now you know I know that you know

Some close ups

2011-08-10T06:07:00.000+02:00

Here are a few more close up photos of the watch...

Temporary Relief

2011-07-05T21:24:00.000+02:00

So I finally broke down and took a few photos. I was mostly hesitating because I don't really have the right set up to take some decent photos. But I figured I'd try and show people what it looks like. So here they are:

Unfortunately I didn't have the time to finish everything how I wanted and of course now that I am back in Canada I don't have the tools/workshop to do what I need. So it's not quite working how it's supposed to but the basic time function works just fine.

As always all comments and opinions welcome. Would love to know what people think of the design and finish. I'm also wondering if there are any people interested in buying something like this and if so, what would you think it's worth? Anyways, let me know and I'll try to respond to any questions.

-Aaron

Hold on to your butts...

2011-06-18T13:45:00.001+02:00

Hey just wanted to let people know I'll be doing an update with the finished watches soon. I finished school May 27th but I left for 3 weeks traveling a few day after so I haven't had time to take pictures or anything like that. And I will be moving back to Canada on Tuesday so the update might be another week or so. So in the wise words of Mr. Samuel Jackson....

And seeing as I have been traveling, check some of the new photos on flickr. Will be adding a few at a time gradually.

Week 42 May 9-14th, 2011

2011-05-15T14:34:00.000+02:00

Just a quick update this week. Still working on getting the bridges back to functional. The barrel bridge is not fun so it's taking a little while.

I did finish the case and caseback so now it is sent to the get the sapphire crystal fitted. We also got in touch with the strap maker and they are sending a sample of the leather so I can make sure it's the color I want. Sorry I don't have more photos but I haven't had the time to stop and take photos of everything.

Here's a photo of the case. I had to enlarge the center, and then drill and tap holes for the caseback to screw down. There wasn't a lot of room in the case to make the holes for screws so they are quite small. The tapping went fine until the last one where I broke the tap. That sucked pretty bad but after about an hour (and a bunch of ruined cutters) I got the broken piece out. So now it works fine.

This is the cutout for the movement holding clamps. I will still have to refinish the case since it was used and had some scratches on it from before. But it is pretty much ready for the movement.

Then I worked on finishing a good dial. First I sandblasted the whole piece. Then I centered the hour/minute section on the M1/Schaublin table and then used the lathe to cut out the recess leaving the circular grained surface. Then I put it back on the M1 and used a widia three face cutter to cut out the indexes using the indexed plate. Pretty simple really. Then I did the same with the seconds cutout. After that I cut out a small + and - for the power reserve indication. I had previously checked the power reserve to make sure I knew the actual angle the hand moves so that it will be accurate on the dial. Then lastly I plated the whole thing with black rhodium. So here are a few photos of the dial.

Cutting out the indexes.

I also finished the hands. Here is the finished dial and hands. It looks pretty much just how I planned so that is nice! It'll look even better once the moon phase wheel is in and it's in the case.

So there's only 2 weeks left in the course. This week is the final exam and then next week everyone is going on visits to different watchmaking companies. Unfortunately it doesn't look good that I'll be able to go on these visits if I want to have my watch finished. But maybe if things go really well this week/weekend it might happen. There is a visit to Philippe Dufour on Monday which would be really awesome to see, so I'll cross my fingers for now.

Weeks 38-41 Apr. 13-May 7th, 2011

2011-05-05T21:15:00.000+02:00

Well it's been a long time since I updated this and I suppose some people are wondering what's going on. To be honest there wasn't that much new or interesting so I just didn't bother. But last week some things started to come together. Anyways, here's what's up.

A lot of April I spent getting the W-01 running, decorated, and ready for the COSC certification. That ended up sucking up a lot of my time which wasn't great but finally we sent them away last Friday. Lets hope they all pass!

Then after that we had the hairspring exam. I had done the least amount of preparation for the exam since I have been working so much on my watch. So I was a little worried about how it would go. Things can go wrong pretty quickly with hairsprings but everything went well and I got a 5.55/6 (the marking scale in Switzerland is out of 6 all the time, not sure why). It was nice to have the last intermediate exam finished and now all I have to worry about in terms of the program is the final.

For the AMS1 things were going fine. I had gotten everything running and had decided to send the balance bridge to Gravalance to get engraved. So I started doing some finishing on the bridges and all the other parts. I finished the two moonphase jumper/springs, the star wheel/cam, beveling on the dial side barrel bridge, and some other minor finishing.

Then I tried to do the geneva waves I had done before. Lets just say this went 7 different kinds of wrong. I had put supports under the bridges first and then re-flattened the surface. Then I did all the bevels perfect. But when I went to make the waves it just did not work out. Each one was a little different for some reason and the middle bridge for the 3rd and center wheels was all out of whack. Not sure what really happened but needless to say it sucked. So I tried to recover the bridges and just settle for straight graining the surface, but by the time I had gotten all of them even again, they were all too thin! So now I am making all the bridges again. I am about 70% done, but it is definitely shitty since I was pretty much done and now I am struggling to get it back and working.

Then I also got some news that the guy we thought could make a case could only cut out the profile of the shape I designed, which was pretty much useless. I was pretty down about that. But just today I tested a case from a Nixon watch I have and it is going to work perfect! Well I still have to modify it a bit and make a caseback, but it's definitely going to work. Super happy about that, and the case is close to my original design so that's great. Now we have to get a strap and a buckle and everything is set.

I mentioned that I sent the balance bridge to get engraved. Well it came back last week, and it looks amazing! Really happy with the look and it is going to give the watch just a little extra. Here are some pictures. The swan neck and regulator aren't on yet, but I you can see all the engraving this way for now.

Thanks Hanne!!

So once I got the bridge I started finishing the regulator and stud holder. This did not go so well because of the regulator. I had made the bevel of the sink too small and wanted to make it bigger. I tried centering it on the lathe and making it bigger but I think it wasn't quite flat and therefore it was all off center. Needless to say it was unrecoverable and I had to make a new one. Didn't take very long, but now it had to fit just right with the jewel and it was not so easy. It took a while to get it to fit, and in the process I bent the stud holder!!! I was already thinking I would have to make another since it looked a little funny where the stud screw was, but again it just set me back some more. But now the two parts are really nice and should work great. As you can see a lot of my time was spent making shit I already made....

Then I had to make the new dial. The first one I made came out warped when I made it so thin, but this time I used my brain a little bit more and it came out perfectly flat and 0.70mm thick. I haven't decorated it yet because I need to see the actual working angle of the power reserve hand to know where to mark the + and - on the dial. But here is the rough cutout before finishing.

Then this week I also started finishing the hands. A classmate gave me a good idea to glue them to a round bar so that I could curve the hands from side to side and lengthwise. It is working really really good and I am done polishing the power reserve and seconds hands. I plan to blue them and then grain the center after to leave it silver in the center. But I think they look awesome for hand made hands!!

I'm going to try and blue some other hands first so I can find the right way to do it. It's not easy to blue something that thin an even color. Hopefully it works...

So now I am trying to get those bridges back to working order, along with learning chronograph watches, plus finishing the rest of the parts for the AMS1. So much work to do but only 2 weeks to the final and 3 til the graduation. I hope to have my watch done by the grad but the limiting hours at the school might prevent me from that, so we'll see. Wish me luck!!!

Week 37 Apr. 4-10, 2011

2011-04-12T19:55:00.000+02:00

Last week I worked on getting the rest of the power reserve and moon phase systems in working condition. I had to make the power reserve pivot and finger, along with the spring to hold it against the cam. This meant milling out a recess in the mainplate to fit the spring under the dial side barrel bridge. After some careful planning I had the recess milled out, and the locating pin and screw hole done. I was planning to make another identical screw to the ones for the moon phase/star wheel springs so I wouldn't have another different type of screw. For some reason I forgot I made the screws 0.60mm thread not 0.50 so I ended up tapping the hole twice, oops! But not a functional problem, just an extra 20 minutes. So here is a picture of the spring. It's a kinda funny shape, but it could only fit in that location so it is what it is.

And here is the spring on the mainplate under the bridge.

Then I had to make the pivot for the power reserve finger that carries the indicating hand. It is just a small shaft that has two burnished pivots on it, and then I friction fit it onto the finger. I also tried to polish the side of the finger to reduce the friction when it slides on the cam (even though it is a slow moving part, friction never helps). Here's what the piece looks like, finger and pivot.

There is a step on the pivot for the hand to help it sit parallel with the dial.

While I was doing this I was also tweaking the springs for the star/moon phase wheels. The beaks of the springs had to be adjusted so that the wheels jump at the correct moment and with the right amount of tension. The beak also should be polished so there is little friction and won't stop the motion of the parts. So after a bunch of filing and polishing here are the springs against the wheels.

I also put in the new post for the pivot of the moon phase wheel. The original one I milled out from the mainplate, but after I did the decoration on the real moon phase wheel, the hole was too big for the post I milled out! Instead of making a new wheel I now have a post that I can adjust the height of the wheel to sit just under the dial, so I guess it worked out better in the end.

Next was to try the moon phase system out! Here's a video which is much better than pictures. It is working exactly like I designed it, nice when a plan comes together.

After that I had to work on my click spring. I had been having a bit of trouble with them breaking. It's a very small spring since it fits under the click, and it does a lot of work. I think I had just made it too thick before and it was too much stress. So I milled out a few, and now I will test how long it will last. It seems to work much smoother now that it is thinner. What a difference 5/100ths of a millimeter can make!

I wasn't going to make just one!

Hopefully it lasts!

Once I had the click spring back in action I was ready to test the power reserve. I first tested it without the PR and I had about 270° amplitude. And when I assembled the PR and got it running again I had the same 270°. That was a good sign that the PR didn't suck the amplitude from the balance. There is still some tweaking to make it function smoothly but it worked on the wind up and down so that is sweet! I'll have some more pics when I get it all running properly.

Another thing I started making was some hands. I have to make them since all of the dimensions are not common and I would like them to look a certain way anyways. I just drew them up on the CAD program and then used the M1 to mill them out. It worked pretty good, I was kinda surprised! I only made the hour and minute hands and only the rough milling so far but here's a pic of the basic design.

They will need a bevel and to be polished and blued...

Then the next thing was to try and make some finishings on the trial dial I have. The main part was to be sandblasted, and then circular graining for the hour/minute and seconds cut-outs. Then coat it in black rhodium for a matte grey look. I had a plan of attack in my mind and it worked awesome. It looks just how I had imagined it which is always a plus. Here's a pic:

So then I had to make some indexes for the different hour/minutes. I still have to try this again to get it the way I want but it's pretty close. I also plan to have the 3, 6, 9, & 12 engraved as well. And then maybe only marks for every 5 seconds not all. But that's just a design aspect. So here it is with the hands. Only the hour/minute are the right ones, but the other ones will be similar. All the hands will be blued I think. What do you think about it? If you have any thoughts feel free to share them, feedback is always nice.

The moon phase wheel is just held on with rodico from the back for the picture. There will be a + and - for the power reserve indication as well, just didn't do it there.

After I realized I will most likely be able to finish the inside parts of the watch, I had to think about a case. I just want a stainless steel one (much cheaper) and we found (thanks to Hanne from Gravalance) a guy who hopefully can make one for me. The main reason for needing to have a case made is because I added a lot of height to the dial side of the movement which puts the winding stem way out of alignment for regular 6498 cases. So I had to work on designing the whole case and all the dimensions to make it work. It's not so easy! There are a lot of things to think about. Plus I needed to design a corrector for the moon phase wheel. Anyways it took about 2 days to think of all the parts (like glass, gaskets, screws, crown and tube, pusher for corrector) needed and dimensions. We submitted the drawings to the company and now we are waiting to hear back if it the design is ok. They said it takes about 4 weeks to make it so it should be done in time if all goes well.

Sorry for the glare in these pics, but just trying to show the designing of the case and all the dimensions/measurements.

So I hope that fixes any cravings for info on the blog, really exciting to see it all coming together. I also have to work out a strap for it as well, but I'll get to it later. One last thing I wanted to show is my bench. Watchmakers are known for being clean and organized. I get laughed at all the time because there is so much shit on my bench. But like I say "that's just how I roll". Plus I always seem to know where anything is so I find it easier this way. Of course I wouldn't have all this stuff when servicing watch, but it's too bad for the people who visit the school and see my clusterf!&# of a workbench haha!

Not sure what those drawers are for.....

If you have twitter I just started an account here if you are interested. Personally twitter is not my thing, but I'll give it a go...

Week 36 Mar. 28-Apr. 2, 2011

2011-04-04T22:18:00.000+02:00

Last week I worked a bunch on the W-01. I was at the point where all I needed to do is the timing and finishing. But to do the timing I needed to have the balance bridge 100% finished and all the decoration complete. This is because the spring can't be removed after it is timed or everything will have to be done again. This also means that I will have to be extra careful with this part as it can't be refinished again. All the bevels are polished and the sides are straight grained.

So I flat polished the top of the clamp first. I had some troubles and wasn't getting a perfect polish but it was because I was using a bit too much paste. Less is more I guess in the polishing department. After that I polished the two screws that hold the mechanism to the bridge. Then I blued them just right. They didn't have to be blued but I thought it was kinda nice. Unfortunately you can only see the end of the screw and not the head, but I think it's just one of those details that make hand finished watches more special. Here's a pic of those screws.

Then I also polished and blued the clamp screw. You can see it in the following photo. The side of the clamp is a bit dirty so I'll have to clean it up before the final assembly.

In this next pic you can see the flawless straight graining on the top of the bridge. Also, I tried to take a picture where you can see the mirror polish on the top of the clamp. You can see the two screw ends are polished as well. I tried to set the Incabloc jewel perpendicular to the screws.

After that I started working on the case. The school will be getting new cases for these movements in the future but this project wasn't really planned very far ahead so we have to use some old stuff and make it work. The case we have is one the previous course used for their school watch. But that was for a different smaller movement so I had to do some modification to make the W-01 fit. Just a bit of expansion really, nothing too complicated. I also had to make casing screws (to hold the movement in the case). Here are the casing screws:

The way they hold is by a small cut out on the case, and a slight overhang of the screw from the movement. This pic kinda shows that...

I also had to re-plate the case. This is because the original finish is a rhodium color, and the material of the case is brass. So the places where I made the case larger are visible in some areas like the side where the balance is (next pic).

After I expanded the case to fit the W-01, there was another problem. Since the older movement was smaller, the caseback glass was also smaller and therefore the case was blocking a lot of the movement. Here in this picture you can see the case is covering up almost 2mm from the edge. It's covering almost all of the click spring.

So we had to order new glass and I had to modify the bezel to fit the new glass. The material in that part of the case was quite small so we decided to just glue the glass in. It was good to get some experience glueing a crystal in. I also had to re-plate the bezel after modifying it for the new crystal.

After modification and new crystal. I also cut the stem to the correct length and glued it on.

Only the balance bridge is finished to completion, don't worry...

I also started making some adjustments for the power reserve on the AMS1. I had to make a new wheel because the one I made had a little too much backlash for my liking. And next week I will hopefully get the power reserve and moon phase in working order! One last thing, just wanted to show the smallest part I had to make for the watch. It's not the most complicated, just a pin with a top, but still the smallest and not easy to find if it jumps out of your tweezers. It's the pin that holds the satellite wheel on the intermediate wheel.

Week 35 Mar. 21-26, 2011

2011-03-29T18:50:00.001+02:00

Last week I finished up the hairspring for the AMS1. It was a lot of work trying to pin the stud at the right length to make the regulator line up in the right spot. But I finally got it and it should just be down to the timing screws on the balance now. So after that I tried to figure out why I wasn't getting enough amplitude in the vertical positions. I made sure everything was clean and mechanically sound but I still had too big of a loss. So after thinking for a while I realized that the new jewel I had ordered was 0.01mm too small and therefore there was not enough sideshake for the one pivot. This was creating the big loss of amplitude and after the pivot was burnished a bit more it now runs great. Actually it was overbanking!! So I had to open the banking pins a little bit to compensate. Now it works great, about 300° in the horizontal and 260-270° in vertical. Just right for this watch. It was nice to finally have it running in a more optimal state so that I could move on with other things.

Next I did a little bit of dynamic poising to get the delta of the vertical positions within a close range. I didn't take it all the way because there are a lot of other things to do before that is really necessary. But it is delta 4-6 already so that's a good start.

Here's just a picture to kind of explain the dynamic poising. The goal is to have the same results in all the vertical positions. So you test the watch in 8 positions and this gives you info on where the balance wheel is heavy. Then you cut (or move) the weight so that it evens out. Sometimes it takes a long time because you have to wait for 10 minutes for each test. But it's pretty simple I think. This is part of the process in making a chronometer certified watch. Of course there are many more things that need to be done for that, but this is a key step.

After that I decided to make the one wheel I had to make for the power reserve system. I had never made a wheel with this type of teeth before but it wasn't too difficult. The wheel is 7.15mm in diameter and has 69 teeth on it. I was limited to a certain number of teeth because of the pinion that the wheel has to mesh with. So anyways, here are some pictures of cutting the wheel...

Wheel blank

And here is where the wheel goes. It meshes with the satellite wheel pinion which has 9 teeth. The satellite wheel turns 7 times so the wheel I made will only turn about 92% of one turn.

Since that wheel turns less than once, I made a cam which will make contact with a lever holding the power reserve hand. If you are not lost at this point well I am impressed. If you are, well I don't blame you.

Here is the cam I am talking about. I don't have a picture of the lever yet so maybe next week. The cam is connected to the wheel by two pins on the underside of the cam and two holes in the wheel.

Hopefully by next week I'll have the other parts that help make sense of it all. I'll have to make a sequence video of the parts or something to show where they all go and why.

On another note I was at Baselworld again this year. It was awesome to see the independent watchmakers section again. I liked the McGonigle watches the best along with Aaron Bescei from Hungary.

Also it was nice to see Nixon Watches at the show again. Will always be my favorite company and happy to support them. Looks like they have some nice stuff coming out for summer. A couple examples were a chrono watch with the indicators on one plane, and one with an iPhone like touch section which controls the modes (digital of course). Also it was cool seeing some of the Nixon WTA watches and The Regent which was even nicer than I thought it was going to be.

With that said, I don't think I would go back to Baselworld unless I had something to sell. It's nice to see the independents, but I think the rest is pretty similar year after year. But that's just my opinion....

Cya next week.

Week 33 & 34 Mar. 7-19, 2011

2011-03-21T20:37:00.001+01:00

Just going to be a quick update since there wasn't much happening the last 2 weeks. Like I had mentioned we went for quartz watch training at ETA in Grenchen for 4 days so that was the first week. But it was good training and necessary so we had to do it sometime.

As for my projects, not a lot to talk about really. Just trying to make a hairspring that works properly right now. It usually isn't that difficult, but the way I designed my system it is proving to be a little tricky. The problem is that I want the stud holder and regulator to have a certain angle between them, and have the regulator centered on the bridge. I keep pinning it and the wrong spot and it's not really easy to adjust. So I guess I have to keep trying.

I guess one other thing I did was to adjust the escapements of both the W-01 and AMS1. We have nicely polished pallet forks and escape wheels that are a higher quality (allegedly). So I put those in and adjusted them properly using the skills we learnt back in August last year.

Here's just a picture showing a regular 6498 balance and spring. The card with angles is to judge if the vibrating point and the pinning point on the collet are within the tolerance of +/- 15°. This is to achieve better results at lower amplitudes.

I also did a little decorative work. I beveled the teeth on the crown and ratchet wheel. This isn't done very often but looks much nicer than sharp teeth on the gears. The first picture is before, and the second pic is after. Looks better with a loupe, trust me...

And I also finished the intermediate wheel for the power reserve with the satellite wheel on top. The intermediate wheel is just the barrel drum from the 6498 with the drum part cut off. It is rhodium plated. The satellite wheel is attached to the intermediate wheel with a friction fitted pin. I also placed the other wheel (with square center) to show what the satellite connects to. That wheel is connected to the barrel arbor. Those wheels are rose gold plated. I could write a whole 4 paragraphs trying to explain the power reserve system, but it probably won't make sense anyways. Maybe I'll try to use a video to explain later.

And just a few artsy shots. The light coming in the window was nice this morning. Starting to finally feel like spring. Which only means one thing, I need to work more to get this damn thing done! Hopefully a longer update next week....

Also, if anyone is interested, I will hopefully have the watch with me at Basel. I'll only be there for one day and of course the watch has no case dial or hands yet, but if you're interested in seeing it send me an email at aaronsblend@gmail.com and maybe I can show it to you. I will most likely be going up on Sunday March 26th, but if enough people want to see it a different day I could possibly arrange it.

Anyways, here's proof it actually works haha!

Week 32 Feb. 28-Mar. 5, 2011

2011-03-06T23:09:00.000+01:00

This week I worked on both watches. I cleaned the W-01 and all the parts to see what kind of amplitude I was getting and it was not bad. I had around 275-290° in both horizontal positions which was fine, but only about 220-235° in the vertical. So I still have some work to do. It would be good if I could get it to about 250° but we'll see...

The balance is still horribly poised so I need to fix that as well as adjusting the escapement. Then all I will need to do is the final finishings. I also want to just add a little video about the vibrating tool that I tried to explain last week. You can see how it works a little better. Sorry for the lame video stuff, just testing out what iMovie can do...

The next thing I did was the regulating pins for the AMS1. Like I suspected this wasn't very easy. I had to make 2 pins that were 0.19mm in diameter and around 2.00mm in length. The problem with making pins this small is that you can't remove the material in steps. The pin will just wobble and/or break if it gets lower than 0.40mm especially at that length. So you have to fin the correct position of the graver, and make the whole pin in one shot. Another thing to note is that the pins needed to be slightly tapered because it would be near impossible to friction fit a pin that long through steel. So after trying many different methods (and about 20-25 failed pins) I found the right dimensions and finally got 2 pins that worked. Now lets hope they don't get bent or broken or I will have to do it again. I forgot to take a picture so maybe I'll have to add one later...

So after I had the pins in I was able to bent the flat hairspring to get my watch working. I had an extra spring that wasn't pinned at the right spot so I just used that for a first trial. I got it centered and put it on the balance wheel and was ready to try my watch out for the very first time. I wound the watch up and it started ticking just fine! It was a really great moment and one I am pretty proud of. At this point I hadn't oiled any jewels and everything was actually really dirty so it was pretty nice to see it working in that condition. I put it on the timing machine just to see what amplitude I was getting and I had 270° in the horizontal position, pretty sweet! I really should've taken a picture or video but I didn't so oh well.

So now that I had the watch running I was at the point where I had to clean everything up and make it start to look like a real movement. As you have seen from the photos before (and the next one) the watch wasn't a circle. This was because I had material to help align the holes I had to drill in the side for dial feet and the stem, and also to hold the movement down with screws and not glue. So I got rid of all the milling marks and then I had to do some perlage on both sides of the movement. I redid the parts I had already done mainly because they had turned a different color from all of the handling of the movement.

After that I was ready to cut all the excess material off and turn this thing into an actual mainplate. Here is a photo of the milling midway through.

And after all the corners are gone it is now a circle! It looks quite thick but this is because of the extra room needed for the power reserve system. And I didn't need to add a module on top which is much nicer in the end.

And here it is after leaning the sides up in the lathe. Looks pretty slick I think! Now I have to be very careful with it and make sure not to get any fingerprints or scratches on it. Never an easy task when working with German silver.

Another thing I worked on this week was beveling the bridges. I had seven bridges I needed to bevel and 7 inner corners to make (the inner corners take more time, skill and patience). I wanted a 0.25mm bevel on all the large bridges. Having a nice large bevel makes them stand out much better and looks nice on a movement of this size. All the bevels were made by hand except the barrel bridge. So here is the raw bridge before beveling:

And then after the bevel. You can't see the bevel very well for the screw hole sink in the picture, but it's there. This is the 4th wheel/seconds wheel bridge. Note the sharp inner corner.

Here you can see the setup I use to make and polish a bevel. I found it makes it easier to move the piece in whichever direction you need, while being able to keep your hand steady and at a 45° angle (or as close as possible). All the bevels on the german silver bridges were cut with a steel file and the inner corners with the file and degussit stone. On the pallet fork bridge in the picture, I had to use a diamond file and degussit stone because it is already hardened steel and a regular file will not work.

Here is the center/third wheel bridge. A lot of bevels on one piece.

For the barrel bridge I used the M1 to pre-cut the bevels. Since there weren't any inner corners, it was just a matter of centering the bridge properly and then using a 45° cutter to make the bevel. It worked pretty good I think and saved a lot of time.

The bevels around the crown wheel, ratchet wheel and click are a little bit smaller than the other bevels. Mainly because it just wouldn't look right if they were the same size.

For the balance bridge I had to make a slightly custom bevel on the one side. The swan neck adjuster is flush with the outer edge of the bridge, so it wouldn't make sense to continue the bevel the whole length of that side. So the bevel has a break where the spring sits. You can see it on this picture from the top, and the following picture from the side.

Also note that all of the bevels are still in a rough condition. Each one still needs to be polished with several different grained pastes to make them into a mirror finish.

And here's just a shot of most of the pieces that are beveled.

Next I will need to polish the bevels of the jewel sinks so I can start setting the end shakes of the wheels. Might not get a lot done next week though as we are headed to ETA for training on quartz movements. Bye for now!

