Anyone ever taken apart a mechanical watch at a workshop?

I did a two-day workshop last spring. Best thing I ever did for my understanding of how these movements actually work. You won't be working on anything expensive — they usually give you cheap practice movements, often old Russian or Chinese ones.

Wear eye protection and be careful with with the tweezers. I launched a balance spring across the room on day one. Never found it.

Personal take — the workshop is worth it just for the tools. You get to use proper screwdrivers and a movement holder instead of buying a cheap kit and runiing your own watch at home.

Not to discourage you but I found the workshop environment kind of rushed. Too many people, one instructor. I learned more from a slow evening with a junk movement and a loupe at my own kitchen table.

Same here. The instructor was good but there were twelve of us. Felt like I was watching more than doing.

Straight in. Bought a bag of broken movements off a parts site for almost nothing. Expect to lose a few springs. That's normal.

Which maker space? The one near me has a waitlist six months long. I've been trying to get into a watch class since January.

Slightly off topic but do check whether the workshop covers skeletonized movements specifically. Most intro classes just do a plain three-hand movement, and skeleton work is a different Level of care.

Ours didn't. It was a basic hand-wind movement. Still useful — you learn the gear train and the keyless works, which applies to everything. But yeah, don't expect expect to be handling skeletonized bridges on day one.

Honestly, the fear of breaking something expensive goes away once you realize you're practicing on a movement that costs less than lunch. That's the whole point of the workshop setup