My Journey

The class I signed up for was the one day taster session, Introduction to Beginners Watch Serving Course, and I spent a very hot Sunday indoors learning how to assemble and disassemble a working pocket watch. By the end of the day, I was hooked and it was confirmed that this was definitely something I wanted to continue. I had most certainly been bitten by the watchmaking bug.

By the following week, I had enrolled onto the extensive one year beginners course at Epping Forest Horology Centre. The one year beginners course ran during term time for 40 weeks of classes and I began making the three hour round trip every week.

I quickly developed a great rapport with both my teachers and fellow students whilst gaining incredible knowledge and experience in watchmaking. This entire experience made the long journey every week worth it.

Then we were sadly hit by the pandemic and classes shut down with no insight on when we would be back to business. As lockdown continued, physical classes were taken online and whilst this was initially a challenge, it worked. Zoom came to the rescue and classes continued albeit in a different form.

However, my passion for watchmaking reigned strong and I was not deterred by this sudden change of class format. Instead, I surpassed all my expectations for what I would get from the course and my watchmaking skills excelled from strength to strength.

Following the one year beginners course at Epping Forest Horology Centre, I was amazed by everything I had learnt about watchmaking in that first year. There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to continue the journey and I signed up for the second year course to progress my watchmaking further. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Beginnings of the WatchmakingTools Website

Throughout my time at Epping Forest Horology Centre, one thing I loved just as much as getting into the nitty gritty of a delicate watch face was to assist others with developing their skills. After several years of personal experience developing my own techniques, establishing a toolbox that actually works and encountering my own challenges in watchmaking, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to share what I knew with others.

Whilst it began as helping others on my course, it was evident that lockdown had made so many things go online and thrive. A thought sparked that my skills and knowledge could be transferred to an online platform where fellow watchmakers could seek out information and find the answers they have been searching for.

Throughout my own watchmaking journey and research, I found myself spending hours endlessly searching for an answer online that just did not exist. As watchmaking is not a mainstream practice, online resources were particularly limited which led to a lot of frustration in the early days of my own watchmaking. It seemed that watchmaking resources were as time-old as the tradition itself, limited to books and not as accessible as most information is in the 21st century. Whilst wading through information with no success in finding what I needed, I longed for an online community where I could easily find the answers, tips and recommendations.

I became extremely passionate about creating this community myself and developed this website to share tips, tricks and knowledge on watchmaking with you, my fellow watchmakers. However, throughout this process of building WatchmakingTool.com, it has also helped my own watchmaking journey.

Throughout my time at Epping Forest Horology Centre, things moved at a fast pace. Sometimes it was difficult to fully absorb and process the information received but putting it here has consolidated my knowledge and firmly cemented it. Whilst trying to help others and share my passion, WatchmakingTools has also become my personal education tool. A place where I can decipher my thoughts about the world of watchmaking and fully understand the intricacies of this art form. I can look back at any time to reaffirm knowledge and help reflect on my own personal watchmaking journey so far.

Building this website has become a secondary passion project, one that I am as deeply invested in as watchmaking itself. I hope that WatchmakingTools helps you in your watchmaking journey as much as it has helped me on mine.