Clermont, Florida · by appointment
Antique American clocks & pocket watches
Taken apart, cleaned, and set running properly by one person at one bench. Seth Thomas to Waltham, mantel clock to railroad watch.
Repair
What comes to the bench
American clocks
Spring-driven shelf and mantel movements, time-only or time-and-strike. Full service, rebushing and mainspring replacement.
Seth Thomas, Ansonia, Ingraham, Waterbury, Gilbert, New Haven.
American pocket watches
18-size down to 6-size, key-wind through lever-set and pendant-set. Cleaning, mainspring and staff work, regulation.
Waltham, Elgin, Illinois, Hamilton, Hampden.
What I don’t take
Quartz movements and battery changes. Smartwatches. Modern Swiss wristwatches. Cuckoo and Black Forest clocks.
If it runs on a battery or was made after about 1950, it isn’t my bench, and I’d rather tell you now than after you’ve driven out. I’m glad to point you to someone who does that work.
What a service includes
- Inspect and quoteBefore anything comes apart, so there are no surprises on either side.
- DisassembleDown to bare plates: every wheel, every screw, every spring out of its barrel.
- CleanUltrasonic, with mainsprings removed and cleaned separately.
- Pivots and bushingsWorn pivot holes get rebushed. A worn hole left alone chews through new oil in a season.
- MainspringSet, tired or broken springs get replaced rather than nursed along.
- LubricateMoebius 8000 at the jewels and pivots, KT22 on the mainspring and keyless work. Gear teeth and hairspring stay dry.
- Reassemble and regulatePut back in beat, then brought to time.
- Run itA week on the bench under observation before it goes home.
Software · free
Bench Buddy
The desktop app I built to run my own bench. Every repair becomes a project with numbered photo, video and narrated steps; a timegrapher and clock beat tool listen through a contact mic; parts, movements, customers and the ledger live in one place, on your own computer.
- Document every job. Photos, video, timelapse and narration, annotated with arrows, numbers and wheel tracing.
- Time it at the bench. Watch rate and beat error; clock BPH, beat error and pendulum calibration.
- Know what’s on the shelf. Parts and movement inventory with locations, labels and Pocket Watch Database lookup.
- Run the shop. Customers, intake, estimates and a ledger that imports eBay purchases.
Free to download and use.
Windows, macOS and Linux. No account, no subscription, and your records stay on your own machine.
Now and then it will ask if you’d like to support development. Say no and it keeps working exactly the same.
Bench trays
Numbered parts trays
Two trays, one numbering sequence. Parts go into compartment 1 as they come off the movement, then 2, then 3, and go back in reverse. Every compartment has a small corral in its corner for the screws that belong to that part.
Tray 1, top view, to scale from the design file.
Tray 1
Large Parts
Case parts, dial, hands, bridges and barrel. A 58 mm open well with four screw boxes, then eight compartments.
Compartments 1–9
Footprint 148 × 83 mm
Height 10 mm
Material [material]
[price]
Tray 2, top view, to scale from the design file.
Tray 2
Small Parts
Train, escapement and keyless work. Six 20 mm columns and a narrow end column; numbering picks up at 10.
Compartments 10–23
Footprint 148 × 83 mm
Height 10 mm
Material [material]
[price]
I
Grandfather
Creighton, Neb.
II
Father
III
Mine
Clermont, Fla.
About
Why Bench Three
My grandfather was a master watchmaker. He opened Wunderlich Jewelry in Creighton, Nebraska in 1947, back when the small-town jeweler was simply the man at the bench with a loupe.
My father kept a bench of his own, and his bench and tools came to me. This is the third bench in that line. The work hasn’t changed much, and neither have the movements.
Contact
Request a repair
Everything is by appointment, so write first and we’ll find a time.
Email [email]
Phone [phone]
Where Clermont, Florida
Tell me What it is, roughly how old you think it is, and what it’s doing or refusing to do. Photos of the movement help more than photos of the case.
Shipping Pocket watches and trays ship anywhere. Clocks are better brought in person.