Donald de CarlePractical Watch Repairing

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.

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.

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.

Excellent book for amateur watch repair , or just general info. Lots of knowledge.

This is an interesting book....it's like a textbook for watch repair for manual watches. If you've got a lot of time, and some expensive old watches--say pre-1945 Omegas and the like, this book may be for you. Anyone who's already a fine-watch repair person would like this book, if they don't already own it, it's got all the hard stuff in it. "Hard stuff" like winding mainsprings, bluing hands and screws, making parts from scratch, setting jewels in the movement just to mention a few.If you only want to adjust the band and change the battery, or maybe advance the time or change a gasket, this book won't help you much, it's just too dated and complicated. I say, if you're a pro, give it a go, but if you're a beginner, it's not a winner!

Great info

Greta old school repair book. Book of the masters.

a lot of information great book now to learn it.