View “The Master Watchmaker”

Photography by Peter Belanger
Written by Todd Oppenheimer

As our timepieces have become increasingly digital (and their functions increasingly invisible), we’ve almost forgotten that these devices were once handmade masterpieces—with miniature gears, chains, springs, and balance wheels that kept time with amazing precision. Today, most watchmakers don’t even know how to repair these old mechanical wonders. Jean-Pierre Bourroux is a notable exception. A CRAFTSMANSHIP photo essay.

In the text that accompanies the photos below, you will notice mentions of many other sources on horology: brief histories of watchmaking’s great periods of innovation; videos and websites explaining how mechanical watches are made; publications that showcase the most remarkable timepieces being made by today’s independent watchmakers; and schools that still train people in the art and craft of horology. Links to some of the best of these sources can be found in the accompanying sidebar, “The Intricate World of Mechanical Watches.”

Jean-Pierre Bourroux has been working as a watchmaker, specializing in repairing mechanical timepieces, for nearly 60 years. When he and his classmates first graduated from their horology studies, in Nice, France, in 1965, the standard pay for a repair by a journeyman watchmaker was 5 francs, which was less than a dime. If he needed tools, Jean-Pierre often had to make his own. But he stuck with it, becoming the only member of his class to sustain a career in horology.

For the last 40 years, Jean-Pierre has kept a small shop in downtown San Francisco, specializing in high-end brands like Boucheron, Patek Philippe, and Omega. While new watchmakers do still enter the field, thanks to a handful of horology schools around the world, independent shops like Gears & Jewels are becoming a rarity. Today, when most horology students graduate, they go to work for mass-market brands like Tourneau, or big retail service centers. Whatever route they choose, skilled watchmakers remain very much in demand, commanding starting salaries in the U.S. of up to $75,000 a year.

Jean-Pierre runs Gears & Jewels with only one other staff member: his wife, Anne-Marie de Gramont, who handles the shop’s business affairs and communication with customers. Although they have worked together for 15 years, Jean-Pierre will not allow her into the shop on days when he has to make a new watch part. He reserves those tasks for the weekends, when the business is closed and he can work with no risk of disturbances. “The work is very delicate,” he says. “If there is not complete silence I cannot concentrate.”

As aficionados of fine watches have tired of the industry’s increasingly automated, mass-produced timepieces, demand has grown for fine mechanical watches—and for horologists with the skills to make them. The demand has been particularly strong in Europe, which is seeing something of a renaissance in traditional mechanical watchmaking. The most accomplished of these watchmakers—some of whom make most if not all of their watch parts themselves—are selling their creations for close to $1 million apiece; and sometimes even more.

In a given year, Jean-Pierre can turn out more than 1,000 repaired or restored timepieces. Some of these are quartz and other battery-powered watches, which are comparatively quick and easy devices to fix, but the vast majority belong to the family of mechanical timepieces that can feel like living machines. These watches tend to create very devoted owners, who are more than happy to pay whatever it takes to keep their watches ticking. Prices for a mechanical watch repair at Gears & Jewels range from a few hundred dollars to well into the thousands for a vintage watch with numerous mechanical functions (“complications” in horology-speak), or requiring new, custom-made parts.

This Swiss pocket watch (circa 1900) is a classic representative of the golden age of watchmaking, which lasted roughly 200 years from the mid-1700s through the mid-20th century. The biggest innovations of this period occurred at its beginning, when the legendary French watchmaker, Abraham-Louis Breguet, came up with a series of groundbreaking innovations: the first wristwatch; the first self-winding system; and slim, “gong repeaters.” These watches, which have up to 300 parts, can sound out the time to the minute. This pocket watch is a “quarter repeater,” which means that, with the press of a button, it chimes out the time on the quarter hour. While this function might seem like a frill, in the days before electric lighting, it proved very helpful when someone, standing in the dark, needed to know what time it was.

This pocket watch, made in the late 1700s by British watchmaker James Tregent, was called a “verge fuseè.” The model got its name from the mechanism (the fuseè) that regulated the mainspring that has powered mechanical watches for centuries. After key-wound watches were made obsolete by Bruguet’s self-winder, the great British watchmaker George Daniels was still defending them. He once said that a man who doesn’t have “the tranquility of mind” to wind a watch once a day with a key “and observe the works going around… doesn’t deserve to have the watch anyway.”

Before horologists like Breguet and George Daniels figured out ways to miniaturize timepiece movements, a watch’s drivetrain was similar to a bicycle’s, in almost microscopic form. These particular gears and miniature chains circle the fuseè in Jean-Pierre’s vintage Tregent pocket watch. The gears’ increasing size was designed to gradually offset, and compensate for, the diminishing power in a watch’s mainspring as it unwinds. Without some mechanism that does this, every mechanical watch would run slower and slower as its mainspring unwinds.

