Watch, it has always been considered a symbol of personal taste and identity. With the name of the people watch highlight their different, more noble identity month can be seen wearing a different luxury watch.

No matter how expensive or not-so-expensive it is, your watch deserves some respect. That means doing your best to keep it from breaking and knowing what to do if and when it does break.

What repairs you make most often?

If it’s a quartz watch, the basic things we’ll test for are if the battery is dead, if there is something defective with the electronic components of the watch, sometimes you’ll get some cables disconnected, like a curcuit. We have diagnostic machines that can tell you basically anything that is wrong within the watch. If there’s something majorly wrong with a quartz watch you’ll just take the old movement out and replace it. Inside the movement is a battery, a coil, and a quartz crystal (the battery powers the coil and sends a vibration through the quartz crystal that beats at 32,000 hertz regulated by gears). It’s always more affordable to repair a quartz watch. Whereas with a mechanical watch, which is Alain’s field, you can repair a watch from 1880 with a simple cleaning and oiling. But for bigger problems it can get tricky. Like with newer car models, replacements for newer mechanical watch parts can be easy to find. But with antique watches you have to make those pieces from scratch.

What are the most common things people do to mess up their watches?

You have to realize that this is a very delicate object, so you have to be careful and not play tennis with it or drop it. That’s the most common issue, they use their watch for everything, like doing mechanical work in a garage or whatever. Everything inside a mechanical watch is a moving part. On a complicated watch you can have 300 to 500 parts inside all working together. So if you hit the watch or are not careful, you will break something. And take your watch off when you put lotion on. We see a lot of watches that are just gross. People don’t take care of them. I recommend you take it off when you sleep and wipe it down once a week. If it’s water resistant, you can use an old toothbrush and some warm water. Be careful though, because some water-resistance can wear off over time.

Do windable watches last a long time? Or can they get worn out?

That depends on the person who owns it. You’ve got people with a watch for fifty years and it still looks brand new, and then you’ve got some with a watch for three weeks and it’s already a disaster.

What’s the craziest watch you’ve ever worked on?

I repair antiques watches, some from as far back as the 1800s. About four years ago, I repaired the famous Oracle pocket watch that ended up selling at Sotheby’s for a million dollars. It’s called a mystery watch, the dials appear to float in space, but upon closer inspection you see that it works with sapphire crystals rotating inside. I also work on all of the Patek Philipe watches that come into the repair center.

What can someone do at home to customize their watch?

Changing out your watch strap is the best way to customize or personalize your watch. Anyone who is vaguely dextrous can undo a springbar. It really does change the personality of the watch.

Can you reapply luminous to a watch that no longer glows in the dark?

Yes, the luminous usually fades after 15 or 20 years. But it’s pretty easy to reapply. But the thing is, with vintage watches it can sometimes affect the resale value of the watch, and it’s better not to make those kinds of changes. People will pay more for a watch that has age and patina.

Can people make any simple repairs to their watch at home?

I wouldn’t recommend servicing a watch yourself, beyond giving it a wipe down. Because there’s a real risk of damaging the watch. Everyone’s guilty of it, prying open the back of a watch to change the battery. A watch repair center is a very clean environment, everyone is in lab coats. It’s much cleaner than your apartment and if you are working on something with a lot of moving parts, you can end up with a lot of dust inside. At that point, if the dust settles, you basically have to take it all apart again and start over.

If you bump up against something and scratch the glass, what can be done?

If it’s acrylic or plastic you can fix it. But if it’s sapphire you can’t remove the scratch, you have to replace the whole thing.

Do you spend a lot of time fixing botched watch repairs?

All the time. We see some ridiculous stuff. If it’s a Patek, you can see right away if the repair was Patek certified. If not then we don’t respect any warrantees and that means the repair will be full charge.

Have any question?