What servicing actually is
Push open the door of a serious watchmaker's workshop and the first thing you notice is the quiet. A correctly equipped bench is a place of deep concentration: pegwood on a tray, a row of Bergeon screwdrivers in their stand, a binocular microscope on a swing arm, an ultrasonic cleaner gurgling in the corner. The watchmaker, behind an Optivisor, is bent over a movement no larger than a coin, lifting out a balance assembly with tweezers whose tips are inspected after every fall to the floor. The work that happens here is the work that keeps a mechanical watch running for the next decade — and determines what it will be worth in the decade after that.
A mechanical watch is a machine with moving parts under friction; friction means wear, and wear means maintenance. The lubricants applied at manufacture degrade — migrating, thickening, collecting debris until they abrade rather than protect — and a movement on dead oil runs at falling amplitude with rising rate error long before anything audibly breaks. (A neglected watch typically starts running fast before it stops: the escapement is failing while the mainspring still has energy to push it.) The service interval exists to intervene before degradation becomes damage, not after. The full physics is in the lubrication article; this one is about the practice.
What a full service involves
A complete overhaul occupies a competent watchmaker for several hours on a simple three-hander and far longer on complications. The movement is fully disassembled — every wheel, spring, screw, and lever separated and identified. Components pass through an ultrasonic cleaning sequence of solvents and rinses that strips old lubricant and wear debris. Each part is inspected at reassembly: pivots for wear and straightness, escape-wheel teeth for damage, pallet stones for geometry, the mainspring for set; anything worn is replaced. Fresh lubricants go on at each specified point — thin oil at the balance pivots, heavier oil down the train, thixotropic grease at the pallet faces, braking grease in the barrel — in quantities measured in fractions of a milligram. The movement is then regulated on a timing machine across positions; the case is resealed with new gaskets and pressure-tested; and a written report (with the rates achieved and parts replaced) should accompany the watch home. If a "service" is quick and cheap, it was a battery-change culture applied to a mechanical object: a wipe and a dip, not an overhaul.
A service should restore a watch to its own specification — nothing more. For any watch of collector significance, decline case polishing explicitly and in writing; the originality articles in this chapter explain why refinishing permanently reduces value. Be equally alert at manufacturer service centres, which historically substituted current-generation parts (dials, hands, bezels) for "worn" originals as a matter of policy. The correct practice everywhere: instruct that no cosmetic work be done without approval, and that every replaced component be returned with the watch. The little bag of old parts is part of the watch's documentation.
Service intervals: what the numbers mean in practice
Manufacturer recommendations range from the old Swiss three-to-five-year standard to Rolex's current guidance of around ten years — the spread reflecting real improvements in synthetic lubricants, epilame treatments, and modern escapement design (Omega's co-axial calibres carry similarly long ratings). The honest answer for any specific watch depends on how much it is worn, what was used at its last service, and the movement's age and design. The most practical regimen: a check every few years — timing machine, visual inspection, water-resistance test, an hour of a watchmaker's time — with full service when performance says so, not on a calendar that ignores the evidence. One absolute rule sits on top: any watch that gets wet should have its seals tested annually, because gaskets age whether or not the movement does, and water does more damage in an afternoon than neglect does in a decade.
Complications cost more and take longer, in direct proportion to their mechanism: a chronograph or perpetual calendar service involves disassembly far beyond a going train, and manufacture service on a high complication is realistically a matter of months and thousands of dollars. This is neither scandal nor surprise; it is the ownership cost of the category, and pricing it in from the start — roughly, expect a full service to cost a low single-digit percentage of a fine watch's value, each decade — is more accurate than treating it as misfortune.
Finding a watchmaker you can trust
The quality of available watchmakers varies enormously, and bad service is sometimes irreversible: chewed screw slots, wrong-generation parts, a polished case. The sorting logic runs by watch. For modern watches in current production, the brand's authorised network is the reliable default — with the parts-return and no-polish instructions above. For everyday mechanical watches, an independent watchmaker with recognised training (WOSTEP or equivalent certification) and a real bench is excellent and usually faster. For vintage of any consequence, you want a specialist in that brand and era — someone who stocks or fabricates period-correct parts and understands that originality outranks shine — and the way to find one is through the collector community: the marque forums, collector clubs, auction-house specialists, and dealers who will say who services their own inventory. Ask any candidate three questions: What will you replace and will I get the parts back? Will you touch the case? What rates will you deliver, documented how? The right watchmaker answers precisely and happily. The wrong one is offended you asked — and sometimes the right watchmaker is a longer wait than the right watch. Wait anyway.
Service is not a cost that diminishes the watch. It is the investment that lets the watch keep being what it is. A mechanical watch that is never serviced is slowly becoming something else — erratic, then stopped, then a restoration project. The earlier the habit is established, the cheaper every decade of ownership becomes.