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That’s why I eventually settled with gshock that has solar charging and syncs time twice a day with radio towers (or bluetooth if you are somewhere in the world where there is no time radio signal)

Even rolex needs time setting, servicing to lube and clean metal parts, etc.

Gshock on the other hand will work for 10-15 years without a single manual time adjustment or battery swap needed.

Absolute unit.

This gold metal square one I especially love for summer:

https://www.casio.com/content/dam/casio/product-info/locales...

Is it a Seiko 5 (self winding)? Yeah, those aren't that accurate, but I wouldn't call them "junk" - they do lose or gain a minute or two a day in my experience - I generally correct mine every couple of days against my phone or computer though.

What kind of timekeeping do you consider "junk"? I'm currently wearing a $50 Chinese watch with a knock-off Seiko automatic movement in it, and I just now timed it out of curiosity at -5s/day.

> Although it seems youd have to pay a lot to get an accurate one because I have a $250 mechanical Seiko and its time keeping is junk. It was mediocre when I got it and has gotten worse. It was $150 when I bought it so I suppose it would have been a good investment if it hadn't got beat up.

You know you need to service mechanical watches regularly, right?

A 7S26 movement (Seiko's mass-produced budget workhorse) isn't that accurate (I think -35 to +45s per day IIRC?). But if you paid $250 secondhand you most likely have a 6R15 or similar inside, which should keep between -15s to +25s per day at worst if regularly serviced. Often you can get much better performance from these movements than the specs imply.

But ... you need to service that poor thing. For a 6R15, every 5 years at minimum, but as an old watchmaker I knew used to say -- a watch will tell you if it needs servicing earlier. Sounds like yours has been trying to get your attention for some time :)

(Otherwise, it's like complaining that the Porsche you haven't taken to a mechanic in the last decade doesn't drive so well any more ...)

You will never get quartz accuracy from any mechanical watch, but that's hardly the point.

(The ETA 2824-2 movement in the page you linked to -- the movement that powers most mid-range mechanical watches -- is substantially more accurate than these lower-range Seiko movements, although it's more costly as well.)

If you are using a mechanical watch to keep time (accurately for long) you are doing it wrong

> all high end watches are mechanical.

No, most high end male jewelry are mechanical watches (and much of women-oriented jewelry as well).

High end watches are such a solved problem we don't even talk about them anymore. Either the G-shock, the Garmin watches, or the Apple Watch run circles around mechanical watches in terms of functionality with each satisfying a different niche (100% self-contained, long lived smart functionality, glance-oriented integration with full-stack personal tech ecosystem).

I would have expected guitar repair. One of my recent youtube channel finds was a young woman who repairs old guitars, rewinding pickups and such. Fascinating. I didn't realize one of the uses for Formvar (aside from films for use in electron microscopes) was insulation on electric guitar pickup wires.

There's something interesting in maintaining items built to last when the objects themselves are maintained and kept for entertainment reasons. (Entertainment in the broad sense for enjoyment first and foremost over utility or practicality). I guess it strikes me like a master of maintaining toy trains or something along those lines, both evoking a sense of respect and sense of humanity for the craft and art of the thing, while paradoxically feeling that this is not "actually important" (whatever that means). Like someone being a great soccer player or michelin star chef -- the seriousness of this kind of endeavor is both inspiring and comical at the same time?

Maybe it should be viewed like the sign of a healthy ecosystem; if it can support "exotic birds" like these, it's stable and healthy.

One could argue that it’s everyone else who is backwards.

It's surprisingly easy to learn. I had a coworker who did this as a hobby while working in tech. Rolex hires people right off the street and trains them into professionals within weeks. Even as an amateur I've opened a few of the cheaper watches in my collection for some basic maintenance. When I retire it's one of the hobbies I hope to dive deeper into, it would be nice to be able to do my own oiling on most of my collection.

The main barrier to entry is that you need a lot of tools and supplies, I priced it out and to do a full service on an automatic I probably need $1000+ of tools and supplies.

My father was a watchmaker. Fond memories of going with him in his van to the various jewellers he did work for picking up and dropping off. I remember being given a big metal lamp from his workshop when he passed away and realising the body of the lamp was not isolated from the incoming power, although luckily not at mains voltage (not what killed him).

The image of him in the home shop with the radio playing and people still bringing him supposedly unfixable things is wonderful

Is this still a viable career?

Yes, but notice the scale - 20 students, in a nation of 40+ million people.

We might call that a moral or poetic victory - but practically speaking, it's like an endangered human language which "still has over 100 native speakers". The future ain't looking good.

Mechanical timepieces are a luxury item, and these students are essentially artists in training. Wrist time was solved in the late 1970's with the commoditization of quartz movements. These 'jobs' will get replaced by AI at approximately the same pace as your local sculptor.

Why?

Many modern watch parts are CNC machined, often the finishing is done by hand such as zaratsu polishing - but even that is a repetitive motion that can be mechanised.

I would not be surprised if given enough time even what we have today - a decent VLA model + some other specialised models, 6-axis CNC machine, an SMD pick and place etc would be capable of designing, manufacturing and assembling a mechanical watch.

I have a friend who got an English and Creative Writing degree from a liberal arts college, and then immediately went back to trade school for band instrument repair. It's not particularly lucrative, as trades go, but it does seem a lot more future proof than most careers.

Correct, AI will not replathe 3 high-paying watch maker jobs that exist. You are the best kind of correct, technically. But you are distracting from the fact that most people aren't doing anything even remotely physical related in the space that some people posit will be decimated by AI: white-collar jobs where you are a keyboard jockey all day.

Sure but it’s also a microscopically small component of the country’s overall economy.

Yes, and it's a great example of an industry that was completely decimated by automation - you can get a functional watch for a fiver, whereas back when every watch was handmade and a de-facto inheritance piece.

But bespoke, handmade, high value, low volume stuff is still around.

I am literally wearing a watch right now that was produced without any of these artisans’ specialized labor and which boasts among its features access to AI.

In a very real sense I have replaced use of the skills of watchmakers with AI.

Sorry about that. To be fair most watchmakers were already put out of work by quartz oscillators and integrated circuits in the 1980s.

I don't know how high paying it is, although I can see how it can be, especially given there is a shortage of watchmakers in the developed world, even in Switzerland.

Basically anything that is a luxury good is probably safe from AI. If people are buying it for status or high performance reasons, they aren’t going to pick the low end AI slop version.

Unless they’re replaced by humans controlled by AI(look at the various research for BCIs or for gene therapy that allows for the possibility for you to be controlled by radio frequencies), then they’re very easily replaced.

I discovered this school right after discovering the Richard Mille clock in Quebec City [1] because the school is responsible for maintaining the clock.

1. https://www.ville.quebec.qc.ca/en/apropos/portrait/attraits/...

I live in Quebec and this is the first time I hear about it.

If you read about Harrison's Chronometers you read of Rupert T. Gould who suffered a Nervous Breakdown, and it is said fell into watch repair as therapy, bringing them back to life.

AI was supposed to do my laundry so that I could make art and code for fun but now the AI is coding and making art while I do laundry.

Give the Chinese some time.

They are doing incredible things with world models, and have an economy that really could do incredible things with robots wired to effective world models.

It won't surprise me at all if in 10 years LLMs are less of a big deal than world models