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Let me start by saying I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL WATCH REPAIR PERSON. I am a hobbyist who tries to help out a little to those who need basic services, inexpensively. There are a few things I do for people and I charge very little for my services. The primary service I offer is to clean, oil and adjust most manual and automatic pocket and wrist watches with some minor repairs.
I specialize in taking cheap watches and making them run to within one minute per day for antique dealers, flea market vendors, etc, inexpensively, and quickly. Often I work in trade, for example, someone sends me ten watches to repair, I charge nothing but get to keep one or two of my choice. My ultimate trade would be work for mechanical chronograph watches so I can improve my skills with them.
I do this to learn, and to have fun, not to make money. For single watches I charge just about enough to cover oil, watch paper, rodico, pithwood, cleaning solution, and the occasional broken screwdriver tip. I am currently not comfortable doing anything more complicated than a watch with day and date, but hope soon to add chronographs and more complicated movements. I can also replace batteries in quartz watches and do minor repairs to them, but if you need one or two batteries changed in cheap watches, take them to Wal-Mart. If you have a slew of them or more expensive models, let me know, I am fully equipped with ESD safe tools.
For the typical manual watch it takes me three to four hours per watch to disassemble the watch and reassemble it. This does not include time in the ultrasonic cleaner. I inspect the parts after cleaning to get an idea of problems. I do not stock replacement parts other than acrylic crystals, springbars, straps, and some crowns. After the reassembly I attempt to time the watch as close as I can without a timing machine. This usually gets the watch to within a few seconds a day but I call any vintage watch that gets to within one minute per day "fixed".
Some people who charge low rates remove the movement from the watch and dump the whole thing into the cleaner. I am not that person. I am doing this to learn so I disassemble every watch, clean and inspect each part, reassemble and lubricate. I use professional lubricants and tools, you will not catch me using vise grips to remove the back of your watch.
To be clear, I want to say this again, I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL WATCH REPAIR PERSON, I do not pretend to be, and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. If you have an expensive watch, or need it to be done by a real professional, please do NOT send it to me. I am using this as a way to help people while learning my hobby.
Some of the watches I have repaired are for sale on my Watch Sales page. Please take a few minutes to check them out. Like my service, they are very cheap, I sell them to fund buying more non-working watches to repair so I can learn more. I am also more than willing to trade for any watch(s) on my sales pages.
Want to see what repairing watches is like? Watch me work on a watch here:
Copyright 2012 Allan Hall, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED