About

I have been around (and in) the clock business, all my life. My father, Jack Kurdzionak (born 1943), began repairing watches and clocks as a hobby in the 1960s. In the late-1960s, he completed his education degree at Northeastern University, and commenced his teaching career at the Lincoln Junior High School in Medford, MA. When the “new” Medford High School opened in 1970, he left the Lincoln to become one of Medford high school’s 9th-grade science teachers. 

By the time I was born in 1971, he was spending nights and weekends repairing watches and clocks in our basement in Everett, MA. 

My first words (sometime in 1972) were “tick-tock”. Starting about 1973, my father would bring me to the Jeweler’s Building at 333 Washington Street in Boston a few times per month, so that he could buy watch supplies and tools, and to pick-up and drop-off repairs that he was doing for various people in the building.

When we moved from Everett to Stoneham in 1974, my father’s watch and clock workshop came with us. It was set up in a vacant second-floor bedroom (this room provided access to the attic, so we called it “The Attic Room”). When my brother was born in 1976, the “Attic Room” became his nursery/bedroom, and the watch and clock workshop was moved downstairs to our home’s first-floor “sun porch” on the side of the house.

I spent many hours of my childhood in the 1970s watching my father in his workshop, learning from him, and helping him. I even went on “house calls” with him, to be with him when he repaired grandfather clocks in peoples’ homes. 

Before I was 10 years old, I could take apart simple watches and basic clocks, and put them back together. I could also operate my father’s watchmaker’s lathe on small, simple projects. 

By the early 1980s, my father (who possessed a brilliant scientific mind and was a passionate teacher), had become disillusioned with the in-school (and city) politics that were affecting his teaching career. Fortunately, throughout the 1970s, he had developed a substantial base of private customers (and jewelry stores) for his watch and clock repair services. So he was able to make a career change: In 1981 he left his full-time job at Medford High School, and began repairing watches and clocks, full-time. No longer was the business to be a hobby or “side business” in the “Attic Room” or the “sun porch”. It was now his full-time career. 

In 1981, with the help of our carpenter-neighbor, my father converted our cellar’s “coal bin” into a watch and clock workshop. (My father had heated our house with coal). In a ritual whose time had all but expired by the late-1970s, the coal delivery truck (from Lord Coal Co. in Woburn, MA) would come to our home, put its “chute” into our basement window, and dispense a ton of coal into our coal bin through the window. I can well-remember watching this procedure with fascination! 

As remodeled, the former coal bin now had a tile floor; insulated walls with paneling; dedicated heat (controlled by its own thermostat); a tile “drop” ceiling; numerous electrical outlets; bright, fluorescent lighting; a phone jack; and an intercom system so that my father could speak to me, my brother, or my mother whilst we were upstairs on the first or second floors. 

This “former coal bin”, now an in-home watch and clock repair shop, would be where my father spent most of the 1980s repairing watches and clocks for several Boston, Boston-area, and suburban jewelry stores….and for numerous private customers.

Neighbors, friends, family members, former teaching colleagues, former students, jewelry store owners, and even other watchmakers….all made visits to our home to see my father for repair work. But some repair jobs were still done “on the road”: like I had done years earlier, I continued to join my father for many “house calls” on which he repaired grandfather clocks in customers’ homes. 

In an act that would probably be unheard-of today, I began doing “parts runs” into Boston for my father, traveling via my bicycle and Boston’s subway lines, to the Jeweler’s Building, by myself, when I was about 11 or 12 years old…. around 1983 or so.  

When I was 13 years old, at the end of the 8th grade, I began the first session of what would later become many years of vocational/trade education: I studied “machine shop” (operation of machine tooling) at Minuteman Regional Vocational/Technical High School in Lexington MA, in that school’s “after school” trades program for junior high school students. It was my first time using full-sized machine tooling. 

The “parts runs” into Boston via bicycle (and later, via automobile) and subway train, continued into the early 1990s. 

August, 1996: John F. Kurdzionak about to run a Cog Railway locomotive to the summit of Mt. Washington, NH.

After my junior year at Merrimack (1992), I left Northeast Manufacturing and went to work as a brakeman on the mountain-climbing trains and steam locomotives of the Mount Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire. I qualified as a fireman on the trains in 1994, and qualified as an engineer, in 1996. It was full-time summer work when I was in college, but afterward, I worked there part-time, as my schedule allowed. If you rode the Mt. Washington Cog Railway at any time between June of 1992 and July of 2001, I may have been your brakeman, fireman, or engineer.

In 1993, my parents hired me to repair most of the clocks that came into The Watchmaker. The earliest clocks I had learned to repair as a child were American “time only” (and later, “time and strike”) clocks (from Connecticut), and I repaired many of these for The Watchmaker. In the 1980s, cuckoo clock repair had been one of my father’s specialties, and by the 1990s The Watchmaker now had endless amounts of them coming in for repair. By this time, my father wanted to personally repair fewer clocks (and more watches)….thus began my repair of cuckoo clocks at, and for, The Watchmaker.

The set of pictures shown here, shows my father’s (and later, my) “repair stickers” on the rear of a cuckoo clock that has been serviced by my father (and me) since 1991. 

My father’s cuckoo clock repair sticker from March 1991 at the original Watchmaker store.

Same clock, repaired by JFK when working at the Watchmaker on Main St.

This is the same clock, but this time repaired at JFK Clock Repair’s Woburn location

35 years after the same clock 1st visited the Watchmaker in Stoneham, JFK repaired again in the Beverly location in 2025.

