Watchmaking and watch repair is a very exciting profession but with a huge selection of watchmaker tools on the market, it is very easy to get confused or even carried away.I thought it may be helpful to list down some of the most essential watch repair tools that any serious…

Eternal Tools has drawn up an alphabetical list of some of the finest clock and watch schools around the world to help you decide where you would like to study Horology,  the study and science of time and time keeping

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.

I thought it might be useful to list down the Swiss ETA watch parts together with an image for reference. I know from personal experience that whenever I have attended a watch making course the experienced tutors are able to recite each watch part number from memory.

My High School Science teacher was a watch collector and thought I'd be a good candidate for an apprenticeship opening at R.L.Christie in Edinburgh where he had his watches maintained. I took the opportunity and served a 5 year apprenticeship as a watch and clock maker.

My interest in clocks and watches began when I was very young, maybe 7-8? I used to stand next to my father who repaired the watches of various work colleagues. He would generally do this on a Sunday morning and then would go into Birmingham the following Saturday morning for any parts he required.