Week 5 Aug 23-28, 2010

Monday I continued with making the eccentric pins. I was determined to do them right this time and that's exactly what happened. I was a lot more careful in every step this time and it went well.

This is the plan for the pins.

I cut the slot on a 2.50mm piece of AP20 steel. Then after that I hardened and tempered the pieces to blue.

Then I turned the whole piece down to 0.76mm. I had to push the pins into a brass plate so they could be milled out. Once I had them milled out I wasn't able to pull the pins out of the brass plate so I ended up having to mill around the pin until there was barely any material left. Then I was able to wiggle them out.

I had to take a picture of the screen with the microscope to actually see the detail from the pins. Everything worked out and should be good to go in the watch. The only thing is that I am planning on flat polishing the screw heads so I will only be able to do that at the very end or they will end up being scratched.

Tuesday I set out trying to figure out my balance bridge and all the parts to go with it. I am trying to make it look a bit like this:

Of course it wouldn't be good to completely copy something so it will change a bit. The first thing I started making was the stud holder. I found some German silver so I made it out of that. I milled pretty much everything and will make the finishing by hand. Here is the design plan:

And here is how it looks after the milling from the top. It has to be thinned out on the back in a few places yet, so it's not quite done. But it looks a lot like the design. just an hour on the milling machine and voila!

After a bit of filing and smoothing here it is:

On Friday we had a visit to one of the few independent watchmaking companies left in Switzerland. The name of the company is Vianney Halter. They make only about 20 watches per year and the stuff they make is quite impressive. It was interesting to see how a small company works. The amount of machines they have for such a small company is awesome! Here's a nice view from the building:

The rest of the week I worked on making the balance bridge. This did not go as planned. I was trying to follow a lot of different dimensions and just wasn't thinking straight a few times. By the end of Saturday I had the basic shape milled out though.

Here is the design:

Next week I'll be trying to make the balance bridge functional. (Note: since I am posting this late on Tuesday, I'll tell you it didn't go so well on Monday. Had to remake the bridge again....)

Cya!