Who Watches the Watchmen (Our Chit Chat Thread)
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
Thanks all for the messages of support 🙂
@893bet The career path in Bremont will have me work my way up in Assembly, 3 handers, GMTs, chronographs. Then every year there's an opportunity for 1 person to go to the British School of Watchmaking for the 1 year 1800 hour WOSTEP course to become a watchmaker where I will move upstairs to the service center servicing and building the movements.
@Gavin1 Just like my last job, the conversations can be about anything 😁 last week we were discussing great WW2 movies, Von Ryan's Express a favorite of mine 😉 But it's great to chat about watches as well, one of the assemblers worked in a Seiko service center in Maidenhead so you can only imagine with my love of vintage Seiko, the questions I had!
Apart from the one assembler that worked in Seiko, the only other that had previously worked on watches is a guy that started along with me in July that worked for Timpsons , like fast fix. The backgrounds of the others are mixed, engineering,retail, construction most never worked on watches before.
Funny enough most watch companies prefer no previous experience in watchmaking as less chance of bad habits etc.
@NIMAN We do get a discount on watches, 60% off RRP on most models excluding special editions etc. Something I really like to see given my grandfather's watch he got after 25 years in his job is a length of service watch. Starting after 2 years of service, we have a " Wear Watch" policy, basically given a watch that we can wear but don't technically own. Start at 2 years with the basic models, then 5 years, 10 years we can choose a higher end models.
One of the things I forget to mention was that I attended the festival of time that was in Waterford back in May. For some reason I didn't take any pictures but it was a great weekend. All independent watchmakers from around Europe, got to meet John McGonigle again after last meeting him back in 2020 at the talk at Engineers Ireland. First time getting to meet Stephen along with several swiss watchmakers.
It was a bit surreal, I was invited to attend a dinner with all the watchmakers and there families. Sitting there in the Granville hotel at a big table chatting with swiss watchmaker's was quite the experience!
Found this picture of the event, * look closely and I'm in the yellow top behind John 😁
Here's a group shot of the watchmaker's and the orginazer Johnny McElherron
I was chatting with him and John about talks regarding setting up a new watchmaking school in Ireland. Apparently the Mayor of Waterford was interested in a school set up in Waterford but the same issues that saw the old one close still exist today, lack of demand for students in Ireland, employment, getting the funding/ teachers.
The thing that finally convinced me that this was the career for me was after attending the week course back in February, not only did I enjoy studying/ working on watches but watching John Murphy teach was fantastic,combine it with my meeting with another teacher,Karl Fitzmaurice of the former Irish school, a teacher in watchmaking is something I would love to do later in life after gaining real experience and school training, maybe by then a school or even some kind of short course will be set up again in Ireland.
Really enjoying it so far, still feels like a dream, everything is happening so fast! Loads to learn in Bremont in assembly, will be attending the annual watch fair in Birmingham in two weeks. Then in November I'll be back in Nottinghamshire at the British Horological Institute to attend a week's course in servicing automatic watches.
Once again, huge thanks for all the support, will try to be more active on here going forward! 🙂
17 -
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
