WatchTime - August 2012

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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 <strong>WatchTime</strong>. 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 <strong>WatchTime</strong>’s editor experiences joy, relief and disbelief when his reassembled movement works.
[ SILVERSTONE ] STOWE GMT CHAPMAN LIMITED EDITION MAKE YOUR NEXT WATCH A GRAHAM. HANDCRAFTED IN SWITZERLAND WWW.GRAHAM-LONDON.COM
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WatchTime - August 2012

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