Week 31 Feb. 21-26, 2011

2011-02-28T22:45:00.000+01:00

Last week I spent most of my time working on hairsprings. I hadn't touched any since before the christmas break so it had been a while. But that was the last part to get the W-01 running so I had to get started.

The first part was to attach the inner part of the spring to a collet. Then you center and flatten the spring to the collet. After that you use the vibration tool to find the vibrating point. It looks like a complicated tool but it's not too crazy. The idea is to pinch the spring at the correct length to make your balance wheel oscillate at the same speed as one of a known frequency. This will ensure your balance will be the right frequency to match the gear ratios of the rest of the watch. In the picture you can see an 18,000 on the side which corresponds to 18,000 vibrations per hour.

Finding the vibrating point is also used to see where you need the spring to come out of the collet (for flat hairsprings). This is because the rate at lower amplitudes changes depending on the angle of the colleting point to the vibrating point. Hopefully this makes sense. If not maybe I should work on that, might have to explain this on a test at some point...

Here you can see the wheels are meant to have the spokes aligned so you can see by eye if the wheels are oscillating together.

As I said before, the W-01 will have a Breguet overcoil. So after I was done finding the vibrating point, I was ready to bend the overcoil. The idea is to make two 35-45° bends to make the last coil higher than the rest. Then you bend the spring into a certain shape according to the diameter you want at the pinning point (end of spring where the clamp pinches it).

I showed a picture of the different overcoil shapes last week, here it is again. I originally picked the one in red, but I had to use the one in green after finding the vibrating point to be much longer than before because of the heavy balance wheel. As you can see, the lower the number, the closer to center C becomes. I had already made the clamp so I had to follow the pattern that matched the diameter of the clamp.

The overcoil was not really that difficult to bend for me. I built a little tool to help me bend the overcoil part of the spring that worked really good. It was just a really thin plate of brass that I could slide the majority of the coil under, and then just work on the overcoil part. It helped keep it much more flat and straight. But it still did take about 3-4 hours to get it looking nice and following the correct shape. You can see in the photos the last part of the spring seems to rise up a bit so I'll have to see what is causing that.

Here you can see the two bends in the spring that raise the last coil up. Then from there it goes overtop and around to where the clamp is.

And here you can see where the clamp pinches the spring. That is the exact point I want the vibrating point to be. It will take some time and skill to get it perfect, because this is what sets the rate of the watch. even a few hundredths of a millimeter to the left or right could make the watch go 10-20 seconds faster or slower.

There is also some extra spring sticking out on the right side that I will trim off later when I know the exact location.

So after putting the spring in the clamp the watch was ready for its first oscillation! I just wanted to see it working so I didn't clean and oil everything, but it still worked fine on the first try. It was very satisfying to see it finally come to life. It was also cool to see the overcoil as I hadn't really looked at one up close (even though we have worked on Rolex watches with overcoils, I just never really looked at it).

Next thing I did was clean everything to see if I had a decent amplitude. We had to make the balance staff so you never know if things are going to work great on the first try. I had 290° amplitude in the horizontal position so that was a great start. The vertical position wasn't that great (215°) but there are a lot of reasons as to why. I now have to start fine tuning to get the results I am looking for. But here's a quick video of the watch actually running!

One other thing to mention about the overcoil. f you watch the video you can see how the spring expands and contracts evenly around the entire spring. This is because the overcoil places the center of gravity in the center of the balance. On a flat spring the center of gravity is not in the center of the balance so the spring will expand and contract a different amount in different spots. This is one of the benefits of the overcoil.

I am also working on getting the AMS1 running. It will have a flat hairspring so I will have more examples of that later. But I put in the eccentric banking pins and I think they look cool. Now I still have to adjust them and also make a spring for that balance. And I have to figure out a way to make some regulating pins. They are extremely small so it's not going to be fun...

Week 30 Feb. 14-19, 2011

2011-02-21T21:36:00.000+01:00

Holy cow, 30 weeks doing this already. Seems like I could've accomplished a lot more. I suppose I didn't originally have a CAD program or plan to make my own mainplate so maybe it's more like 20-25 weeks realistically. But anyways here's the scoop on last week.

I actually didn't do a hell of a lot. I started the week in hopes of making the balance staffs needed for the W-01 and the AMS1. I finished one for each. I will still need to make another one for the AMS1 but for now it is fine. I will use the first one to rivet to a test balance wheel so I can do all the testing without using the nicely decorated balance wheel I plan to use.

Just to test the staff I made, I glued it to a temporary balance wheel. The staff was just the right length at the extra 0.18mm I had calculated. In these first two pics I was just testing the staff to see if the pivots fit and if it was the right length.

Not the nice balance wheel like the one with the screws...

Next I riveted the balance staff for the W-01 onto the nice balance wheel. The screws are for regulating the watch. This is also the underside of the wheel.

Next I started making the spring clamp. Usually there is a stud that holds the one end of the hairspring with either a pin or shellac. But this design is a little more solid and suits a Breguet overcoil design a little better. Note: a Breguet overcoil is just a different shape of the end of a hairspring to aid the center of gravity of the spring. Normally a hairspring only expands and contracts one way because of its shape. But the overcoil reduces this effect creating a better timing between the 6 different positions (crown up, left, right, down, dial up & down).

Here you can see different shapes of overcoils, depending on the radius of the end point. I chose the one circled in red. We have to bend the spring by hand in the air. I'm sure it won't be easy...

So anyways, the design is pretty simple for the clamp. Just a disc that has a flat face on one side, with a steel piece screwed on creating a clamp. This is the underside....

The spring will go into the spot indicated by the green arrow. Please forgive my horrific attempt to free hand draw a hairspring in photoshop hahahaha. More info on balance springs here.

I had to drill and mill holes in the bridge to fit the screws. These are some of the smallest screws I've had to make. The head is 0.60mm, thread 0.50mm and the length is only 0.80mm. The one for the clamp is really small as well. I think I will be making all the screws blue.

The end of the screws will be polished so you will just see two circles. The top of the clamp will also be flat polished.

Here you can see what it will sorta look like with the pallet fork bridge and balance wheel. Very simple design but nice I think.

I think I will try to leave the arms of the balance in this position. That way it won't block anything from view when the watch isn't running (not like that'll really matter, but still).

As for next week I will be finishing the bridges and hopefully bending the spring to get the watch working! See ya

Week 29 Feb. 7-12, 2011

2011-02-13T16:52:00.001+01:00

*Update: added a few photos of the barrel bridge stem cut out

This week was quite a bit worse than last week as far as getting things done. On Monday I tried to cut out the recesses for the balance bridge but it didn't go so well I ended up making another one and finally got it to work.

I was testing the bridge with an original balance wheel and staff and as you can see the mainplate jewel is sticking out quite a bit. This just means the balance staff I make will have to be a bit longer, not a big deal.

Then I worked on the recess for the sliding and winding pinion on the barrel bridge. I didn't really have the right tool or machine to make the correct cut out on the bridge so I had to improvise. It is supposed to be a curved shaped cut out for a round piece but I just made small steps in the material to create the recess. I forgot to take a picture of it so I'll have to update this tomorrow otherwise this makes hardly any sense. But anyways, you can't see the recess so it's not a big deal what it looks like really... Here's a pic of cutting the recess for part of the winding stem out of the bridge and mainplate.

Pic of the original (left) and the AMS1 (right)

Then I had to make a winding stem since the hole in the mainplate and bridge are a bit bigger than the original one. Only took about 3 hours (compared to the 6 or so for our exam) since I didn't really need it to be nearly half as accurate. Here are a couple pictures, with a temporary crown glued on.

Next thing I had to make was a new setting lever spring. The one I had made before was nice but it wasn't quite working properly on account of the shape of the spring. It was curved the opposite way and was too strong. Also when you pulled the stem out, the pin would jump out of the notch because there wasn't a big enough rest for it. So here is the picture of the new one on the left. It all works great now and the functions are smooth.

Saturday I decided to make a few of the parts needed for the moon phase. The springs were simple to make, but I found hardening and tempering them a bit tricky. They are very thin (0.20mm) so I was worried they might become bent while hardening. I first tried to put them in this tube (pictured) with some charcoal inside but the springs didn't get hard. Then I tried pressing them between two thin plates but that didn't work either. Finally I ended up making a little basket dealy out of wire that I wrapped around a piece of steel first. Then I put one spring in at a time and that worked great. They came out still straight and finally hard.

As for an explanation of the springs. There needs to be a spring holding the star wheel and the moon phase wheel in place when they are not being activated. It keeps the wheels from moving and also so that the finger of the cam will always activate in the same place. The photos explain best I guess so just take a look. I know, I know the teeth on the moon phase wheel are backwards. That's just the spare trial wheel and I did a trial decoration on the underside of the wheel. It is just in upside down to see the decoration....

