Horology (WATCHES) with Cameron Weiss

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Is it Weiss?

I say Weiss?

Okay? Cameron has owned the Weiss watch company for four years. How did you start a watch company? I mean, because you're a young person. You're like, what like under you're in your thirties, right, twenties? Yet here's where I awkwardly try to ascertain Cameron's age, because listen, in my defense, he looks young as hell. He has that kind of southern California guy look, but he carries himself and he speaks like a tweed clad professor. It's very confusing.

You're in your twenties, yeah, twenty nine.

How did you start a watch company in your twenties? How did you do that?

I was fortunate to find watch making pretty young.

How did you get obsessed with horology and clocks? What was like the first thing? Do you remember cracking open a watch when you were like five and being like, what's happening in here?

I don't know about the first thing, but pretty early on I was given a cheap, little plastic watch. I think it had alligators owned or something. But it was just it was when I was a little kid, and I really enjoyed wearing it. Something about it. It just felt nice to have it on my wrist. And that was the beginning I really needed.

I needed a visual of this, and so I searched for alligators plus kids watches, and I didn't turn up anything. And then I realized, what if it was a crocodile? And then I realized what if it was a Clocko dial? And then I got bumped and overwhelmed because Clocko dial is such a good idea, I'd have to quit my whole life. I'd have to pursue that as a children's watch company. But I was relieved there's already a kid's book of that name. Someone are somebody's on it. Good job,

Then I found my way into a watch making school.

So Cameron went to school. He did that for two years full time.

Was able to train in Switzerland as well.

WHOA I did not ask him about the landscape or chocolate, and I regret that.

And eventually I was confident enough to start my own brand.

How old were you when you started going to watch making school? Were you the youngest person there? Because I feel like I've met a couple horologists and they're all like, seventy Are you always the youngest when you go to meetups?

Oh yeah meetups? Definitely. Yeah, in school, I wasn't the youngest.

Okay, but.

It's more so because the there's very few people who are actually admitted into schools.

How rigorous is it is it? Do you have to have great eyesight and like not shaky hands?

Yeah, that along with a couple of certain learning styles. Being able to uh focus for long period of time. Okay, maybe you sit there for eight hours working on bending one little piece of metal into a certain shape or filing something perfectly flat. Being able to focus and keep your patience is very important. So things like that, the teachers kind of weed out people who wouldn't be able to handle that.

So they're like, no spas is no dicks.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a major time investment, Yeah to teach someone watchmaking. So they don't want to teach it to someone who might not actually succeed in the program.

Right, They're like, go do something else. Yeah, they're like fixed pinball machines, be a bartender. I imagine it's a very quiet classroom.

Also, yeah, it can be. Yeah, because if you.

Go behind a horologist and you startle them while they're working on these movements, like you will get stabt.

I feel like, yeah, it's not a good idea. And tweezers and screwdrivers are very sharp.

Okay, so watch movements are tiny, right, But are you Are you also interested in clocks? Are you more interested in wrist watches and pocket watches and smaller items?

Personally, I'm interested in anything mechanical that keeps time. Really, for the business, we only make wrist watches and I don't do any kind of clockmaking. It's a completely different craft really.

Yeah, Okay, your watches are they they're all mechanical and not quartz, right or that's correct? Okay, So can you explain the difference between a mechanical watch and a quartz watch.

Yeah. Mechanical watches are powered by springs, and they can either be wound by hand by turning the crown, or they could be wound by a weight in the back of the watch that actually moves with your with your arm movements. A quartz watch is battery powered, so you actually have a battery that is then putting energy through a quartz crystal. Okay, the crystal oscillates back and forth.

And that's why it's a quartz watch.

Yeah.

How do you feel about lyrics that reference watches? I didn't know that with a mechanical watch, wearing it winds it until, like I heard a jay Z lyric about it.

Yeah.

I need to give a special thank you to the website Rap Genius, which is now just called Genius. I like the better when it was Rap Genius, but this site will explain all of your I don't know what this lyric is or what it means problems, So if you remember, I'll set the scene. Twenty eleven, a jay Z Kanye West song comes out. There's a line jay Z says, fall so hard. Got a broke clock, row Lee's that don't TikTok ar to Mars. That's losing time. I'm not good at rapping.

Got a roles that don't take the top all to Mars.

That's not the time these rocks and so on. Genius. I found out that having a broke clock and rollies that don't TikTok means two things. Number One, you ball so hard you don't even have time to wear your watches, because automatic watches of the mechanical variety wind themselves just by wearing them. So he has so many nice watches that they don't even work because he doesn't even wear them enough. And when you have a rollie that doesn't TikTok,

I mean, I it's something that doesn't really appeal to me.

