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
