In statistics—a big part of my day job—an often misunderstood idea is “regression to the mean.” This is sometimes misinterpreted as some sort of mystical process where the universe balances… Read more »
My stash of watches to fix is slowly shrinking, and I’m reaching some interesting and complicated cases. Here’s the current patient: a big, chunky Illinois pocket watch. This is an… Read more »
My backlog of broken watches is shrinking, and next in line is this charming little pocket watch. This is an Illinois 404, a 12-size pocket watch from around 1915, according… Read more »
If a watch runs well—it is clean, free of flaws, and running with good amplitude—it can usually be adjusted to be more accurate across different positions. And then we have… Read more »
When you fish for pocket watches in the murky waters of eBay, estate sales, and pawn shops, you’ll find some seriously mistreated watches. A certain kind of person, when finding… Read more »
I’m often asked about which watches are “nice watches,” and I usually say that any watch someone is willing to take care of is a nice watch. I have more… Read more »
Most tasks in watchmaking are much harder than they sound on the Internet, but a few are pretty easy. When describing my Elgin 313, I mentioned that restoring the enamel… Read more »
I’ve been trying to do fewer Illinois pocket watches, and I did manage to stray into some offbeat Russian watches, but the heart wants what it wants. That’s why we… Read more »
I didn’t intend for this blog to be an homage to all things Illinois, but it has happened. Here’s another Illinois pocket watch—the last for a few posts, I swear…. Read more »
The dial is what you see when you carry a pocket watch. No matter how precisely you’ve adjusted a watch, a dirty dial will deter most buyers. But cleaning watch… Read more »