So next week I have to get started making balance staffs. I need to make 1 for our school watch W-01. And I should make maybe 2-3 for the AMS-1 since I would like to have one for a trial balance, one for a good nicely decorated balance, and one for a spare in case I ever break one. I could make a spare for the W-01, but I figure it would be not so likely I would break a balance staff in a pocket watch that isn't used. But anyways, not looking forward to a whole week or so making balance staffs. Nicholas if you read this maybe you can make me one?? Haha, cya next week...

Week 28 Jan. 31-Feb. 5th, 2011

2011-02-06T18:40:00.000+01:00

This should be a lengthy update this week. I had 5/6 days go really well so lots of things to report. This was our first week back to school after the internship I did at Panerai. Our goal now in school is to get our W-01 watches running and ready for the COSC certification. We have to send the watches in at the end of February so we don't have much time.

The first thing I started with was putting in a bronze bearing on the barrel bridge for the W-01. I had already put one in on the mainplate and needed to finish the bridge. I also did the perlage to the underside of the bridge. I didn't take any pictures of that but it doesn't look much different than the other bridges. After this was complete I only have the balance staff to make and the stud holder (which doesn't have a final design yet) and the Breguet overcoil hairspring and I will have a running watch. Considering I have almost everything done (except those few small things) I got to work on my AMS1 a little bit.

A while back I had an idea that I could do Geneva stripes on the Schaublin 70. Geneva stripes (or waves) is a pattern that creates the illusion of a waved surface on the flat surfaces. It's not the most complicated to do, but if done properly it is much more difficult. The goal is to leave marks on the surface and not create big steps from one side of the stripe to the next stripe. If you look up close at even some of the expensive watches you will see big steps and it's not so nice. Here is an example of perfect geneva stripes on the Phillipe Dufour Simplicity watch. If you look at the side views of the bridge you can't see any wave in the bevel. If you look at some of the other well known brands up close you can see the quality isn't even close to this good.

So I set out to achieve something close to ideal, but accepting I might not be able to get it perfect. I figured I could use the milling attachment and with the right tool set to the right angle I could do it. So Tuesday I set out to see if I could get a good result. I only had a rough idea of how the professionals (like Phillipe Dufour, Vianney Halter and Kari Voutilainen to name a few) do it. I tried using diamond paper on some flexible plastic like I was told it was done, but I had not so good results. I tried different speeds and angles but nothing was giving me the right result. Plus this was all based on a partial guess of how it was supposed to be done.

Then I set up a stone in the milling attachment and after tweaking with the angle for quite some time and a lot of trials, I finally got something I think would be acceptable to put on my watch. Here are some pictures to show the result so far.

I also had some advice from my instructors friend Enrico (might have spelled that wrong) who used to work at Vianney Halter. So thanks to him for stopping by and giving his advice and opinions.

I had first tested everything on brass, but I figured I'd better try it on German silver since that what my bridges are made from. It's still not perfect but with a little bit of tweaking I think it will look as close as possible.

You can see from the side view that there is not much of a wave in the bevel. If you see an ETA watch up close sometime look at how deep the waves are!

The bevel is still nice and straight!

I also have to make a support for when I actually do my bridges. The bridges have to be almost perfectly flat before making the stripes and I need to support the weak part of the bridges so they do not flex and create a funny pattern. But I have a lot of other things to do before I need to worry about that...

Next thing I worked on was another design and finish aspect. As you might know I really like the design of the A. Lange & Sohne watches. One thing I really like is the engraved balance bridge. I thought if it's not too crazy expensive, I could get mine engraved. So I drew up a pattern I think is pretty cool and interesting. My instructor knows a really good engraver who might be able to do it for me. Here's her website by the way: http://gravalance.ch/. She does some really nice work, hopefully it works out!

Another thing I started working on was the dial. Since my watch is not a traditional design with the hour and minute in the center, I have to make my own dial. I tested some things out a while ago and found a really nice finish with sandblasting brass and coating it with the black rhodium. So I am trying to make my dial out of brass. Usually the dial feet are soldered onto the dial after, but I am going to try to mill them out of the full material. I think they will be a little more solid that way. Anyways, I flattened one side and then glued it to my milling block. Then I milled the feet out and also drilled the holes for the pivots, and milled out the moon phase window. Then since I left a lot of material on the other side I had to flip it over and mill the rest off. This turned out to be a not so hot idea. I am not 100% sure, but I think the aggressive action of the milling caused the dial to be warped. It is only 0.60mm thick so that doesn't help. I tried to flatten it but it just didn't work out. So now I am trying a slightly different approach, crossing my fingers it works. I don't really want to increase the thickness that much so I'll try to figure something out. But here is a picture of the underside of the dial. One good thing is that I can use this one to test the finishings on it!

After that I decided to finish an old project I started a while back. The project is a collet holder for the 8mm Schaublin collets. I had done the top part that holds the collet a long time ago but we didn't have the tap to thread the screw for the collet. We finally got it a while back so I just drilled and tapped the piece and it was done. Only an hour of work to finish it. It's a very handy tool though and will be nice to have. I guess I need to get some collets to actually use it!

Then I set out to make another (hopefully the last!) pallet fork bridge. I had the other one from the previous setup but when I put it on the mainplate I made, the jewel of the bridge was not aligned close enough with the one in the mainplate. And since I didn't want to put in a larger jewel, making a new one was the only solution. So I milled it out, hardened and tempered it and then set it up to center the hole for the jewel. And just to show how accurate you have to be when making this hole here is an explanation. The jewel is exactly 1.000mm in diameter. Depending on the material you are pushing the jewel into, the hole has to be 0.005-0.010mm smaller than the jewel diameter. With steel, it has to be about 0.005mm less. It's not that easy to measure at this dimension. I thought I had the hole to about 0.992 or 0.993mm. But when I tried to push the jewel in, it just cracked. So i had to take off another 1-2 microns of material so it would push in nicely, but not be too loose. Here you can see the difference between a few microns of material!

I now have the bridges done up to the balance.

We also got the pinions for the wheels so I was able to rivet the 3rd and fourth wheel for the W-01, and also the 3rd wheel for the AMS1. For the 4th wheel on the AMS1 I had to do something different for the pinion. Since I added almost 1.50mm to the dial side of the mainplate, the original 4th wheel pinion wouldn't be long enough to extend through to the dial. So what I though would work was to make a longer pivot and push it onto part of the original one. The pictures show a little better what I'm talking about. It was quite a nerving experience though because I had to rivet the pinion onto the wheel first, and then push that extra piece on after. Then if it was not running straight I wouldn't have a way of removing it and the nice wheel I already beveled and plated would be unusable. But everything worked out and it runs really straight and flat. A big moment this week!

I think the wheels are quite a bit nicer now that they are beveled and plated.

Then on Saturday I set out to make the click spring and click and get them to work. First I milled out the springs (I made one extra) in the M1, then hardened and tempered them.

Here you can see how small the spring is. And it isn't just flat either, it has to extend into the click.

Then I had to adjust slightly to make it fit into the slot I had cut out in the bridge and in the click.

And here you can see the click set in and the spring is not visible. I also had to adjust the thickness of the spring because the tension was a little bit too much at first. But now it is working great. And I think it looks pretty cool! At least much better than the original 6498 click...

And lastly here is a picture of the gear train with and without the bridges on. I think it looks pretty awesome, even without it being finished nicely yet!

Now I just have to get the balance bridge milled out. Should be close by the end of next week. Hopefully I can have more weeks like that one. I think it was the best week I have had since I started this project!

Week 26 & 27 Jan. 17-29, 2011

2011-01-30T18:15:00.001+01:00

Hello again. Little slow with the update here. Kinda busy with working at Panerai and going back to school after. Pretty difficult not to be super lazy when I actually get home. But anyways, I got a few things done the last couple weeks so here they are.

Well the last update I had milled the barrel bridge and balance bridge out. The next Monday I got working on the barrel bridge recesses. By 8 that night I had ruined the barrel bridge. It wasn't an execution problem but a design one. The spot I recessed for the click was too deep and I milled into the spot for the reverser wheel. Needless to say I had to make another one. It has become clear to me that I need to make every part 2 times before I get it right. Knowing and accepting this has helped me not lose my sanity after things go wrong.

So anyways, here is the bridge from the top side.

In the next 2 pictures you can see the recess for the click and also the click spring. I didn't really want it to be visible so it will be underneath the click. You can also see beside the post of the click, the jewel that holds one of the reverser wheels. I put it there to have easy access and movability.

