Keeping Time Ticking
A passion for precision watchmaking
STORY BY DREW CASTELLAW
The minute hand of a clock strikes 12. An owl hoots while small wooden people start dancing to music and lights flash signifying a new hour has arrived. Clocks and watches layer the walls with sounds at the watch repair and retail store, Time Concepts, at 1321 King Street in Bellingham, Washington. A tall slender man in his mid-60s with a thick Romanian accent sits behind the counter diligently working on a pocket watch that stopped ticking a few days ago. Hovering over the pocket watch with an eye-socket magnifying glass he carefully rests the axles of the balance wheel, which is responsible for regulating the movements of the watch, on a small clamp and spins it to see if it’s evenly weighted.
Nelu Gheorghita has worked in the watch repair and creation business for more than three decades. Originally from Viziru, Romania, he opened his first shop in 1973. In 1989 he then immigrated to the United States to Loma Linda, California and opened another shop. In 2006, he and his wife Veronica moved again to Bellingham.
From old grandfather clocks to German cuckoo clocks, Gheorghita repairs and restores them all.
Gheorghita says he noticed that people in Bellingham were throwing away their watches and clocks instead of getting them repaired so he decided to make a watch and clock repair business out of his house in 2007. However, after a few years of business Gheorghita says he saw a potential for security issues when he came to his house one day to see that a customer had left a $4000 watch in a plastic bag for repair on his front door.
“I’m getting in trouble if somebody brings a watch and it disappears,” he says.
He decided to open a retail location to move his business from his home in 2011. Time Concepts gained more customers, and Gheorghita started a retail business along with repair.
Walking into Time Concepts, clocks of all kinds cover the walls. From old grandfather clocks to German cuckoo clocks, Gheorghita repairs and restores them all. He likes the precision and patience it takes to repair a clock or watch, he says. The pieces of a watch are minuscule, consisting of screws that are one millimeter long and washers that look, without a keen eye, like specks of dirt. It usually takes Gheorghita about one full workday to repair a watch, although he usually spreads out the workload over a few days. Usually, the problem with watches is dust. He has to take everything apart, wipe off the dust and re-oil the wheels and springs. He usually gets through a couple of watches a week.
Since Gheorghita is the only person that repairs watches and clocks for his business, he currently has an eight-month backlog of work that needs to be completed.
“I found with this kind of work, you are always busy,” he says.
Gheorghita uses his time at the shop to greet customers and to repair watches. Once the shop closes, he continues to work by repairing clocks at his home.
Gheorghita takes the mechanisms from the clocks, separates the pieces, cleans the parts and assembles everything back together, his wife Veronica says.
Watchmakers use unique oils for different parts of a watch — one for winding, one for the main spring, one for the balance wheel and so on. If one part of the watch is oiled when it isn’t supposed to be, it won’t work at all, Gheorghita says. Likewise, if it’s not the proper oil it can jam the parts and collect dust. This will shorten the lifetime of the watch or clock.
In Bellingham, a customer came in saying his inherited clock wasn’t ticking. Gheorghita installed a new suspension spring for the pendulum and the customer came back saying it still didn’t work. Gheorghita suspected that it needed to be cleaned more thoroughly so the customer brought the clock to the shop.
“I’ve never seen one that dirty,” Mr. Gheroghita says. “It was sprayed with many oils.”
Oil covered the clock and collected a lot of dust. He took the clock apart, re-oiled it with correct amounts and types and it was able to function properly. Repeat customer James Thompson has come to Time Concepts to get eight different watches repaired.
“I enjoy the people here,” Thompson says. “They’re nice and welcoming and they get the repairs done.”
Some challenges Gheorghita faces with older watches are the parts. Many parts aren’t made anymore for old watches, so he either has to find parts from other watchmakers or make them himself. Gheorghita can also search through the many small boxes of different parts he has under his desk to see if he can find the right size. He goes through a guess-and-check process to find if the screw or spring fits, a process that can take up to an hour to find the perfect piece. Once when working on a particular pocket watch that was missing a balance wheel, Gheorghita had to adjust the axles on a larger wheel to make it work because there wasn’t another one of the original size.
“I’ve never considered myself as the best watchmaker,” Mr. Gheorghita says. “I just like to open them up and see how they work.”