Welcome!

My name is Cees (“case”) de Groot and this site is where I’m planning to keep track of what I do around watch and clock repair, plus the tooling I’m building up around it.

The plan is to get thoroughly acquainted with my Sherline lathe and spend on that and build tools for the repair side rather than buying outrageously expensive tools outright.

“Grotius curavit” is Latin. Well, probably. My Latin is rusty, it’s been a few decades. “Grotius” is the latinization of my family name (viz. Hugo Grotius, the 17th century lawyer and statesman, not family, I think), and “curavit” roughly translates as “fixed it” (took care of it, etc, etc). Also, the domain was available.

The site will probably be more of a personal diary/log than something that is primarily aimed at sharing, and please take everything here with a healthy dose of critical thinking. I’m not really qualified in either watch, clock or toolmaking, it is strictly a hobby, and while I have some experience in the field (in the ’90s, I worked a lot on cameras and especially old shutters - different, but not that different), I have never attended WOSTEP or similar institutions of higher horology.

I’d like to stay oldskool with my watchmaking: build tools, don’t buy them, and work on the older stuff. I hope that the site style, shamelessly ripped from the Jekyll “Libretto” theme and then tweaked, reflects that. But accessibility is important, so let me now if you don’t like something!

Oh, before I forget: I’m happy to part with most of the watches and clocks I’ll present here. Just ping me :)