Master Watchmaking Complete Course - The Chicago School of Watchmaking

In the mid 1950's, the Chicago School of Watchmaking offered a course called "Master Watchmaking." It consisted of a binder of 700+ pages of lessons that trained individuals to acquire the necessary technical skills to work as master watchmakers and master repairers of watches. This course is now available to the general public in its entirety, featuring the original 35 lessons as well as the 58-page "Tools and Materials of the Trade" section, all in one book. This manual is extraordinarily technical in nature. If you have seen the Bulova School of Watchmaking book, you will likely appreciate the extent to which this manual goes far beyond the Bulova book in terms of detail. This Chicago Master Watchmaker Course was truly intended to bring a layperson into the trade and give them the training necessary to work at the master watchmaker level.

The 35 lessons within the manual contain hundreds of photographs and technical diagrams to accompany the specific skills being taught.

The lessons are as follows:

Tools and Materials of the Trade

Lesson 1 Fundamental Principles, Equipment, Casing

Lesson 2 Crowns, Stems, Sleeves, and Bows

Lesson 3 Fitting Watch Crystals and Watch Attachments for Practice and Profit

Lesson 4 Nomenclature and Sizes of Watches

Lesson 5 Mainspring in Watches

Lesson 6 Motor & Jeweled Barrels

Lesson 7 Selecting the Mainspring

Lesson 8 Assembling Watches

Lesson 9 Winding and Setting Mechanisms

Lesson 10 Cleaning Watches

Lesson 11 Timing, Rating and Regulation

Lesson 12 Factory Set Train Jewels

Lesson 13 Factory Balance Hole Jewels and Roller Jewels

Lesson 14 Friction Jeweling

Lesson 15 Replacing Factory Balance Staffs

Lesson 16 Truing Balance Wheels

Lesson 17 Poising Balance Wheels

Lesson 18 Truing Hairsprings

Lesson 19 Colleting Hairsprings

Lesson 20 The Overcoil Hairspring

Lesson 21 Principles of the Lever Escapement

Lesson 22 Principles of the Lever Escapement (con’t)

Lesson 23 Types of Escapements

Lesson 24 Drawing the Lever Escapement

Lesson 25 Drawing the Lever Escapement (con’t)

Lesson 26 Matching the Escapement

Lesson 27 Tools – Hardening & Tempering

Lesson 28 The Lathe

Lesson 29 Lathe Work

Lesson 30 Lathe Work (con’t)

Lesson 31 Lathe Work (con’t)

Lesson 32 - Part 1 Fitting Hairsprings to Watches

Lesson 32 - Part 2 Modern Shop Methods

Lesson 33 Electronic Timing Machines – Watch Master

Lesson 34 Electronic Timing Machines – Time-O-Graph

Lesson 35 Problems and Solutions

If you are new to the trade or simply interested in adding more reference books to your watchmaking library, this course has long been admired by horology enthusiasts as one of the courses worth acquiring, due to it's detailed technical discussions not easily available in other watchmaking manuals.