Clyde Moore

The word “community” gets a lot of airplay these days, sometimes with little justification, attempting to link together individuals who have little in common with one another. But sometimes it genuinely works, a subset of a subset sharing similar experiences, schedules, routines. I’ve come to see those who work on and around Park Avenue as such – one community within another.

My other half and I will end up at what we call our local ‘Cheers,’ the Bistro in the Hidden Garden, some evenings, typically with other local residents, often a group of the same ones. During these local happy-hour gatherings I met Scott Gray, who works at the Orlando Watch Company on Park Avenue.

Scott’s part of that community, but speaks a language often foreign to me and most others, one of watch parts and mechanics. It sometimes sounds less familiar than the proverbial Greek, at least to me. One evening at the Bistro he caught my imagination as he spoke about foot-long springs wound inside of wrist watches, counter balances which increase their tension, all somehow working to literally mark time on your wrist. My own mechanical ineptitude does not prevent me from being fascinated.

Scott not only has a watch on his wrist, and sometimes another in his pocket, but they also seem to be in his blood. He says his grandfather operated a watch shop in College Park for nearly 50 years. His father began working on watches when he was 15, and later took over that shop. Scott’s 21 years of age when he started seems late by comparison.

Working what he called a dead end job two years ago, his attention turned to the family business after being offered an apprenticeship by Scott Heisler at the Orlando Watch Company. “And I fell in love with it,” he admits, maybe still a bit surprised.

What does his father think? “He’s actually extremely proud. I actually sort of rekindled his love for watch making,” he said. As soon as Scott gets home each evening the conversation is usually about watches. “As soon as I get home, that’s the first subject we get on is talking about watches. My sister gets upset. She’s like shut up already.”

He says his project preference these days is for wristwatches, especially new ones with more advanced mechanisms. I ask about the first watch he completely remade and he removes it from his wrist. “I felt a real sense of accomplishment when I did it,” he said. “This is the first watch I rebuilt, a complete overhaul, took it down to bare bones, cleaned it, re-oiled it, and reassembled it. And I even cut a hole in the back of it so that I could see the movement at work.” The leather band has been modified to look more like a modern metal clasp.

When he was a kid, there was one time when his father presented him with a box of watch parts to see what he might make of it. It didn’t stick then, but he relishes such opportunities now. “One of my ex-girlfriends found a pocket watch at a flea market and she knew I could fix watches. That was when I was getting into the finer mechanics of watches and she said, ‘hey, you want to fix this for me?’ I said, ‘yeah, I need the practice,’” he said.

Watch-making these days, he says, is all about the parts. “It’s not as much making a watch as it is making the parts you need for a watch. If we had a vintage 1963 Bulova or such and had a broken set-lever, I think that’s something we could fashion ourselves. Just take a piece of spring steel, shave it all down.”

He brings out an amazingly small set of screwdrivers, and demonstrates how to keep your finger pressed on the top as you use it. I ask how someone can work with such tiny pieces and, with joule – a jewelry or watch-making magnifier about his neck – he simply says, “Fine motor skills. That’s all I can say.”

He gets more technical, largely losing me again, speaking of the small synthetic jewels in his watch with small cups in them. When it’s so tiny, it’s hard to imagine so much detail at such a size. He continues, speaking of what can happen when watches are neglected, what can go wrong with such small parts.

“You wouldn’t run your car five years without changing the oil. It’s the same thing. The oils we use now days are part synthetic, part vegetable. But they only last in the watch about five to seven years. They start fading away, dust starts collecting. You think it’s a sealed watch, but little metal shavings are coming off of those wheels as they’re grinding together; and, they’re spreading around the watch. If you don’t service it, that’s just going to build up and stop your watch and break apart.”

Being in the shop while we talk, I keep thinking it’s the sort of environment that might make a corporate type look for a small business job. The Orlando Watch Company Facebook page extols: “Watch Making Is OUR Family Business.” Like Scott Gray, owner Scott Heisler has a love of watches, working on them being in his blood, with a watchmaker father.

They joke, and Scott obviously likes to antagonize his boss a bit, waits until he’s out of earshot to add “He’s a great boss. I can’t thank him enough for what he’s doing for me.”

We joke about them being Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker, another newer apprentice who started a few months ago, but when I ask Scott about his skills compared to his father’s and the other Scott, he invokes the Karate Kid, “I’m bottom of the barrel, absolute bottom of the barrel right now. I’m still ‘wax on, wax off.’”