Okay, all right, moving on, how do you feel about watches being kind of not status symbols but like jewelry as well as something functional, Like which part of it appeals to you, the functionality or the style of it.

I mean that brings me back to why I chose watches in the first place to be my interests kind of was you have this artwork and it's the mechanical movement which shows this whole watchmaking background behind it, all the history that goes into it, all the mechanics. It's like a work of art. Then you put it inside of the watch case, and you can actually carry that piece of art on your wrist and it functions too, So it's like a little motor that is encased on

And just for the record, I don't have a Mercedes, but if I did, I also would not bring it in the building exactly my like two thousand and seven, pres is not something I can bring in. So it's the art and the functionality of how many parts are there in a wristwatch, like roughly, like can you describe how it works?

Super super basic for yeah, So you have two springs. You have a main spring which is in the barrel, which is where we store the power. Okay, so instead of having having a battery, you have the main spring, and that once it's been wound either by your hand the movement of your hand or by physically turning the crown, it stores the energy and then it goes through a gear train. At the end of the gear train, there's an escapement.

What's an escapement?

The escapement. The easiest way to explain it is if you think about a pendulum on a clock. It swings back and forth. Well, the escapement in a watch is the same thing, except it's just been designed to fit in a watch. So it's a coiled spring.

Okay, all right, So you have these.

Two opposing springs. One stores the energy, one releases the energy in a in a certain fashion where we know exactly how slowly it releases the energy, and we harness that to actually translate it to the hands.

I'm gonna explain the again really quick in non horology terms. Number One, you wind that little knob. That knob coils up a main spring that gets all tense and it wants so badly to go boing. This is the main spring and a mechanical watch, but it's in this little barrel kind of dish. It keeps it from doing that. The barrel transfers all that wound up energy to a gear train, which is just a series of wheels with

No? No, I mean everything is. It's traditional watchmaking, so it's been tested over time. What we make today is the same thing that was made a hundred years ago.

Okay, okay. Brief brief history of timekeeping devices fifteen hundred BC, sun dials thirteen hundred BC. Water clocks, so water would drip and that would fill something that would show you how much time has passed. Eight hundred candle clocks. You'd burn a candle. Depending on how tall the candle was, you knew what time it was. There were also incense clocks burns minsense. When a different smell would hit you, you'd be like, oh, it's time for me to go to work.

So we don't really have nightmares because it's nothing new. It's like it's like if you're a painter, you know, everyone's been using paints for a long time. We're not trying some new fancy paint that might disappear in a day or two. It might fade or something like that. It's all traditional watchmaking. So there's great watchmakers that I borrow all of that engineering and physics and everything that they did. I borrow that and put it into our watches.

Were you good at physics and chemistry and sciences as a child or were you better at just like I'm going to take the t be apart and put it back together. Before my parents come home.

Yeah, I have more of a mechanical mind. Hands on. If I can physically have something in front of me, take it apart.

How are you with like Ikea bookshelves.

I have no problem with Ikea stuff. Okay, all the stuff that goes into Ikea, the screws, the pegs, everything. They're way larger than watch parts.

Right, okay, which brings me to watch parts. Roughly, how many parts are in you're wearing one of your watches, which is gorgeous, molo, how many parts are in that? Mechanically in our watch?

It's about one hundred and fifty pieces.

Okay, one hundred and fifty pieces, and they're all the size of what not assessme see like a I don't even like a piece of confetti? Like, how big are these parts?

A lot of them are about the size of a grain of rice, Some of them are smaller, some are bigger. It depends on which component.

And do you drink coffee?

Yes, you do.

How do you not have shaky like Captain shaky hands?

Well, I find that there's a certain amount of coffee, right, and when you kind of get over that threshold, that's when you start to get shaky. Just the right amount of coffee is good, Okay, I have no problem with it keeps me awake, even if I'm sitting there at the bench quietly. But too much coffee and there's no more watchmaking, I move over and start doing emails, emails and business stuff. Yeah.

How many coffees is it? You know it's like two expressos.

Or like, well, no, it's more than that, maybe four espressoes.

Are you serious?

Yeah?

God, if I had four espressos, I'd just be like sweating and shaking. So the fact that you can even do that, that's amazing. So you had to learn that, probably by trial and error exactly where you're like, Cameron, get away from the bench.

This is too much. I can't I can't watch make.

That brings me to a question. Is it harder to make a ladies watch because they're tinier parts?

Yes?

Really?

Yeah?

Okay, So do they cost more because their tinier parts? Tell me about this, tell me everything.

That's the thing. They don't normally cost more.

