Please do try this at home

TINKERING IS THERAPEUTIC There’s a sense of satisfaction that comes from taking something apart, fiddling about intelligently with it, and making it live again This applies as much to watches as cars The closed back of a watch is, in reality, no more impenetrable than the myriad slabs of plastic trying to deter you from fixing your modern car ’ s engine

When I was a kid, just as the digital watch revolution was kicking off, old watches that didn’t work weren’t ‘vintage’, they were scrap Youcould–asIdid–scroungedeadmechanical movements from local jewellers’ shops before they ended up in the bin After setting to and stripping them down with more enthusiasm than ability, I eventually managed to get a few back together. Sometimes there weren’t too many parts left over. A couple even ran again, albeit briefly. It’s how I started my ruinous obsession with anything that ticks, bleeps or hums to tell the time.

I got the chance to relive my youth when, earlierthis month, a package arrived in the post from our associate editor Glen Waddington. In it was his very dead Vostok Komandirskie He wondered if Ifancied taking it apart to see what was wrong These Russian watches are built like my old Russian motorcycle combination, basicallyandwithasmuchfinesseandpolishas a KamAZ truck But they’re equally robust, so they’re pretty simple to work on and it doesn’t really matter if you make a hay of things.

I’m not suggesting you go all George Bamford and attack your Christmas present Breitling Navitimer with a penknife, but it’s worth trying to take an old, cheap watch apart and putting it back together again. The process won’t just give you a better understanding of how a watch works, it’ll also give you an appreciation of the watchmakers who’ve brought mechanical timekeeping to the level it is at today. Sadly, the days of movement scrounging are over but, if you ’ re feeling flush, you can pick up a new, working Vostok cal. 2414 from auction sites for about £20 or any number of broken movements for beans.

You don’t need much in the way of tools to start taking a watch apart. If you don’t have a case opener, winding a couple of lengths of gaffer tape round your fingers will usually give enough stick to shift a screw-on caseback Then you’ll need a set of jeweller’s screwdrivers, pointed and flat-ended tweezers, a handpulling tool (to get the hands off the centre pinion) and a set of finger stalls to keep the movement and dial clean as you handle them To be fair, that’s the absolute minimum but it’ll set you back less than the price of a couple of hours’ parking in central Oxford

It’s down to you how you tackle the job If you have an old, cheap and broken movement and just fancy learning a bit about how a watch works, simply start in with your screwdrivers and take the thing apart. If you want to be more scientific about it (and, to be fair, have an infinitely better chance of not lousing anything up), get a copy of Practical Watch Repairing by Donald De Carle and read it before you start. De Carle wrote in the early 1940s, so you have a significant advantage over him; you can use your telephone to photograph each screw and part as you remove it. That means you don’t end up scratching your head and wondering where that little curly spring that’s left over should have gone.

If you ’ re starting with a watch in its case, you’ll need to know how to separate the winding crown and stem from the movement so you can get the movement out. When I tried working on my first watches, I couldn’t work out how to do this and so resorted to some truly horrifying botchery. In fact, it’s simple. Most movements have a little button or a screw near the stem. Pushing this (or partially unscrewing it) while pulling gently on the crown will usually release it and you can pop it and the stem out.

This is the stage I’m currently at with Glen’s Vostok.WhenitarrivedandItookthecaseback off (the gaffer tape method won’t work on a Vostok as the Russian firm used a separate, threaded retaining ring to hold its casebacks on), I thought I’d got it nailed. There was dust all over the movement, it had been oiled by a jittery ape, and there was a hair blocking the rotation of the third wheel. I removed the hair and the watch ran happily. I was, clearly, a modern Breguet. Then, sensing my hubris, the watch stopped ten minutes later.

So now I’ve got the movement out of the case, am about to remove the hands and start stripping the thing down, and I’m 11 again.