I came to watchmaking by accident while working as an accounts clerk in Melbourne, on my last day of an annual leave break in early 2001 my wife Nikki spotted an advertisement in the local jobs section for “apprentice watchmaker” and thought I may be interested, being of a technical bent. The rest will be history.
During my apprenticeship I was exposed to many and varied types and brands of watches, from the service station $5.00 digitals, to 200 year old English fusee pocket watches. One of the other watchmakers had a copy of a wonderful book titled “watchmaking” which had a great array of techniques, tools and pretty pictures of watches and unfathomable mechanisms. Repeatedly I was told that no-one worked this way anymore, and that it wasn’t practical to do it, especially in Australia. Never one to shirk from a challenge I took it upon myself to learn the skills and techniques required to make (to my knowledge) the first Australian made wristwatch.
This blog is to tell the story of my progress so far, and more to come…
Tom's Watchmaking Blog 
Hi Tom
Love to say G;dy on the phone or email. Your work looks great.
Dan
Orange
Hi Tom Cool to see your stuff. I just glanced at it but will bookmark and come back when I have more time to read. I am a bench jeweler in south Texas, linked to your site from Engraver Cafe I just joined. I saw your CNC mill, I recently purchased my 1st CNC Mill (taig) and really enjoy it. You should consider joining the other forum I am on 3dcadjewelry.com. Several Aussie there too. Pleasure to see someone doing it right,
Regards David
Deer Park TX
Thanks David, The Taigs look like a decent machine, and you should be able to do a ton with it! I’ll have to take a look at the forum, we seem to pop up all over the place 😉
Tom
Hi Tom, Firstly Congratulations! and then, I hope that you please help me… I’m qualified in the conservation of cultural heritage and I have recently moved to Melbourne.Recently, I’ve been looking for a course to continue my professional training and I´m really interested in specializing in watch reparations but I couldn’t find a school or an apprenticeship opportunity in Melbourne. Can you please give me an advice? what should I do? I can’t move from Melbourne and I really want to perform this wonderful art…
Thank you for the time you’ll dedicate to this.
Kind regards,
Hi Maria, Unfortunately the Melbourne watchmaking course run through RMIT closed over 10 years ago (I was in the class of watchmakers that started in Melbourne, but finished in Sydney), The closest course is run in Sydney, which covers apprentices from South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and NSW…
As far as an apprenticeship goes, all I can suggest is to keep an ear out, possibly get in contact with Trent Firth who runs the aforementioned course at the Sydney Institute of Tafe. They are few and far between, and becoming fewer as time goes on. An alternative would be to seek schooling overseas (counterproductive but effective) ideally at one of the WOSTEP partnership schools, or WOSTEP itself.
Good luck!
Tom
You seem like a man who needs a very tiny cuckoo. That’d definitely be a first, probably.