Another thing I was doing was trying to get the bearings for the barrel in and functional. The bearings are made of bronze and will provide a bit more strength than jewels or brass would. This also allows for some adjustment of endshakes on the barrel. As of now they are working but I think they don't have enough side shake so it is a little tight. I'll have to work on that this week. Here you can see the bearings in bronze on the dial side barrel bridge.

As you can also see in the previous I made the holes for the jewels of the reversing wheels. These wheels are part of the power reserve system. I needed to reverse the direction of the barrel to the intermediate wheel on the other side. That intermediate wheel will carry the satellite wheel which is the heart of the power reserve. When the barrel is turning (during normal watch function) the satellite and intermediate wheel will turn around the barrel arbor, which will (through another wheel and rack) turn the power reserve indicator in one direction. When the arbor turns (during the winding of the watch) the intermediate wheel will be blocked by the barrel, but the satellite wheel will turn on the spot. This will turn the gears in the opposite direction, moving the power reserve indicator the opposite way.

So if that doesn't confuse the entire shit out of you well you are smarter than most. It really isn't easy to depict what I'm talking about in pictures because when it is assembled you can't see all the parts to make an explanation. But I will try my best to show the parts. Here you can see the reversing wheels without the barrel and intermediate wheel. The wheel on the right connects with the barrel teeth (see poorly drawn red teeth). the two reverser wheels connect together, and then the one on the right connects to the intermediate wheel (see poorly drawn blue teeth)

Hopefully this makes sense to someone. If not well I guess ask some questions and I'll try to answer. You might be asking where all the other parts are for the power reserve. Well I didn't have them set up yet so you'll have to wait. Here are a couple more photos of the reversing wheels from the dial and bridge side.

The sad thing about all of this is I had another design flaw. I had set the position of the two reversing wheels too close to each other so when I originally put the jewels in the gears were meshing too much and would not turn smoothly. So after I moved one over (only 0.15mm) I had them working just fine. Heres a video of the system, sorry for the extremely poor quality video. Maybe I'll have to look into a video cam...

Kind of a confusing explanation I'm aware. Oh well.

That's it for now. One other thing is that I noticed I had set my blog for comments from registered users only. Well I changed that so any and all comments are welcome!

Week 22-25 Dec. 20/2010-Jan. 15 /2011

2011-01-16T22:27:00.000+01:00

Well it's been a while so I guess I should get back into updating regularly. I went back to Canada for the Christmas holiday so there wasn't really anything to update until now. After realizing I have just about the worst luck in flying history (I was on this flight), I got back to Switzerland on the 5th of January. Most of that week was gone and I was jet-lagged so I did not get much done.

And as of last week our class is doing another internship. I am working for Panerai in the after sales service department. It has been great so far with a good learning environment and nice colleagues. The first week we started servicing customer watches. Then at the end of the week for some reason I was given a special watch. It is the watch of famed explorer Mike Horn! I had never heard of him but I guess he's a big deal... here's his website. Anyways I guess Panerai sponsors him so it is cool I get to work on his watch. It is a chronometer watch (not to be confused with a chronograph) and will have to be certified by COSC. COSC is the chronometer standards testing center and only watches that have been tested by them can have the word 'chronometer' on them. Click those links if you have no clue what a chronometer or it's standards are. This isn't an education blog!

The nice thing about Panerai is that it is located in Neuchatel so I am still able to go back to WOSTEP after finishing work there some of the nights. This past week I started with a few simple things on the AMS-1. I centered and enlarged the original holes for the jewels of the escape, third, and fourth/center wheel bridges. Using the M1 it was easy to center these holes to guarantee the wheels will sit perfectly straight in the watch. The holes have to be 0.01mm smaller than the jewel to ensure a good fit. Even one hundredth smaller/larger and the jewel will be too tight/loose. But thanks to the M1 it is much easier. I didn't take any pics of the bridges, but I'm sure you will see them plenty in the future.

Next I set out making the balance bridge and the barrel bridge. My goal is to have a running watch by the end of February so I have to get a lot of parts made. First I made the balance bridge. And as I have had many many nagging requests to include coins in the photos, I will try my best to remember.

Here is a picture in the middle of making the balance bridge. You can see the undercut and the spot for the incabloc jewel, and also the spot for the locating pins and screw hole.

And here it is after all the milling. I still have to enlarge the hole for the incabloc, do the cut outs for the stud holder, make the screw holes for the swan neck, and the recess for the screw. Lots to do!

Next I started making the barrel bridge. This is the most difficult bridge to make as it has more recesses to mill out. Like all the other bridges, I started with the underside. Here you can see the cut out for the center wheel.

Also on the underside is the cut out for the barrel, winding stem and winding pinion. In the next two photos you can see how I checked the size of the locating pins. The size of the hole on the mainplate is exactly 1.000mm so I needed to mill the pin to fit exactly. So I used a jewel of size 1.00mm and slowly reduced the size until it fit. Worked great with all the pins for all the bridges. All the bridges fit great on the mainplate with very minor adjustment.

And here you can see all the bridges together. Of course the barrel and balance bridge are not quite finished yet but hopefully by next week I should have them close...

Cya next week!

Week 20 & 21 Dec. 6-18, 2010

2010-12-18T21:13:00.000+01:00

This week I got into refinishing some more parts. I spent about 3 days figuring out how to bevel all of the wheels for the AMS1 and W-01. It took a lot of patience and time under the microscope to get the wheels looking nice. Then I plated them rose gold. Now I have to wait because we don't have the right pinions for them. Hurry up and wait I guess...

Originals on the top, refinished on the bottom.

Here you can see the bevel made on the spokes and inner/outer rim. Doesn't look shiny or nice at all in these pictures but I didn't have the time or patience to try to get the lighting right for that...

Here is a bit better photo...

I also took some time to do some spotting and finishing on the AMS1 mainplate. It just took a while to figure out how to remove the milling marks. I found the best way was to use some diamond paper in the M1.

I didn't do much this past week as it was the last week of official school before holidays. Had some drinks a few times after school so not much accomplished. I'll do an update after I get something noteworthy done. Not sure when that might be yet... but Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Week 19 Nov. 29-Dec. 4, 2010

2010-12-05T21:54:00.000+01:00

Well this week started out pretty boring. I was just finishing the rest of the screws for both of the watches. Not very exciting but I needed some of them to test out things on the AMS1. Here is just a random shot of a 'nest' of screws before hardening.

The next day we received the black rhodium for electroplating. I had planned to use this for my moon phase wheel on the AMS1. So I got started testing out the plating on different pieces. It took a while to get the look that I wanted but I finally got something. I found that when electroplating the black rhodium on a sandblasted surface got rid of the sandblasting for some reason. But it still left a nice matte black surface which is kinda what I was going for. Here is just a trial wheel.

So after the plating I sandblasted the section that is to be the moons. I used a piece of brass as sort of a stencil to cover the part of the wheel I didn't want sandblasted. In this pic the wheel on the left is the result after sandblasting.

Then I designed a pattern for the stars and used the M1 to make spots. After that I found a picture of the moon I liked and using a piece of widia, I scratched off the sandblasting in the areas that were lighter. I was not expecting it to end up looking this good. I am extremely happy with the results! It's almost exactly how I imagined it so that is a big bonus.

Here you can see the before/after look.

In the pattern of the stars I made the big dipper. Can you see it?

Anyways I'm really happy with how this piece came out. It is totally finished and ready to go in the watch. I have one spare so I can do testing with that one and not mess up this one.

After the moon phase wheel I worked a little bit more on finishing some parts for the W-01 watch. I made the snailing pattern on the barrel and cover, and then coated with rhodium. You can see the before (bottom) and after (top). You probably have to view the images large to see the detail in the finishes.

The crown and ratchet wheel are finished in a sunray pattern.

Then I finished the setting mechanism parts. The wheels are circular grained, the minute wheel being rose gold plated. Before the plating I had to remove the pinion because I wanted to leave it steel color and have only the wheel rose gold. The other parts are straight grained using a diamond plate.

The setting lever (bottom right) was a more complicated piece to finish. I wanted to straight grain it. But the piece has a pin on it so I first had to drill the original pin out. Then I straight grain the piece, and then push a new pin in. So it's more complicated than the yoke or setting lever spring. Another note is that even though we are making the finish on all these parts nice, you won't be able to see any of the parts when the watch is in the case. Just how high quality watchmaking is!

The next step on the W-01 is to get the mainspring in the barrel and refinish the gear train wheels.

Last thing I did this week was to make a few bridges for the AMS1. There are five in total and I managed to get the escape wheel and fourth wheel bridges milled out. Kind of a long process because of so many different curves but it's nicer and faster than doing it all by hand I guess. I also started the third/center wheel bridge but I'm not quite finished yet.

