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, as a facsimile softcover edition 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. Being a facsimile, this book is essentially a scan of the original 700+ page manual from 1952. The scanned pages are second generation copies of the original and are in black and white. The book is a large 8x10 size. 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.