Right to Repair Movement

There really needs to be a way to certify collector/restorers who work on their own watches.

The problems is when parts are sold to just anyone, then there are a few who go into the 'Manufacturing' business on their own. This even happens on the top levels as what happened with the Heritage department, that was to quick to produce the 'perfect' watch.

I am pretty much limited to OFrie, eBay and goodwill. Just got a Tissot case (more on that later it only arrived withing the last hour) Has a broken pusher. I also finally found a 2577 case with a missing crown and tube. A search of these forums gives the needed part number. Unfortunately there is no way to simply order the part.

I tried to get into WOSTEP when I was in my 30s. That was 30 years ago. They said I was too old. I was at the height of my field at Apple working on the laser printers. Those when obsolete by the time I was 40. I went into working on pipe organs. I would have liked to have continued with the watches as well. I suspect I would have drifted into teaching.

That is in effect what my friends and mentors did. They passed on some of their knowledge before they died. I guess that is why I like posting here.

The pipe organ and player piano suppliers pretty much shut down 10 years ago. There are a couple of places that do continue to sell to the trade. Many of the materials have been banned as bad for the environment. Used to one could go into the hardware store and purchase animal hide glued and high proof alcohol (denatured.) Sears stopped selling lathes in the 1960s, because people could use them to make or modify a gun.

Such things look good on paper.

None of this is new. The trade guilds have been restricting competition for centuries. Especially the myth that women are not technical. (Yet who are the low wage semi skilled workers on the assembly line?) If you can read the contract they will not hire you.

If it were not for the liability. I might possibly open a watch shop perhaps even find some apprentices. On the other hand there are at least three places like that within a few KM of here. The public expects to get a few thousand in service for 35 to 50 bucks.

Still it would be nice to be able to get crowns, case tube, clamps and the consumables like gaskets. Not to mention dials and hands. Especially hands.

Hairsprings and balances are the other pesky thing. More so for the high end. There are plenty for 'generic' low end. Ironically no one is (or should be making) A Schild parts. Yet these are widely available.

I think the Open source movement has proven otherwise. Open source is robust. Proprietary software is often crippled and limited. Who knows what is happening inside your data?

There is more open source running critical things than you probably realize.

A lot of the Apple OS code is Open Source. It is easy to forget Apple is a hardware company. Sadly there is a move away from this model with the personal devices. In theory anyone can write an App (which these days are basically front ends to big data bases.)

Possibly the trade secret is that the mfgs do not want customers to know how much Linux does run the world. Ironically AT&T tried to lock down Unix. This gave rise to first BSD (Berkley Systems Distribution.) and of course Linux.

Windows is pretty much last century these days. Sure people still use it. The best versions still remain 98 and XP. A lot of critical stuff ran on that. When was the last time anyone really wrote a program in Basic. Nowadays it is all Python and the cloud.

Innovation happens when people get access to the cast off stuff. I was raised in the 1960s and 1970s SF Bay Area what gave rise to the Silicon valley. The art class used to make field trips to the dump.

There used to be great surplus stores which sold stuff repurposed from dumpsters. A lot from organizations with tax payer funded government contracts. This ended when someone dumpster dived some semi obsolete networking software.

Now such garbage is owned by corporations. Some say this is used to launder money and other things.

One could learn a lot from the old failed products that were tossed into the rubbish bin.

I recently re-read Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court. Sill as relevant as when written. Especially the chapter on wages and inflation.

None of this is new. It was forbidden to take manufacturing knowledge out of England. Still it was smuggled out anyway and gave birth to the so called Yankee ingenuity. If the old restrictions were kept in place, the Wright brothers never would have got past building bicycles.

Have your watchmaker try one of these.