Okay.

And there's actually a lot of vintage women's watches that were mechanical that watchmakers will not even repair today because they're so small.

Wow.

Yeah, they're very hard to find people to work on those watches.

Are a lot of watchmakers, guys, fixed horologists.

In Switzerland, it's not so much male dominated.

What is it about Switzerland? Why are they covering the market on watches? Why are they so good at it?

They've been doing it a long time.

I never knew this, but during World War Two, because Switzerland was neutral, that let their watch industry continue making consumer timekeeping things. Other nations of the world were like, if we're going to make an apparatus, it better bomb someone. The Swiss were like, just going to keep making watches. So as a result, the Swiss watch industry had a pretty good monopoly. They're like, I'm just over here making

It's almost like a crutch. I think when people pull out their phones and they're like, you know, just sucked into their phone, checking Facebook, check an email, whereas the watch is more of like bringing you back into the real world, where there you have a mechanical item that's on your wrist that it's real pieces they move, there's a spring in there. You have to wind it every day or you have to move to keep it going right.

You know what has nothing to do with watches, but it does have something to do with watches is punctuality. I live in Los Angeles, so everyone shows up like four hours link to things, if they show up at all. Some people are punctual, some people aren't. I always run a few minutes behind to be honest. I wanted to find out why this was why essentially I'm a garbage person, so I googled it. In two thousand and one, Chef Conte,

The only time I ever think about anything like that is when I service watches, like watches that come back in they have moving parts, so they only cleaning and oiling, just like a car engine m hm. But realizing that at some point somebody is going to have this watch and I'll be long gone, but it'll need somebody to work on it, service it, or somebody will pull it out of a lock box in one hundred years and

Mm hm. When True Detective came out, did you get a lot of times of flat circle questions from your friends, Were you like, okay.

Guys, I did not?

Okay? Do you ever think a lot about the time space continuum and like whether or not time is a fourth dimension? No?

Not really like no, yeah.

Just I had to check. I think all I've done is just revealed that I have an anxiety disorder about more challenging. Yeah, okay, here's the part where camera almost makes me start crying.

The previous generations actually were able to maintain mechanical watchmaking and kind of promote the art form behind it rather than just focusing on well it keeps time right, Because if you just focus on the time aspect, a quarts watch is far superior. It keeps better time, and it costs a lot less money. But a mechanical watch would be like the actual painting, whereas the court's watch would be the post to print.

Got it?

So the poster print is going to be very accurate, colors won't fade, It'll be really nice and perfect, just like the last one. But the actual painting on canvas, that one is going to be unique. It's a real work of art. The artists may have had a slightly different brushstroke or so that one has more of an artistic appeal, almost like each one is unique.

Right, this is making me want to cry. That's like such a wonderful way of putting it. Like that makes every mechanical watch seems so much more emotional.

Do you know what I mean?

When you consider that there's like a person behind it working on this, who's gone through all this schooling, squinting, like looking at these tiny cogs. Yeah, that's pretty nuts. How do you even deal with those tiny tools?

It's a lot of repetition and training, learning to look at things in a certain way. Being able to see perfection is really important, and when you go to school you actually spend about the first six months just learning how to see if your work is perfect or not. And by perfect I mean like down to twenty times magnification, So learning to see any imperfection and then actually act on correcting it is a big part of learning how to work with everything, even just making sure your tools

That part of your personality. Are you a perfectionist? Is your house like immaculate? Are your tax returns sparkling?

It does kind of be becom ingrained in everything you do. However, I do also enjoy working on cars, and the reason I like that is because if something doesn't fit, you can bang it with the hammer. If something's not exactly perfect, it doesn't matter so much. So it's there's other parts of my life where I kind of relax a little bit and don't focus so much on the tiny little details that I focus on with watches.

Yeah, I'm sure cars just seem like these big, crazy like working on a dinosaur, like a like doing surgery on a huge animal. You know what I mean. Yeah, Like that's got to be so different.

Yeah, and all the parts are greasy and dirty, and watchmaking is much cleaner.

When you decided to form your own company, wiss like, what what did you want to do differently?

Well? I truly believe that mechanical watches are very important because we don't need clocks or watches. We have that everywhere. The time telling part is not my main interest. The art behind it is so beautiful and the amount of work that goes into it is recognized. So for me, I wanted to take that and expose more people to it. I think there's a lot of people who they don't even really know about mechanical watches. They may have heard it,

Ha ha? Right. I think a lot of people like, of course a watch is mechanical, and you're like, no, there's actually like taxonomic things like if it's a quartz watch, there's a battery, and if it's a mechanical watch, it's all based on springs and tension, and there's far more parts and more complexity to it.

