Pennsylvania men hope for steady work in watch repair

YORK, Pa. (AP) – Jacob Kinard was always mechanically inclined.

“Anything I could take apart I would,” the 22-year-old Dover resident said.

He tried working in auto mechanics but decided he preferred that as a hobby. As he looked for other options, his grandfather, who always had clocks and watches around the house, referred him to Dan Nied, director of the York Time Institute.

At the end of last month, Kinard and fellow student Mike Simon, 59, of the Reading area, became the institute’s first graduates, earning diplomas in horological conservation, restoration and repair.

In other words, they became watch and clock makers.

“I enjoy taking pieces that don’t work and diagnosing the problem,” Kinard said, noting that the profession isn’t something people typically hear about. “People give you crazy looks.”

Nied said there’s a shortage of watch and clock makers around the world.

“It was mistakenly deemed unnecessary,” he said of the trade.

But most high-end watches and clocks are mechanical, he said, not to mention the millions that existed before the digital kind came along. And there’s hardly anyone left to fix them.

Simon turned to the institute because he was unemployed after a previous career as a machinist, he said.

The tools have him hooked. Lasty week he worked at a watchmaker’s bench from the 1880s, on top of which sat an antique rounding up tool, used for gear work,that he restored.

“All of the tools … are really unique,” he said.

Simon plans to work at a local jewelry store repairing watches and clocks. He hopes to one day have his own business.

Kinard, who serves as vice president of the Horological Society of New York, is still considering options. He’s talked to several people who have pieces that need work, he said, or he might approach some area jewelry stores.

Nied said students leave his program prepared to work on more than clocks. Music boxes, mechanical toys, medical instruments and automotive instruments all require the touch of a micro-machinist.

More students are applying than Nied can fit in his West Market Street shop, so he hopes to one day expand. He’s had students from around the globe, he said, but he’d prefer more local students to help the local economy.

His students learn about the tools of the trade, about the materials, and how to make parts that can’t be bought anymore.

Nied believes the country needs people “who can make” again.

“We want to be able to do what other people can’t do,” he said.

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Online:

http://bit.ly/p2paAK

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Information from: York Daily Record, http://www.ydr.com

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AP-WF-07-09-11 1932GMT

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