Found a 1-man watch repair shop near me

[phydaux]

I found a 1-man watch repair shop near me.  Guy runs it out of his house.  I'm trying to work up the nerve to go to his house and ask for an apprenticeship, even if it's just one day a week.

 

A couple of questions for the forum:

1) What should I have down cold before I show up and ask for an apprenticeship?  When I go in will he be expecting me to know nothing, or will he be expecting me to pass a bench test?

2) What are the odds he already HAS an apprentice?

 

I'm thinking that, if I can get my foot in the door and depending on the state/volume of the business, I might try to buy it off the guy a couple years down the road.

[anilv]

Hi Phydaux,

A lot of it depends on your mechanical aptitude. If you have taken apart your car/bike/truck carburetor and gotten it back running again without much assistance then you are probably ok. If assembling an IKEA chair takes a full day for you then maybe not. If I was to judge an apprentice I would probably hand him a clock and tell him to take it apart. Then sit back and see how he lays out his workspace, handles his tools and his general approach. Does he think about the job or does he willy nilly unscrew everything in sight. Does he place the tools in an orderly manner and replace them in the same plce? There is usually a left-handed thread on one of the winders on the clock and if he catches this fast then its a good sign.

Age is also a factor, eyesight mostly but steadiness of the hand degrades with age. I am pushing 50 and sometimes it gets too tiresome to work at high magnification.

question one - I would really recommend you take the watch course offered in this website as the first step.. maybe approach him when you're a bit more comfortable with handling the tools. The last thing the watch-repair person wants is a newbie putting a screwdriver thru a customers hairspring. So having some basic skills will give him some confidence in you.

question two - A lot depends on the size of the business, if he does not have many customers then he may not be able to afford an apprentice (or another one). One trend nowadays is that watch repair guys don't deal directly with the customer, they work with watch shops who deal with the customer. They just make weekly rounds to hand over the previous weeks batch and collect the next weeks work. If this is the case then the workload should be enough.

Good luck.

 

Anilv

 

[oldhippy]

You want to find out if he is qualified; I do not know the qualifications you need in the USA. If he is self-taught you do not want to learn bad habits. Just be honest and tell him what you can or cannot do, how you got interested in horology, tell him about this forum if you like. I have never heard of a bench test, so forget that. You should tell him the tools you have and knowledge of using them, any books you have.   

Certainly do not tell him.

 I'm thinking that, if I can get my foot in the door and depending on the state/volume of the business, I might try to buy it off the guy a couple years down the road.

 

Taking on an apprentice over here in the UK you have to go down official channels, in my time I had to be registered with the B H I. A bit of paper work involved.