I grew up in South Wales with a father who was a very proficient automotive mechanic working on the cars of the day just after the war– that is to say, purely mechanical vehicles without any of the chips and electronic systems were are accustomed to see in cars today. This necessarily required a singular degree of mechanical ingenuity and lateral thinking in order to keep them on the road in full running order. Growing up in such an environment, amongst tools and parts, I more or less silently absorbed much of my father’s expertise and developed an innate ability to look at mechanical problems in an unorthodox way. 

Already as a young boy I was competent in dealing with the adjusting of brake drums, or dismantling and assembling engines and building model gearboxes. I can still recall a Meccano project that I had laid-out on the kitchen table, finding it next morning at breakfast fully assembled by my father, who had silently finished it at night after returning home from work. It was a natural process that this mechanically suffused childhood was followed by an apprenticeship creating high precision gauges, cutters and even complex machinery at Borg Warner UK, followed by a degree in engineering at Kingston Polytechnic. 

However, the desire to continue making things with my hands meant that my home workshop was used, amongst other things, for making special parts for converting my Hillman Imp into a dirt track racer with the help of my father when I was still an apprentice toolmaker, and later, a single-seat Formula Vee that has since gone through a number of re-builds. A lifetime literally spent with every conceivable type of complex gearing and application, in theory and practice, means that I truly enjoy any mechanical challenge I come across – whether found in a car transmission, jet turbine, or a even a specialist government project.

A chance encounter reading an article about Dr. George Daniels had a profound effect on me; the very idea that all the parts of a watch, much smaller than the much larger projects I normally worked on, could be built from simple raw materials was fascinating and, in my mind, immediately became a challenge worth pursuing. However, it would only be several years later, after my wife gave me a copy of Daniels’ book ‘Watchmaking’ as a Christmas present, that the idea of making a pocket watch became a single-minded goal for me.

So said so done, and from the very outset of this project creating my first pocketwatch I committed to producing all the parts myself within my home workshop, with the sole exception of the winding and balance springs and the glass for the case which always comes from outside suppliers. This made the project even more demanding than I had originally expected, moreso for the fact that I was unhappy with many of the machines and tools available for watchmaking that I came across. This meant the rebuilding of existing lathes and tools to improve their accuracy, as well as the creation of entirely new machines, such as for the decoration of hand-made dials, and for the manual polishing, cutting and finishing of all manner of parts. The computer in my shop is only used for drawing and calculations, and no parts are made with automated, computer milling operations. Another ‘challenge within a challenge’ I set myself was not only making my own escapement; I was determined to also make a co-axial escapement following Daniels model. This was a tremendous challenge, and it was heartening for me that Roger W. Smith kindly provided insights on a few key points in helping me solve several issues.

On other pages of this site there is extensive information about the tooling created for the creation of my first pocket watch that has now become part of my ‘arsenal’ of watchmaking equipment. That pocket watch test piece was my attempt to establish the viability of my thinking, engineering and design ethics as well as the gaining of necessary insights of the Daniels co-axial escapement; however, it is my pocket watch No. 1 as shown on this site that fully quantifies my approach to design, accuracy and finishing in the most idealmanner.