Week 18 Nov. 22-27, 2010

2010-11-28T18:41:00.000+01:00

This week was the official start of our WOSTEP school watch. As you may or may not know, the school had their own caliber (W-01) manufactured and our class is the first one to use it. Like I said before we are not allowed as much freedom with design as the previous classes and that's why I wanted to do my own side project.

Anyways, we still have to do a bunch of work to the watches. We have to make locating pins and refinish all the parts and make decorations. Nothing too complicated but still work. So this week we started by getting all the parts the school has received so far. I made the locating pins and started some of the refinishing work. Here are some pictures.

You can see in these pics the spotting of the gear train. This finish is done to hide the milling marks from the cutters used. It is traditional in watchmaking and is seen on many watches.

I got watch number 0006. The first 4 were reserved for the school. I didn't really care which one I got though...

Unfortunately I scratched one part of the spotting I did already so I have to go back and redo it.

And here are some of the bridges. the underside has to be finished as well, even though no one will ever see it.

As of this weekend I am just making some screws for both the W-01 (WOSTEP) and AMS1 (my watch). I'll just refer to them like that to create less confusion. Screws are not really the most exciting thing to make, but they have to be done so I might as well get them over with. There are not too many screws for the W-01 watch but my watch has over 30 screws, and 15 different kinds of screws. I really should've planned that better...

I did make a few things for the AMS1 watch this week. As I said last week, I made a click. Well here is the picture of that...

And this week I made the click spring for it. I'm not really sure if it's going to work yet, but I hope so. I am planning to hide it underneath the click so it won't be seen. This makes it quite small and delicate. But I can't really test it out until I make all the bridges anyways so more on that later.

I was also able to harden and temper my moon phase wheel. I also sandblasted the top and it is almost ready to be decorated. I have two other spare wheels to test some decoration on but it is going to look great I think. Here is just a picture of how the system is going to work with the star wheel and cam I made last week. In this pic the star wheel and cam are not fixed yet so it doesn't look quite right, but hopefully you get the idea.

And lastly I wanted to show the diagram of my power reserve system. It looks pretty complicated and I suppose most people wont have a clue what the hell is even going on here but I find it interesting and wanted to share anyways. Feel free to ask any questions about it or anything else. Cya!

Week 17 Nov. 15-20, 2010

2010-11-24T22:59:00.000+01:00

This week I continued with milling the recesses of my mainplate. The dial side was much more complicated having different shapes of milling. Lots of calculations needed to be made to get the proper shapes. Thankfully I was able to keep my focus and by the end of Tuesday I had the mainplate 95% milled out. Here is a look at the dial side:

And here are some more close up pictures of some recesses. As you can see the finish left by the milling cutter isn't that nice.

So glad it all worked out! A big step in the whole process.

I also made a few more things this week. I had to make a new setting lever spring. This is part of the keyless works. The holes on the old one were not going to work because they were too big. Also if you have ever seen a 6498/97 before it is easily distinguishable by this part. So making a new one will set my watch apart a little bit. Here is my design (left) and the original (right)

Here you can see how different mine is in direct relation to the original pin and hole locations.

I also was able to finish the partial cam and star wheel for the moon phase system. The cam isn't technically a cam in the traditional sense of the word. It's basically just a cylinder with a small finger that actuates the moon phase wheel. But anyways here you can see it after partially making the cylinder and finger.

You can see in this photo there is a straight edge on the back of the finger and in the next photo it is rounded off. I did this in the M1 after making the recess for the screw.

I also made locating pins in the back of the cam to position it on the star wheel in the same place each time. It also serves the purpose of keeping the cam attached to the start wheel so they both move simultaneously. The pins of the cam aren't visible, but they fit in the two holes of the star wheel.

Here's a pic of the almost finished pieces. Click on the images for a larger view.

Next I made the new cannon pinion. My plan was to use the original one, but I needed to attach another pinion onto it to connect to the new displaced minute wheel. I first had to shave some material off the shaft of the pinion. I had some trouble centering the piece on the lathe but finally I got it and I was set. Then I took another cannon pinion and shaved off the shaft so all I had was the pinion teeth left. then I just had to drill a hole slightly smaller than the shaft of the original and push it on. Here is the result. The new one (left) and the original (right).

Lastly I was able to make the new click. The click is also something that is very recognizable on the 6498/97 so I am making a new one. Unfortunately I forgot to take some pictures so I will have to post them later. But it was a pretty simple part to make. It is shaped like a comma actually, or a number 6/9 if you prefer. I'll post some pictures soon.

Bye for now.

Week 16 Nov. 8-13, 2010

2010-11-14T18:03:00.000+01:00

Well it was a big week this week for me. We got the German silver for my mainplate and all the specific drills I needed to get it done. So I was ready to get started. Making a mainplate is no easy task (for a human). The first step was to drill all the holes in the plate. There are a lot of holes to drill and tap, and a lot of recessed areas in the plate that need specific depths to make the parts functional. I had to check, re-check, then check again with someone else if all my holes were in the correct locations and that I had them written down correctly. After this I printed out the list of the 49 holes to drill, with specific co-ordinates from the X: 0.000 and Y: 0.000 point I was headed to the M1 to get busy.

Here is the plate after flattening it in the M1. Nice finish hey! But it won't last...

After flattening I had to use a center drill for all the holes I was drilling to make sure they didn't go off center. Obviously this adds to the time because I can't just go with the bit, drill the hole and move on. Here is the plate after the center spotting.

Then I went and drilled all the holes. There were 49 holes in total, ranging from size 2.80mm to 0.50mm. Some of the holes have to be tapped to accept screws. and some holes have to be very accurate because they are the locations for the jewels. Those holes must be exactly 0.01mm less than the jewel that fits in them. I had special reamers for those holes to be precise. After all the drilling here is the plate again.

The barrel bridge fits!

The next step was to tap all the necessary holes for the screw locations. These holes are drilled to 80% the size of the tap so that the teeth take up the other 20%. To make sure all the holes would be tapped straight I used the M1 attachment to center the hole, then put it on the lathe, and then used the tailstock with a pin vise centered on a brass rod to tap by hand. Didn't take too lang and was more accurate than tapping freehand. I didn't tap the 0.60mm threads yet because my mainplate is quite thick and the tap will not pass through the plate so I will wait until the recess has been made in the specific area.

All of the drilling and tapping took 8 hours. A long process for sure, and that was the easy part. If you are wondering why is my mainplate not round, well there are a few reasons. I had to leave spots to screw the mainplate onto another brass plate to hold it while milling the recesses. And I also milled the sides 90 degrees to the winding stem and the dial feet. I have to drill holes into the side of the mainplate so this will help in aligning perfectly 90 degrees and straight. A good idea I thought!

So I had to make a holder for my mainplate so I can remove it from the M1 without gluing it all the time. I flattened a piece of brass and made the tapped holes for the screws. Then I fitted 2 pins where the dial feet holes are so it will align in the same spot in case I need to take it out in the middle of milling to check the depth of the mill. To the left is me flattening the brass on the lathe.

After all that I started to mill the recesses for the gear train and balance. I figured this would be the easier part so I would do it first.

It went quite smoothly until I was milling the recess for the barrel. It was the last step but I somehow miscalculated my starting zero point and milled too deep! I was extremely angry with myself after being almost finished. Luckily there was enough spare material on the dial side that I could save it, but this meant going back to all the previous spots to mill deeper. So 2 hours later I was done the bridge side. It looks pretty damn good, actually starting to look like a mainplate!

The last thing I was able to do was mill the recess for the barrel bridge on the other side. I almost had a problem when the holder moved but I noticed it before I started milling and fixed it. But now the barrel bridge fits and all is good. Here is a pic of the barrel bridge recess. That little extra part sticking out is for the rack that will hold the hand for the power reserve indication. I had to put it in this location because of the shape of my dial.

Now I just have to mill out the complicated setting mechanism recesses and I'm done, riiiiight. Not going to be easy or fun.... wish me luck!

Week 15 Nov. 1-6, 2010

2010-11-07T18:27:00.008+01:00

This week I worked on my power reserve system. First I made the new barrel arbor. It isn't an overly complicated piece but it has a lot of surfaces that need burnishing so it took a while to complete. And there was also the problem of not having a big enough Jacot tool for burnishing pivots that big. So I had to use the lathe to do it which took longer. But I think it came out looking ok.

Here is the original plan I made on the CAD program. The one half will be the same as the original arbor because that part is staying the same. But the other half will have to accommodate the power reserve system and all the parts. There is another square part I had to make for the wheel that is fixed to the arbor.

