my name is Dave Makana I'm the
first-year watchmaking instructor here
at North Seattle College
so I teach that micro mechanics and
basic watch introduction to watches
being a being a watchmaker goes to
school you're very well-rounded
regardless of what school you go to
you're it's a very collaborative
environment and we have a very diverse
background of skills and a lot of people
bring kind of a fresh approach to to
repair that Encino I learned from my
students all the time things that I just
never would have even thought of because
I'm used to doing it you know one way
and everything I learned I take back and
you know try to work it into our lessons
and really give them all angles of the
repair I've always liked working with my
hands of like making things fixing
things taking things apart putting it
back together and a friend of mine I was
talking with her dad and he just
mentioned that his dad was a jeweler and
a watchmakers apprentice and I was like
oh my god that's still a thing so I
started looking into it and there happen
to be one of the three schools in the
country is here so just kind of fell
into it and two months later I was
enrolled in six months after that I
started I grew up in Idaho and my mom
has gone to the same Machar per person
for years and she kept telling me she's
like you really look into this you know
of course I was like now I know what I'm
doing okay
and then I ended up going and talking to
him I think two years ago he was so
encouraging and I think that had a lot
to do with me actually deciding to look
into
and think seriously about it initially
there wasn't much to draw specifically
to watches and it wasn't until I
actually played around of one took one
apart so the intricate workings of them
and all the ornate craftsmanship that
went into some of these things you know
well over a hundred years ago that's
what really drew me to it and realizing
that people would dedicate their lives
to making these pieces and they would
have this pride in the workmanship
I happened to stumble upon this post
online I was talking about the watch
making school up here and at first it
just seems like such a kind of odd thing
to go into but I thought it over and it
seemed to line up with what I don't like
to do it's all pretty great I like the
manufacturing making tools and and also
getting familiar with different
movements and parts I had the
opportunity to start my student watch
project a little bit earlier than the
rest of my class and I made kind of a
first run demo of making the plates for
a watch bridge it's made out of brass
which is nice and easy to machine but
the precision required for those are
extremely high things being off by less
than 0.1 of a millimeter is enough for
things not to work properly you develop
dexterity in your hands that you can
feel you get the feel for things that
you usually wouldn't have you feel the
to hundreds of a millimeter something
moves a lot of people they can
not even I believe that even imagine
that most mechanical and electrical
products are very utilitarian the you
know they do a job and that's all they
do whereas in watchmaking we get the
opportunity for design as well really
going to marry those two and that not
just the like the dial and case layout
of watch but the movement itself I mean
there's some really beautiful works of
art that are going on the backside of
watches these days design is almost just
as important in a watch
making it look aesthetically pleasing
it's almost just as important as it
functioning well if you go back in
history the first watches that people
wore didn't work that well at all but
they were a fashion statement as such
from the very beginning of the program
it's it's evident that there's a lot of
tradition in watchmaking that gets
taught to the students the things that
we do by hand are very old school and
even though there's machinery or
equipment that we can use to do our job
more quickly
we always start from the very basics and
sort of take this time-honored route and
I think that it's very important to sort
of continue this tradition and even when
we graduate from the program with all
the new technology and everything new is
still gold pondered or 200 years back
and look at what they did and pretty
much that's what we do you can pick up a
watch from 50 years ago and still get it
to work and it still keeps good time I
will always advocate for mechanicals
over courts they
they're cooler they're fancier they run
on their own they come the zombie
apocalypse will never stop working and
and you can pass down to your kids like
this is the thing that will be around
for centuries if you take good care of
it I like I said I don't want to stare
at a computer screen all day I am I want
to to fix things and build things and
I'm perfectly happy doing this for the
rest of my life and just getting better
and better at it