In the Beginning (Ω)

Photo: "Seagull ST36 movement" by W. Bronkhorst

... As I was about to speak, all the clocks in the shop suddenly began chiming. It was exactly 2 p.m., and although each one chimed only twice, it was still incredibly loud and a bit shocking, especially with the cuckoos flying out all at once. The watchmaker didn’t bat an eye. He simply turned around, got out a little invoice book, and started filling it in. He let out a small guffaw and told me that it was a very nice watch and that he would repair it.

That experience marked the beginning of this journey. Fifteen years later I still own and treasure that watch. Since then I have moved from South Africa to Canada. I used to teach in my birth country and starting over within a new education system has required many difficult adjustments.

During my first few years here, I worked in the mental health field within the public school system. In that role I travelled between schools as needed by my district, supporting students and families across different learning communities.

Over time, I began to feel a strong pull back toward teaching, and because I lost my original certification when I moved to this country, returning to the profession meant starting over. I had to enroll in the BC teacher certification program at the University of Victoria, where I am now completing my studies. One of my courses explores technology in education, and a blogging assignment in that class is what first encouraged me to begin this project.

I was still fascinated by watches and saw this as the right time to learn more about the craft by blogging. The title of the blog came from that realisation. I thought it appropriate because I have always been holding off on the idea of taking up watchmaking as a hobby, but here the perfect opportunity seemed to have presented itself to me at the right time.

With the personal reasons for choosing this topic now set aside, I want to turn toward my larger goal for this platform. I think it is fairly obvious by now that I am a bit of a watch enthusiast. I am however a novice to working on them and the blog will serve to document my progress as I attempt to teach myself the basics. Hopefully some like-minded readers who have also been waiting for Kairos to arrive at their doorstep will find the blog useful or perhaps somewhat inspirational.

Even though I’m exclusively using technology and online content to learn, I have recently realised that the most important part of the journey won’t be the tools or the skills I acquire, but the relationships I form along the way. In just two weeks, I have already met three people who were very enthusiastic about what I am doing.

At the moment, I am happy to report that many of the pieces I need to start the independent learning process have fallen into place, and I look forward to telling you more about my experiences and also bringing you up to speed with what has been happening behind the scenes over the past few weeks.

An aspect of this project that I am very happy about is that I will be using resources that most of my readers also have access to. This will hopefully create an authentic, replicable project that provides other would-be hobbyists with a clear picture of what starting from scratch involves.

This blog will showcase those resources that I have found to be particularly helpful and worth consideration to others. I do live in Canada, so not all the resources I use will be 100% transferable to readers who live abroad, but I do think the general lines of enquiry will be similar.

My first goal is to completely disassemble a practice watch movement and then reassemble it in the correct order. It is the ST36 movement as shown in the feature photo above. This task will take me a few weeks to complete, and I will take you along through each step.

If I feel confident in my ability to dismantle and reassemble the movement, my next goal will be to find a used watch at a thrift store or online and attempt to service it. If I can clean, service, and successfully sell the watch online, I’ll consider that the final test before heading further down the rabbit hole. I will also document that process on this blog, but I should mention that this is the first blog I have ever attempted to write. I may not be great at presenting things in a user-friendly way just yet, but I am working on it. If you have thoughts or suggestions along the way, I would be grateful to hear them.

Next week I will explain how I approached buying my initial tools and perhaps share photos from my bench. Each week after that I will add more photos of the learning process, as well as any new interesting stories I come across.

Till next time.