Yeah.

Right. I feel like you're kind of like the Jack White of horology. There's something about mechanical watches that's very like a kin to, like I appreciate hearing music on wax cylinders and vinyl and you know what I mean very much.

So, just like winding your watch every morning, it becomes this ritual. And because my watches have a display back, I always wind mine looking at the movement.

A display back is where if you flip over a mechanical watch, you can see the guts tiktoking and working and clicketty clocketing and doing all of their horological magic. Now, I thought these were just glass backs, but I looked and know oftentimes in really good watches, including camerons, they're not glass. They're made of polished sapphire crystal, which is hard as hell.

And I watch all the wheels turn and it's like maybe thirty seconds, but I do it every morning, and then when I look at my watch, I know that I've wound it and set it. And it's almost like this connection you have, like if you had an animal and you feed it in the morning. You know you're feeding your watch every morning.

Oh, that's an interesting way of looking at It's kind of a thirty second mechanical meditation.

Yeah.

And I love that your watches have that display back. It's kind of like a sleeping beauty glass coffin where you can see inside.

Yeah.

Right, And was that like one of the first things that when you're like, well, I have a watch company, it's going to be displaybacks all the way.

Definitely, Yeah, because, like I said, I want to show mechanical watchmaking to a lot more people, especially here in the US, where we used to make a lot of watches. It used to be a major industry here. There used to be a lot of watchmakers around the early nineteen hundreds. It was a massive industry, right, and you would actually meet watchmakers. But now I'm the only watchmaker that people meet. Usually they're like, oh, I've never met a watchmaker, this

So did you listen to like every drop of S Town, that podcast about horology?

I did not.

Did you listen to any of it?

I have not yet, Cameron, I's.

Gonna bounce in here with a quick email update. I figured, okay, we recorded this a few months ago. He probably listened to it, so I'll get his reaction. I emailed the company. I got this back. Cameron still hasn't listened to S Town, but I would estimate he's had about seventy people ask him thus far.

Oops.

End quote. I'm just saying, just put it on your list. Do you listen to anything when you're watchmaking? Or do you just need like the sound of silence?

Usually silence, But sometimes if I have a lot to get done, I'll turn on some music and that helps me sit at the bench for a longer period of time.

What kind of jams we already know he's not a huge fan of jay Z and Kanye, classical or just like old Carly Simon.

Sometimes when I polish, I'll listen to classical music if I'm at the polishing machine, but usually just a bunch of and them mixes. You're just like Pandora anything. Yeah, exactly, play me.

Some hot jams.

Yeah.

I have a bunch of questions that people want to ask you, so I'm going to fire them up. This is kind of like a speed round where I'm just gonna lob a bunch of questions that people want me to ask you. Okay, Emily was like, did you listen to Estown? Everyone wants to feel this test down. Elspeth wants to know what is your absolute favorite time piece you've ever worked on the rarest or your favorite that you've ever worked on?

The rarest that I've ever worked on? Was a grand complication from Automarpige.

First off, grand complication sounds like a Wes Anderson movie. Is this an expensive watch? Well, it's not too bad. It retails for nine hundred and ninety six thousand dollars, but The good news is that I think there's free shipping.

They've utilized multiple complications in one watch. Okay, plit's second chronograph, perpetual calendar, minute repeater, and a lot of people this won't mean anything to them.

I don't know what any of those mean.

Now.

A complication is that, like when there's a dial within the dial.

Well, there will be extra sub dials because the more complex it watches, the more it needs to tell you.

Okay.

The minute repeater, though, is what I like the most about it.

What is that? So?

The minute repeater is it's a chiming watch, so you actually pull a slide and then it will sound off the time. Oh so kind of like a grandfather clock. M it will actually repeat the time to you on demand, down to the minute.

How does it do that? That seems like it's all mechanical, so it's a musical instrument. Also, exactly how big was this thing?

It certainly doesn't seem that big. It's still smaller than like a pocket watch.

That's crazy. Yeah, so you got to work on that?

Yeah?

Were you so nervous?

Yeah?

How did you prep for it?

Well, there wasn't any prepping for me. It was a just a simple little fix on it.

I'm physically nauseous just thinking about.

That watch has fifteen hundred pieces.

Oh god. Yeah, and they're all about the size of a grain of rice.

In that because it's so complex, many of them are like an eighth the size of a grain of rice.

I can't even y, I can't. I don't understand how you're not. Your palms aren't just like so sweaty. You can't even handle this. Stuff just moves slow, very slow. Okay, Lena wants to know if you're a horologist. I love this question a lot. Do you feel like a total sell out if you want to buy a fipbit or a smart watch?

