Beginner Watchmaking: How to Build Your Very First Watch Paperback – December 6, 2010

My wife has several small "style" watches that all cost less than $25 each and which she uses with only a particular outfit or type of clothing. After all of their batteries died and some of the bands were broken, she asked me if I could get them fixed or fix some of them myself. At first I was going to take them to the jewelry store but they charge $30 or more for a battery change. So, I decided to try and fix them myself and ordered this book, Beginner Watchmaking to help me get started.Everyone has heard the ole' adage that a picture is worth a thousand words and that is exactly how this book works. It is filled with black and white photos that clearly show the parts of modern mechanical and quartz movements, and how they interconnect, the tools you will need to work with watches, and methods for customizing your own watch. Overall, the pictures are detailed and the text is not overly verbose or technical. I sat down on a Friday evening not knowing jack about watch repair and by Sunday evening, I had finished the book. It is very easy to read through and you will quickly learn how to change a battery, remove or replace a watch band or replace a crystal.I also like how this book is geared to those beginners who just want to get started working on their watch. While the book does spend a few pages to explain the mechanical drivetrain (mainspring (barrel) -> gear train -> escapement -> balance spring) and does show how to adjust the balance spring, it is not really geared towards a deeper understanding of how a watch movement works. What the book does excel at is describing the process for changing batteries, bands, crystals, dials and hands. The book also details all the tools you will need to make the changes the book illustrates. (all the tools can be purchased as a kit or separately for less than $100) At the end of the book, the author shows step by step how to customize a very common watch (the Seiko SKX007 model) into something entirely different in appearance.For those who wish to go deeper, I think of this book as the first of three guides that dive progressively deeper into horology and watch repair/construction. The next book after this one, for those who really want to learn how to take apart and repair watch movements, is The Watch Repairer's Manual by Henry B. Fried. The final book in the series for those who want to actually build their own watch movement piece by piece and goes very deeply into the engineering and mathematics behind watch making is Watchmaking by grandmaster horologist George Daniels.In addition to this book, I ordered a Floureon 20 piece watch tool kit for $23 plus a few small extras. After I finished the book, I removed all the watch backs and ordered new bands and batteries for my wife's watches. A week later, everything came from Amazon and I had all of my wife's 19 watches up and running again for the price of $12 for this book and $23 for my watch tool set (plus the $21 for the assorted batteries and $42 for the new bands). In comparison, I would have paid over $300 to have a jewelry store update all my wife's watches. So, not only did I save a great deal of money but I also learned some valuable skills as well.Then several weeks later, I decided to mod my own Seiko diving watch with a red lumed minute hand and slightly different bezel and cyclops crystal. Thanks to the skills I learned earlier, the work went very smoothly and the mods look great. I even decided to take out my Seiko MarineMaster 300m and clean and oil the movement (repairs that are not covered in Beginner Watchmaking), and that process built upon the base of skills of this book but was more heavily focused on the techniques learned in the Fried book.Overall, I give this book five stars and think it will make an excellent start for anyone interested in either maintaining or modifying their watch. If you just want to get down to work without worrying about deeper concepts related to the watch movement, then this book gives an excellent start.

Beginning Watchmaking might be a little confusing for a title. Watchmaking generally refers to building the movement itself. Swike's approach is geared more toward using off the shelf components and ASSEMBLING a unique watch you have imagined. Not a bad approach and certainly much more attainable for the average person.A more accurate title might be: "Beginner Watch Modifications and Custom Builds". I am not familiar with any other book that takes this approach, so if this idea appeals to you, this is probably the book you want to start with.I am taking one star off because I felt it didn't cover parts sources as well as it could have and sourcing parts (especially good cases) seems to be a big stumbling block for many people.The book covers a lot of ground and is an easy read. Be aware that tracking down parts and identifying what will fit together is still not quite as straightforward as one might think given the internet, eBay, Amazon, etc. Also, if your intent is to just build one or two watches, it's probably more cost effective and efficient to pay someone else to put them together for you.I chipped a watch crystal recently. Using Swike's book, I was able to identify the parts and tools I would need to replace it. Once I acquired all the tools, crystal, and gaskets, I was able to safely remove the back, stem, movement, bezel, and crystal. I then cleaned the case, installed new gaskets as Swike instructs, and reassembled the watch successfully. It was a lot of fun and easier than I had imagined. And the watch still works, an added bonus!Having been inspired by successfully not destroying my watch, I am rereading Beginner Watchmaking and starting to plan a full build based on Swike's instructions.

Great

This book is basically about modifying watches (for example, replacing dials and hands), and building watches from components (whole cases, movements, dials, and hands). Since the former is what I want to do, the book was a good choice. There's a lot of information in here, put together all in one place. One _could_ find this information by searching Internet watch forums, but it's all been collected here in one place. That's the good.The bad? The book needs an editor. It is full of spelling and grammatical errors, as well as poorly written awkward sentences. The book also jumps all over the place, often changing the subject mid-paragraph. My high school English teacher would have given me a "C" for this book.The graphics arts teacher (if I'd had one) would have flunked me. The layout is terrible. Often, a picture will appear on a page, with the caption for the next picture immediately below it. The picture to which it belongs is then on the next page.In summary: The book contains a lot of information which _can_ be found elsewhere, but is conveniently located all in one place. However, the book is unpleasant to read due to textual errors and poor layout. 5 stars for content, 1 star for everything else, hence 3 stars overall.