Most modern mechanical watches, when opened up, look much like this one: an assembly of ultra-thin gears, springs, and balance wheels, all carefully connected, and carefully regulated, to turn a watch’s hands in near-perfect time. While no mechanical watches match the accuracy of today’s battery-powered watches, or the time on your phone, the best do pretty well. To meet the highest Swiss standard, for a “chronometer,” a mechanical watch cannot gain or lose more than 5 seconds a day. (Speaking from personal experience, I can confirm that Jean-Pierre’s restorations can keep some watches from varying more than a few seconds a week. And even that minor variance can be controlled, on a self-winding watch, by the owner.)

While big, fat wristwatches are all the rage these days, there was a time when they were decidedly not in fashion. One reason is that it’s much easier to make a big watch, with big, easily manageable parts, than a small one with parts that are small and fragile. So back in the day, watchmakers showed off their skill by turning out tiny, ultra-thin timepieces like this one, which could easily fit in the palm of a baby’s hand.

Precise time of course requires precise work. And this drawer-full of tiny tools is one of many that Jean-Pierre turns to many times a day, as he puts a disabled watch through whatever surgery it needs.

A master watchmaker’s workbench looks a lot like a hospital operating room: every part and tool handled gently, and kept pristinely clean.

“You cannot do this job just for a job,” Jean-Pierre says. “You have to be in love.” Jean-Pierre likes to work alone (his wife happily keeps her office in a separate room). And he has never had an apprentice. “I am a difficult person,” he says.

From time to time, Jean-Pierre gets a watch needing new parts that he cannot find: gears with special calibrations, springs or balance staffs with unusual dimensions. When these challenges occur, he has to make the part himself; and that sends him to his primary raw materials: boxes of steel rods, which he organizes in various sizes.

Once he has chosen the appropriate piece of steel for a new part, Jean-Pierre takes to his lathe. Lathes like this one (cutting mechanism somewhat hidden in the foreground) are designed specifically for watchmakers, and are thus more refined than standard metal lathes. High-end watchmaking lathes and their accessories are still made in Europe, and sell for as much as $100,000. Vintage versions, if properly maintained, can be just as costly, and sometimes more so.

Before a repaired watch is put back together, Jean-Pierre uses these grinding and polishing wheels to bring its outer parts–case, bracelet strap, or chain–to a high shine.

Over the centuries, watches have been made in almost every size and shape imaginable. To accomodate their diverse history, Jean-Pierre keeps a store of hundreds of different watch movements and other parts gathered through his decades of work. “I never throw anything away,” he says.

For a watch to work properly, and keep working, its parts must go through a three-part cleaning process, with different chemical mixtures applied at each stage. This “washing machine,” of sorts, is the latest of several that Jean-Pierre has obtained over the years. (The older ones are still on his shelves, just in case…)

One can almost hear the horology surgeon talking to himself as the operation is about to begin. (“Tweezers, please.”)

As complicated as a mechanical watch seems, most are driven by only about a half-dozen gears, often called wheels. Some are relatively large, at least by watch standards (nearly half the circumference of the watch itself). Others are miniscule, like this wheel, which is less than a fifth the size of a small wristwatch’s largest wheel.

At age 76, Jean-Pierre is stil trim and fit. (His exercise routine? “A lot of walking.”) And his hands remain remarkably steady.

Like any machine, mechanical watches need oil to run properly. Until 1900, watchmakers used animal oil; today they use synthetic oils–four different kinds in Jean-Pierre’s shop. He says the synthetics are far superior to animal oils: lighter, longer lasting, less prone to getting sticky over time. Still, mechanical watch parts need to keep moving in order to stay properly lubricated. This rule has produced yet another fussy piece of gear for serious watch collectors: automatic watch winders, which are small, battery powered watch cases that keep a self-winding watch rotating when you’re not wearing it.

Microscopic screws: microscopic screwdrivers. It’s all in a day’s work for Jean-Pierre, who routinely makes his own steel pivots, with points that are a mere 600th of a millimeter wide.

When going about his normal life, Jean-Pierre won’t carry one of his vintage pocket watches, which he considers too fragile, too valuable, and too rare to put at risk. Instead, he usually wears one of modern horology’s most remarkable innovations: the Accutron, invented by the Bulova watch company, in New York, in 1960. Jean-Pierre is still amused by the watch’s central mechanism: a miniature tuning fork, which made the Accutron the world’s first electronic timepiece.

Peter Belanger is a commercial photographer based in San Francisco, California.
Todd Oppenheimer is the editor and publisher of Craftsmanship Magazine, and the executive director of its nonprofit umbrella organization, The Craftsmanship Initiative.

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