WatchTime - August 2012

WATCHtalk
spring, the winding stem, the winding
pinion and sliding pinion. All of them end
up in the blue dish. Voilà: We have
stripped the movement down to what
watchmakers call the “platin nu,”
Ritschel said – the bare plate.
We take a break. When we resume,
chaos strikes. Everybody’s blue dish is
loaded with wheels and screws and other
parts. The task is to put our Humpty
Dumpty Unitas tractors back together
again. But how? What part goes first and
where does it go? Good luck. Good grief!
The instructors spring into action.
Now there is lots of individual tutoring.
“Take this screw. Put it there. No, not
there. That’s right.” Sitting behind me is a
British journalist with a wonderful baritone
voice. “Ooops, spring’s gone,” he
announces to no one in particular. It’s the
yoke spring. The instructors manage to
find it on the floor. A minute later, he
makes another announcement: “It’s gone
again. It’s just disappeared.” The instructors
bring him a spare. But he loses that
one, too.
Meanwhile I am having my own yoke
spring problems. It doesn’t fly away like
my British colleague’s. But it doesn’t slide
into place, either, after endless attempts
maneuvering it with the buff and tweezers.
Finally, Emmanuel Schneider, one of
the instructors, has mercy on me and intervenes.
In a flash of his tweezers and
buff, the spring slides into place.
Now I move onward. And upward.
Literally. While trying to insert the tiny
click spring into the movement, it goes
Disassembling the movement is easy; reassembling it is hard.
Ritschel aids the editor of WatchTime.
the way of my British friend’s yoke
spring: propelled into oblivion. I see it
launch but have no idea where it went.
They bring me another.
Suddenly, behind me, the British baritone
wails: “Oh, I’ve done something
very, very bad. The screw is now in two
pieces. The head has come off!” Short
pause. Even more plaintively, “Should I
just leave?” A glutton for punishment, he
bravely stays.
Finally, we get to the last step, inserting
the balance wheel. Ritschel explains
that there are four maneuvers to make, all
at the same time (lift, drag, push, flip,
whatever: I couldn’t remember them all,
let alone attempt them). I realize this is
mission impossible. As I stare forlornly at
the movement, Schneider appears and
whispers to me and the journalist next to
me in a lyrical French accent, “There is a
trick.” He shows us the trick. I take a stab
at it. No luck. I try again. Bingo! The balance
wheel slips into place and starts gyrating.
The watch comes alive, and so do
I. I can’t believe it. I want to jump up and
do an NFL end-zone dance. Wisely, I
don’t. But it is a “eureka” moment when
that movement moves. I am giddy with
delight.
The discovery for me was not how
hard watchmaking and watch repairing
are. I knew that going in. What I learned
is how exciting it is when, after all that
painstaking effort, the watch works. In
some slight way, I got a sense of the satisfaction
that drives professional watchmakers
to the bench each day.
(The FHH offers watchmaking workshops
on a regular basis in Geneva. For
more information, go to www.hautehorlogerie.org.)
–JOE THOMPSON
WatchTime’s editor experiences joy, relief and disbelief
when his reassembled movement works.