Watchmaking Hardcover – May 3, 2011

There are a few books in existence that cover their subject well enough to be an industry standard and yet fit in your lap. This is one of em. It is highest quality in it's making. The subject is watch making and the writer shows evidence through pictures that his work appears impossible to do but the text takes you through it in an organized and clear fashion giving the basic steps so, if you ever wanted to, you too could do it. (Its like any art form, the skill is learned with lots of practice) It shows how to make little tiny parts out of high carbon steel for an exact purpose and the reason of each process. The other book in this class is Gordon Cornell's book on model airplane engines.

George Daniels wanted to write a book about hand made high quality watches and how to build them. This book covers every aspect of that process. If you could only have one book on the subject, this would be it. The mechanical drawings, some in color, plus the photographic plates of assembled and disassembled watches are excellent. Another aspect of this book deals with the watchmaker's workshop and what tools, machines and skills are needed to accomplish this difficult, to say the least, task.Clearly Daniels was a master of this craft and he also had a world view of the watchmaking industry. You learn that the expensive high quality mechanical watches from Switzerland are still made in batches (series) where the parts are mass produced. Daniels' approach reverts to the one of a kind, hand made watch where every part is produced by hand. There is no mass production.Concerning the various subsystems that make up a watch, Daniels goes through all of them, explaining how they work and their advantages and disadvantages. On the topic of movements (escapements) he starts with the primitive verge escapement and takes it from there through the standard lever designs to his modern invention known as the coaxial escapement. He provides much detail in how these movements actually work. Daniels clearly had a great knowledge of the past great watchmakers such a Breguet and Arnold to name a few. And it is also clear that Daniels was guided but not a copier of these classic mechanical watch designs. He completely understood their mechanisms and used that knowledge to innovate and make significant design improvements and breakthroughs such as his coaxial escapement.Daniels understands the interplay between the watch consumer and the watchmaker/watchmaking industry. The fact that we still have a thriving industry in mechanical watches in a world were an electronic quartz watch can be more accurate and cost much less, shows that there is still a viable market for those who value a high quality, high priced, mechanical timepieces.Daniels' timepieces required thousands of hours to complete and because of their quality and function, he was able to keep this art form alive appealing to connoisseurs who are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to own one of these unique timepieces.I think that Daniels wrote this book because he wanted to leave a legacy to future generations about his work and unique accomplishments that might otherwise be forgotten as the world continues to move from a real representation of things to a digitally contrived artificial representation. Hopefully, the fascination and appreciation of fine mechanical timepieces will continue and this book will continue to be a source for building or at least deciphering them.

I love everything about this book, now once I understand it all I will be happy. This is a book you purchase to use over your lifetime. There seems to be several lifetimes of information in this book but one man did it all in one lifetime and that just blows me away. He builds on the past like everyone else but Daniels has some fantastic watches and fantastic ideas for watchmaking. This isn't about taking a watch apart and putting it back together, its about building everything from scratch everything even the screws and springs. Its fantastic I just hope to be able to do a few of the techniques described in this book.

Purchased for horology loving family member. He loved this book he was very haooy with this book.

The amount of information contained within the pages of this volume are so absolutely astounding, both so immaculately in depth on aspects of watchmaking unknown to me and just as much an intimate recollection of a lifetime spent mastering a craft. For watch enthusiasts and collectors and repairers alike, this is a wonderfully invaluable tome not just for one to keep but the perfect gift as well.

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So, you were looking for a popular science book that explains to you how watches work. Bad luck, this is the wrong book. This book is really really technical. I mean, it has technical drawings of all the tools used to make a watch, plus of different parts of a watch. This book really wants to teach you how to make a watch. Is not a popular science book, and is not a book that tells you how to assemble a watch or where to buy the components from. Is not a textbook because it doesn't have formulae and exercises, but otherwise it feels like a textbook.In general the book is printed on really beautiful paper and is very heavy. Most likely you'll waste the money on it, since it is impossible to read. At least you can see that watchmaking is complicated and you can have some fun showing it to some friends that come over.I can't give it less than 5 stars because the author put so much effort into writing it, and is a serious book. Is also the only book around that explains something about watches.