Watch Repair Books

[david pierce]

There are some good basic watch repair books that were published years ago and come up for sale on Ebay. Some of my favorites are: Practical Watch Repairing by Donald de Carle, The Watch Repairer’s Manual by H. B. Fried, and Watch Repair by Harold C. Kelly. Practical Watch Reparing seems to be back in print and is available in paperback at an affordable price.
david

[arutha]

If I could only have one of those books it would be The Watch Repairer’s Manual by H. B. Fried. Amazing book and great pictures to help, although you can never have too many books

[david pierce]

Arutha,
I bought and read every watch repair book I could find. I think most of the major ones seem to be a continuation of the “Watchmakers Hand-Book” by Claudius Saunier written in 1882. This work seems to have set the mold for the subsequent watchmaker repair books. The George Daniels book is the one that seems to have broken away from this tradition and branched out with different concepts and ideas. I am sure that he read the earlier works as well but did original research and has thrown in many new ideas that were not mentioned in the earlier works. His book shows numerous pictures of his shop which is different than most watch repair facilities. My background was in manufacturing engineering and robotics design, not watchmaking, so I have no particular allegiance to traditional watchmaking or watch repair procedures.
david

[arutha]

Hi David, I too have Sauniers book on watchmaking, it is great but times and tools have moved on, I am not saying its not relevant, far from it, its just that some methods have moved on. Do you also have his A treatise on modern horology? What an amazing book! Very heavy going in places but if you want to understand the science behind anything in Horology then that is the book to have.
I love books

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