Here it is out of the lathe:

Here I am just testing the wheel that fits on the square part of the arbor for the power reserve. I have to adjust the height of the wheel to fit.

Not sure if you can see the square, but it's there...

Here is a comparison between the original arbor (left) and the new one for my watch (right). As you can see it is much bigger which means my watch will need to be thicker.

At this stage the burnishing was only partially done. The surfaces are still not quite good enough. The barrel arbor is a part that gets a lot of use so it needs to have a good burnished surface to prolong it's life. From this picture you can see the surface on the far right is quite good, but the others still have marks from the lathe on them. All these surfaces have a rotating part that touches them so they need to be burnished well.

I also made the two intermediate wheels for the power reserve system. These are basically to reverse the direction of the barrel to another wheel which carries the satellite wheel for the power reserve. It needs to operate in the opposite direction of the barrel so these two wheels are what reverses it. Since the barrel and the wheel for the satellite are the same diameter, these wheels have to be set up at different heights but still interact with each other. Again hard to explain without showing in person or with good pictures so just trust me. I am using the center wheel pinions and making them into the shape I want because they already work with the barrel. Here is the drawing for them:

And then I turned this:

Into this:

Obviously that's just one side of one of them but you get the point I hope.

And lastly I made a new screw for the ratchet wheel. It's kind of a weird screw because it has a huge diameter head (3.30mm) but is very very thin (0.35mm). So you can imagine the slot is very shallow and you have to be very careful when tightening it so you don't slip with your screwdriver. If you're wondering why the hell am I polishing screws already for a watch that isn't even close to completed (Rob), well luckily for me I chose a very common movement and I can use almost all the original parts like screws and undecorated wheels to do all the testing for it so I won't need to touch any of this stuff until the final assembly!

Lastly, I just wanted to show a few more drawings for other parts. The first one is for the barrel bridge that will go on the dial side. I need this because of the power reserve system. The bridge will also have jewels for the two intermediate wheels I talked about and also for the rack that holds the power reserve indicator. I had to change the position of a screw and locating pin but nothing big.

And here is the plan I used for the numerous times I milled out the swan neck. As you can see, lots of different milling spots and locations to center so it was not the most simple of pieces.

Week 13 & 14 Oct 18-30, 2010

2010-11-01T22:48:00.004+01:00

Well some good and bad news to tell. The bad news is that the center and third wheel bridge got ruined when I tried to make it the same height as the other bridges. The pins I made for it were pushed in and I drilled the hole too deep so the hole showed through when I tried to even them all out. This led me to the ultimate conclusion that I am going to try and make my own mainplate. Don't ask how I came to that conclusion but I did.

Now that we have a CAD program to help with designing it seemed like a good idea to just make my own mainplate. That way I don't have to plug all the holes in the 6498 one. This will also help with my power reserve and moon phase design as I can just incorporate it into the design of the mainplate and won't have to add a module on top.

Unfortunately this means a LOT more work. We have ordered the german silver which I will use for the mainplate and all new bridges and it should be here next week. German silver is actually way nicer for bridges and mainplates anyway so that is another positive thing.

Here are some pics of the ongoing design and planning. I will have to write out a very specific schedule to make this mainplate as it has a lot of different depths and places to mill.

Dial side, very complex!! Each color is a different height of milling. And I don't have a computer to mill this out. I have to set it all by hand and be sure of everything at every step. 14 different depths!

Bridge side, a little less complicated... but as you can see, 9 different depths.

I have done a lot of designing and drawing out on the computer of almost every part so that I can plan the milling and making of parts better and faster. I really don't think I would be doing my own mainplate without this program.

As I mentioned a long time ago, I will be putting a power reserve into the watch. Power reserve indicates how much power the watch has before it needs to be wound. Anyways, I finally figured out a good way to do it. It took me whole day to figure it out, with the help of my classmates and Mr. Accolla as well. I will have to take a picture of the design once I get it drawn out on the CAD program. I have the section view built up but not the top view. But if you know anything about the power reserve in most JLC watches then it is similar to that. I'm really excited to see it work. And I only have to make one wheel and pinion!! I will also have to make a new barrel arbor to fit the new system.

So that's it for that part. I am still designing things as I go and drawing more of the parts on the CAD. Hopefully I will have a copy of every part on there at some point so I can have it for personal use sometime in the future. I think it'll be quite handy.

Other than all that, I started to get into finishing some parts. Some of the parts I know I won't need until the end. The original 6498 minute wheel will now serve as the wheel for the moon phase and also for the setting of the hands. So I got rid of the pinion and it will have a larger post. I also created a new design for it. Just some milling out of new spokes. the pin on the wheel is to move the star wheel for the moon phase. I will take some pics of the system this week. I also did a bit of electroplating on these wheels. They won't be touched until the final assembly so I figured I would just do some of that now.

Here you can see the original minute wheel (top right). The wheels on the left side are just three different looks for the new system. You can see the pin for the star wheel. And now there is no pinion on it because it has no use anymore (cause the hour and minute are not in the center anymore). The wheel middle right is the new minute wheel. And the wheel bottom right is the new hour wheel. The four bottom wheels are circular grained and plated with rose gold. I think they look pretty sweet! The pictures really don't do any of these wheels justice. The top left is just original brass, and the top right is how the wheel comes from the manufacturer.

Closer...

Which wheel on the left do you prefer, top middle or bottom?? I can't decide...

As I am posting this Monday, I guess some of these next pics are from today, but oh well. I finished decorating the barrel drum and cover and plated them with rhodium. I made a curved sunburst pattern on the wheels and the pattern is mirrored to look the opposite on the drum and cover. Much easier to show in person I guess. Plus these pictures are pitiful so I'll have to try them again.

I guess you can't really tell how different they are, I'll have to have a photo session this week and try a little harder to show some details.

Are you wondering why the hell there are cap jewels in my barrel cover? Well it's because the power reserve has a large wheel that sits on top of the cover and I didn't want it to rub if the wheel is not sitting flat so this is the solution we came up with. Technically you won't see it with the power reserve system in place anyways, but I think it's a cool idea.

That's it for now. I will have to try to take some better pics as these don't help explain a damn thing I said in this post. But I guess if you are into watchmaking you will get the idea...

Later

Week 11 & 12, Oct. 4-16, 2010

2010-10-18T22:41:00.005+02:00

Missed last week so another double week update. The first week didn't have much in it except for a bunch of major fails so I guess it isn't that important. Plus we were preparing for our official escapement exam. I did attempt to make the swan neck for the balance. This proved to be not an easy task. Let's just say I never want to make one of these for a long time. I had to mill it out 5 times..... FIVE!! The first one bent accidentally. The second one had a tap stuck in it. The third one melted in the hardening process. The fourth one broke at the round part because it was hardened into the wrong position. Finally on the 5th attempt I made good. What a nightmare. Every single time I tried tapping the hole for the adjustment screw the tap broke. The thread is 0.40mm, and just for your information Bergeon taps are not so hot. Not impressed!

Anyways, here are some views of the useless springs...

My second workbench....

Milling the spring

So if you remember from the last post I said I had to make a new regulating arm. Well I did that easily and I'm nearly finished that part. Just to show an example of the inside corners here is a pic. On the left side you can see it is nice and sharp. And on the right is what it looked like after the milling. It looks even better through a 10x loupe. I will be polishing the top and still need to make some beveling.

I also had to drill and tap the spots to hold down the swan neck on the bridge. You can see the holes in the pic here. The threads are 0.50mm and were way easier to tap. Once this was done I made the two screws for the swan neck. 0.50mm thread - 0.80mm long, the head is 0.75mm diameter and 0.40mm long. Pretty small screws. The first one I made got away from me and I couldn't find it. This job can be frustrating sometimes!

As you can see there are still sharp edges everywhere so not close close to 'done' yet...

The long regulating screw is just temporary for now. The ones I could find that were already made are not very nice. They have a cross slot on the end and it isn't very centered. So I'll just make my own with only holes. I'll show some pics next week of that screw. Not easy to make as it is very long (2.40mm) and very skinny (0.40mm thread).

Here are the parts together (minus the jewel of course, if it ever comes...). I think it looks pretty awesome! Basically just how I pictured and drew it so that is good. Really happy with how it is looking. I'm excited to actually get it running!

One last thing I made last week. It's a holder for saw blades. The ones we had before were much smaller at the holding point so the blade was not so steady. Especially when using a saw blade only 0.10mm thick. It wasn't working to cut slots for screws that small. So I designed this holder to hold more of the blade. It worked perfectly and the screws for the swan neck were made with this thing. Now I can make super small screw heads easier, yay!

On a side note we are starting to work on hairsprings on our watches. