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Teaching Time

The nation’s premier watchmaker’s college, in the heart of Amish country.

[by erin kelly-park]

CLOCKWISE: Ficklin assembles and lubricates a cleaned watch. A watchmaker’s tools: Tweezers, hand installers, pin vises, movement holders, hammer, truing caliper, aperture plate, etc. Some of the 220-plus components of a Rolex wristwatch movement.

Twist the crown of a mechanical watch and the watch,” Ficklin says. “The slightest mistake can you’re winding a tiny spring, which powers ruin the work piece.” a gear that runs until the spring is completely The LWT, funded by Rolex, aims to prevent a unwound, some two days later. Maintaining these watch-repair crisis, as watchmakers have declined in miniature ecosystems is a skill that takes hours recent decades. Rolex covers tuition, while students to learn — 3,000 hours, if you’re as obsessed are responsible for their own tools, which can run up with keeping time as they are at the Lititz Watch to $5,000.

Technicum or “LW T” ( lititzwatchtechnicum.org). Ficklin muses about traveling back in time 150

Based in the Amish country of Pennsylvania, this years. “Watches from that period would have had watchmaker’s college accepts just 12 students a custom-fit components instead of manufactured year. After a two-year program, graduates can repair pieces with the tolerances we have today. With a anything that ticks, and even fabricate parts. modern watch I can just order a replacement and

Jordan Ficklin ( watchmakingblog.com), a 2006 put it in.” Still, he notes, “Every day I have to adjust graduate of LWT, originally got a degree in computer parts so that the play between them and the next science but now fixes watches. “Watchmaking tools component is within 0.01 or 0.02 millimeters.” haven’t changed much in a hundred years,” Ficklin Your grandfather’s Datejust will reap the benefits says. “A few have become motorized, but the twee- of this new generation of watchsmiths. zers, lathes, and files haven’t changed much.”

“Probably the hardest skill to master is manipulating the tiny hairspring that controls the rate of

Photography by Ryan Heffernan

Erin Kelly-Park is wife to a maker and momma to two little makers. She lives in Southern California.

62 Make: Volume 17