The Watchmaker moved from 352-B Main Street to 379 Main Street (Stoneham), in 1995. One of the cuckoo clock “repair stickers” shown here, shows the original address at 352-B Main Street and has my father’s writing; another, shows the new address at 379 Main Street, and has my writing.  

After this same-street move (1995), I continued to repair & rebuild clocks at, and for, The Watchmaker. (The final two “repair stickers” shown above, show when I repaired the same clock at my Woburn location some years later, and then later, at Beverly). 

I never counted how many clocks crossed my bench while I worked at The Watchmaker, but it numbers in the hundreds. I also did clock repairs for private customers, and for a few Boston-area jewelry and watch stores. I even repaired clocks for other repairmen who were unable to complete those repairs themselves.

A young John Kurdzionak, Circa 1995, reassembling a Chelsea clock after repairing it.

I attended several advanced clockmaking courses in the 1990s, including: gear and pinion cutting, and escapement making and repair. I even traveled to Grenchen, Switzerland on two occasions (1997, 1998) and studied watch repair. After some (but very little) thought, I decided that not only did I prefer repairing clocks to repairing small Swiss watches, but also that my customers needed me as a clock repairman much more than it needed me as a watch repairman!

I repaired a substantial number of clocks for Boston-area jewelry and watch stores in the 1990s. From about late 1994 to 1996 (only), I did all clock repair work for The Swiss Watchmaker on Church Street in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA. 

The then-new (1994) owner of The Swiss Watchmaker wanted to offer clock repair to his customers. Even though I was only in my twenties, he had heard (from others in the business) about my reputation for quality work. So, he sought me, found me, and asked me to perform all the clockwork that his customers brought to him. 

I accepted. 

I repaired his customers’ clocks and also made grandfather and tall clock “house calls” in and around Harvard Square, Cambridge, Somerville, Belmont, and Watertown…. for nearly two years. 

In a very sad turn of events, The Swiss Watchmaker’s owner unexpectedly became seriously ill in 1996 and passed away. 

I declined a very kind offer by the [next] new owner to continue to do the store’s clockwork for her. I worked with her and for her, part time, for a few months in 1996…. to complete my repairs and to help get her started in her new endeavor; but my affiliation with The Swiss Watchmaker and my era in “Harvard Square” came to an end, after that.

But, for that brief span of approximately two years, if your clock was repaired at The Swiss Watchmaker, or if you had The Swiss Watchmaker do a “house call” for your grandfather or tall clock, it was me who did the work or visited your home. 

One of my favorite memories from that era, is when a customer visited the store on a day that I was there, inquired about a repair, and spoke with me at length about it…. without me realizing her identity. At the end of our conversation, I realized that I had just had an entire discussion with (and been hired by)…. Julia Child….television’s “The French Chef”. 

That experience only ever could have happened, in Harvard Square.

I completed the repair for her, and a few weeks later, an autographed publicity photo of her in her famous kitchen, arrived in my mailbox. It said “Bon Appetit, to John! From Julia Child…”

Today, some 30 years later, I am thankful for the brief time I worked at (and for) that store, in that neighborhood. I hold very fond memories of that era. 

By 1998, I had outgrown the physical limitations of the clock repair facilities at The Watchmaker. I rented dedicated commercial space on Central Street in Stoneham, close to (but entirely separate from) The Watchmaker, to handle the increasing number of clocks I was being asked to repair. It was a small shop, only a few hundred square feet, but was worlds bigger than what had been available to me prior. 

Although I didn’t officially have a name for my business (and never had a sign on my door at this first location), my wife registered the website JFKCLOCK.COM for me and suggested that that’s what I call my website, and suggested “JFK Clock Repair”, be what I call my business. (The letters “JFK” are my initials, and were not chosen to imply any relation to President Kennedy or to the Kennedy family). 

It was at this new location that, from 1999 to 2005, I continued to repair clocks for The Watchmaker, and for my own private customers (which included jewelry stores that hired me to repair their clocks, and even other clock repairmen, who needed assistance with complex repairs, escapement work, or custom parts manufacture…. that they were unable to complete themselves). 

From 1999 to 2002, I studied machine shop (machine tool operation) again, but this time it was a much-more advanced level course, and was at Wentworth Institute of Technology, in Boston. 

With the acquisition of more machines and tooling, and more clocks coming to me for repair, I outgrew the Stoneham location quickly. So, in late 2005, a large commercial room in Cummings Park in Woburn MA was leased. It was officially named JFK CLOCK REPAIR, and the name was printed on my front door! 

With the move to Woburn, I ceased doing any machining, escapement work, or “troublesome repairs” for other clock repairmen, and stopped all work for jewelry stores….so that I could focus exclusively on my own private customers, and on the former and legacy clock customers of The Watchmaker. 

Although I didn’t know at the time, clockmaker and conservator James Moss of James Moss Clockmakers, Littleton MA, made a comment about me on the NAWCC (National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors) forums back in 2005:

I highly recommend John Kurdzionak of Stoneham, MA. You may be able to reach him through the business called “The Watchmaker” in Stoneham.

Highly qualified, and honest. 

https://mb.nawcc.org/threads/recommendation-for-service.3091/

-Jim Moss

I didn’t see Jim’s comment until years later, but I am humbled and honored, to know that the ending of my era in Stoneham coincided with a very nice endorsement from Jim Moss. 

The years in Stoneham were concluded. On to Woburn!

Although already many years proficient in soldering and brazing (the joining of metals with torch heat, using soft or hard filler metals), I studied electric (and gas) welding technology (entirely different from soldering and brazing), at Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational Technical High School in Wakefield MA, for several semesters beginning in 2014.