Curiosity Requires a Workbench

Welcome to the shop

You may occasionally see plumbing pipes, crumbling stone walls from my circa-1840 Philadelphia basement, or an old punching dummy lurking somewhere behind the workbench in photos and videos from this project.

That’s because Pine Street Dial Works is being built in the only space it can be… a slowly evolving basement workshop beneath an old rowhome.

Over the last few years, reading about watches, watching videos, and admiring the work of others gradually gave way to a different question: what would it actually take to learn how to do some small part of this myself?

For me, that question slowly turned into a workbench, then tools, then storage drawers full of increasingly specific equipment.

And the more packages that have arrived — along with a growing appreciation for global supply chains, especially the remarkable manufacturing ecosystem that exists in China — the more I’ve realized how much of this craft rewards patience over speed.

Even basic tasks have a way of exposing a death grip on the tweezers, poor lighting, bad organization, or assumptions that things will somehow be easier than they are. That has been part of the appeal.

The workshop is still in its infancy. Most of the tools are still new. Mistakes are frequent. Fun is being had.