For 40 years, watchmaker George Kajanoff toiled quietly in his Ballard shop, sometimes late at night, aligning the wheels of an antique timepiece or cleaning an heirloom.

He was an internationally recognized watchmaker, so respected that some collectors wouldn't trust anyone else with their $12,000 watches.

Even when battery-powered watches threatened to make the profession of mechanical-watch makers obsolete, Mr. Kajanoff correctly predicted that his business would still boom, because so many collectors and loyalists value the heartbeat of the ticking watch.

Mr. Kajanoff died Feb. 21 from emphysema. He was 76.

He was born in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1928, where his Russian Christian parents had fled to escape religious persecution.

The young Kajanoff wanted nothing to do with his father's and grandfather's profession of watchmaking, and worked in a statistics department for an airline company in his early 20s. But he later changed his mind and apprenticed with several master watchmakers in Europe.

After his father died in 1955, he took over his father's shop before moving to the United States with his first wife and two sons in 1963. They would later divorce.

He settled in the Seattle area and started doing contract work for a local jewelry store. Soon, other jewelry stores heard of the talented watchmaker and sought his services.

But the real money, Mr. Kajanoff learned, was to work with the customers directly. He gradually built his own clientele and became a well-known independent watchmaker by the 1980s.

Intensely devoted to working on Swiss-made watches that ranged in value from $1,000 to $500,000, Mr. Kajanoff sometimes sneered at customers who brought in a cheap timepiece.

"In his Dutch accent, he would yell, 'Junk!' " and hand the watch back to them," recalled his second wife, Janice, whom he married in 1974.

She was 20 years his junior, but no one noticed, she said, because "he was just so intense and energetic."

Mr. Kajanoff spoke five languages and won the Tacoma-Pierce County Chess Championship in 1964.

But fixing the world's finest watches — Rolex, Ebel, Concord, Piaget and Corum — was his passion. It also made him realize the disparity of the economic classes.

Once, a businessman strolled in his Ballard shop, Horological Service, to get his $405,000 diamond-studded Piaget fixed before returning to Kuwait.

"That made him depressed for a week," said his wife, laughing. "What he was wearing on his wrist was worth four times what our house was worth."

But she understood her husband's intense passion. "You are kind of looking at this small world, which you can control to some extent. And you have to shut out the rest of the world to do the work," she said.

Memorial services were held yesterday at Ballard Elks.

Mr. Kajanoff is survived by his wife; two sons, Paul of Belltown and Robert; and two grandsons. Remembrances can be made to the Watch Technology Rolex Fund at the North Seattle Community College Foundation, 9600 College Way N., Seattle, WA 98103.

Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com