Practical Watch Repairing

Keep in mind that this book was first written in 1946 and additions made to it up until 1963. With that being said, this has got to be the complete encyclopedia of watch making at the time of writing it. The author, Donald E. Carle is no doubt an authority of horology. The language he uses is old British and a little hard to understand in places and some of the equipment and materials he advises are no longer available or have been found to be health hazards in today's world. This book contains a wealth of information, but unless you are a professional horologist and willing to invest 10's of thousands of dollars in tools and equipment it has more information than you will ever use. But it does contain everything and I mean everything that you could possibly want to know about vintage mechanical watches. I guess the author assumes that the reader already has considerable experience in watch repair by the layout of the book. It starts out discussing needed tools and then by chapter 3 it explains completely disassembling a wrist watch movement. The steps he uses are not what I would recommend. The first thing he suggests removing on the back of the movement is the balance wheel assembly, which in my opinion has got to be the most difficult part of watch disassembly of all. Unless you have an extreme amount of previous experience, you will permanently trash your watch by starting at this point. The balance wheel assembly is very delicate and easily damaged. In the time period this book was written replacement parts may have been readily available. That is not the case today. The majority of the parts for these vintage watches are no longer made in today's market place and finding a replacement part can in some cases be close to impossible. He does explain how to make or repair some parts of a watch, but without the specialized tools needed to do this, it would be impossible to do today and finding those specialized tools would be a difficult task in itself and very expensive. Overall, I would highly recommend this book if you want to learn extensive watch repair.

Basic watchmaking guide that spells things out quite well, is readable, and a fun read.

Mechanical watches are precision micro machines. It is unrealistic for anyone to think that it is possible to learn to repair mechanical watches just by reading books. There are drawn illustrations through out the book. However; the illustrations do not show step by step of the operations being discussed. On the other hand,in the age of the internet it is not difficult to overcome this problem. There are plenty information that can be found on the topic on the internet. There are documents showing step by step instructions to disassembled and reassembled a simple mechanical watch. However, even with these step by step instructions the only way to learn is through practicing. Together with information that you can find on the internet, you will then realize the gold that is hidden between the pages of this very affordable book. To Work on a mechanical watch you will need time, patience, steady hands and the right tools. The purpose of this book review is to help the interested readers to set realistic expectations of any book on watch repairing. Should you buy this book? If you are interested in mechanical watch repair then you must.

Started watch repair as a hobby. found this book very enlightening and helpfu

While this book is widely touted on watch repair "training" websites it is not exactly the easiest read or mostly clearly detail how-to book I have ever used. It is a good reference, and I am not sorry I purchased it, but I wish I had some thing a little more clearly written. For example, the author frequently refers to parts and assemblies that he never shows.

This is a fairly comprehensive book, especially from the viewpoint of a novice. It has a lot of watchmaking lore that I believe will become very helpful as I get more familiar with the world inside watches. I think it will be a fine reference book when I gain more experience and insight.

works on changing watch batteries.

I'm just getting into watch repair. Two weeks ago I knew absolutely nothing about watches. I think I read somewhere that this book focused only on pocket watches but that's not the case. I bought a few Westclox pocket watches, hoping to use them to learn with. I soon discovered that Westclox watches are terrible for repair because most weren't meant to be disassembled. This is not a perfect book - and it's not easy to understand but it is a terrific read and it has a wealth of information. There are many illustrations, but only a 30th of the number of illustrations that would really be necessary to see what the author is referring to in most cases. My biggest complaint so far is that the author jumps into the most intricate minutia almost immediately, yet he says that he assumes we know absolutely nothing about watches. I haven't finished this book, but really think that I'm going to need another more general book that explains how to take a watch apart - clean it - and put it back together. This book doesn't do a good job of explaining the big picture before diving into the details. There are many, many tips and conversations based on determining if each part of your watch is absolutely perfect long before more general understanding of the parts has been offered. Some of the illustrations are out of order and many illustrations are missing (not because of error - just omitted). The author says that his publisher wanted a book that would teach even people who couldn't read how to repair a watch. Trust me, you have to know how to read to even start understanding this book.

The book is listed as “ from 2008” . That is not the case. This is a facsimile (scanned) reprint of a 1949-1969 book. And that is for watch repairing old. Some principles are the same, but things have progressed. But not in the book. And the facsimile (scanned) version is also no fun to read.

Good reading

Excellent book

This is a very detailed book on mechanical watch repairing, begining from how to set up your shop, the kind of tools you will need from start up and how to check if the tools are in good shape, and going through every part of a mechanical watch movement. It's as generic as possible because there are a number of different movements in the marked but you get to understand the concepts, which will allow you to identify those parts in any movement you are working with. If you are looking to understand mechanical movements without the idea to become a watch repairer, but serving different purposes, this book is also a very good start.

The content is over 50 years old and the graphics/sketches are very poor quality/resolution