Until I began in the world of watchmaking I didn't realise just how complicated selecting a set of watchmakers screwdrivers could be. In this article I'm going to break down everything you need to know about screwdrivers for watch repair so that you don't end up purchasing the wrong tools and ultimately find yourself wasting time and money.

Mechanical devices have always interested me. Being born in the late thirties, when I was a teenager in the early fifties, cars and motorcycles were cheap and sufficiently simple mechanically that one could perform repairs without needing expensive equipment. At age 30, 1968, I was working as a heavy equipment mechanic

Ever since I’ve been young I’ve always been compelled to find out how the things around me worked. I would take things apart, anything I could get my hands on and hopefully put it back together. I remember when I was 10 and my parents found me in my room with a new toy helicopter in pieces all over the floor - and me with a screwdriver in hand.

I’d like to tell my story and hopefully help inspire others to develop previously unknown skills and abilities and keep the world of mechanical timekeeping well and truly alive and ticking.

I am a qualified architect and industrial designer. My final project for the masters program in industrial design was related to time. I spent countless hours pouring over the wonderful books on horology in the institute library researching my project. I think that is where my love for mechanical timekeeping was born. Later I discovered ebay and English fusee watches. With no one to fix them here I learnt how to do it myself.

I have always been fascinated by the concept of time. We know almost nothing about it, we do not know if it even exists. It is obviously not the 'fourth dimension' as it is so often called. Time. We can not measure it, we can not travel through it, we can not exert any control over it. All we can do is record its passing, with ever greater accuracy.