I would feel pretty weird wearing that. Yeah, it would be hard to tell people what I do all day if I had a fitbit on my wrist, not to say there's anything wrong with it, but maybe on the other wrist, and then a mechanical watch on the on one wrist with the fitbit on the other.

Yeah, I feel like you'd have to get an ankle fitbit or something, you know what I mean, hide that under.

Your pants exactly.

You can't. Your wrist is good real estate, Yeah, it better be reserved for like a mechanical watch, maybe a medical RT bracelet. But I don't think you could just like slap a live strong band on there and like a fitbit. Okay. A few people asked, Britt wants to know why some clocks click as seconds tick by, but others are silent.

So they all make noise, all of them. Okay, the difference is how loud. Oh, and it really just has to do with a couple of the components that actually knock into each other.

Oh and knock into each other, yeah, on accident or on purpose.

On purpose. Okay, there's five noises that the mechanical watch will make. And that's actually how we time the mechanical watch and make sure that it is keeping time accurately. Oh, because we know how many how many noises it should make in a set period of time based on the frequency of that escapement balance wheel and hairspring. What we'll do is we actually lengthen and shorten the spring that hairspring in the watch.

Oh, got it. So that's how if a watch is faster slow, it would have something to do probably with the hairspring.

Yeah, okay, yeah, it would likely have something to do with with your hairspring or some of the oils that are on the on the parts associated with the escapement.

Okay, you have to wash your hands before you use it, probably right, or you'll get your grammy dirty hand.

Oh yeah, definitely, no touching the parts with your bare hands.

Oh you just need like you need tiny tweezers.

Everything is only touched with tweezers and small other little prodding type devices to move things around. We never touch the components with their bare hands.

Yeah. I guess there's like you don't want pepperoni smudges on that.

I think exactly. Fondliness is very or when working with watches.

No one's eating lasagna at their desk.

No, definitely not.

God, can you imagine what a nightmare?

Yeah, I would not want to think about think about opening that watch up in ten years and finding little bits of oh god, red sauce or something like that.

Oh god. No. Okay, Well, tell me what your last question last two questions, like what is your least favorite thing about what you do? And then we'll end on a positive note. You can tell me your favorite thing about what you do, but what's your least like, what's the one thing that drives you crazy, or that you didn't expect to encounter when you got into this field, or questions that people ask you that are annoying.

Everything about the making of watches I absolutely love. However, the business side sometimes gets in the way of that, well often gets in the way of that, and it kind of takes me away from why I got into this in the first place, which was to work on the watches. So I'd say my most favorite thing is developing something new and designing and kind of prototyping, testing something, making something that I haven't made before. That is very exciting to me.

So do you have a favorite moment that you've ever had doing what you do?

More So, something I didn't expect that would be really exciting is driving around and looking at the person next to us in the car and they're wearing a watch that I made. Something like that is really exciting. That just it blows me away, and it reminds me why I got into this, which was to expose more people to mechanical watches and I try and restore an industry and just create this resurgence of watchmaking here in the US.

Do you ever roll down your window and you're like, bro that's my watch.

I haven't in the car, but when I see people in person, I'll usually say your watch, and then I'll show them mine and I'll let them know that I made theirs.

Do they freak out?

Yeah? Usually yeah.

I bet people want to hug you, but they're like, good job, bro. Are they give you like that backpat that man backpath that means I respect you?

And sometimes I won't even notice. I'll be at a restaurant or something and I'll hear someone say, Cameron, Karen, is that you? And you know lo and behold it's somebody that's got my watch, and no way they recognize me, and.

You're like famous horologists over her. Thanks very much. I never would have thought, well, where can people find you? Number one? What's website for your company? And also do you guys maintain like a social media presence so people can go get your wares.

Yeah, our website is Weisswatchcompany dot com and that's all spelled out. We also have Facebook and Instagram, so we and on Instagram. On Facebook, we're oftentimes showing the workshop and how we make certain certain components, how we assemble something new things we're working on. So for people who are really interested in watchmaking, they can kind of get an inside look at how watches are made.

And if someone wants to be a horologist, well start young. Maybe no, so you don't.

Have to find it young if you're interested. For me, it just so happens. I found it young and it's a major passion of mine, So that's perfect for me.

So if you happen to own a Wie watch and you see Cameron around, you should definitely high five him. And if you're wondering how much his watches cost, which after writing up this episode, I was like, how much of these watches cost. They're not that bad. There are mechanical watches. They started under a thousand dollars, some of them go to seven thousand dollars. But in terms of other watches, they're not like second mortgage level expensive watches,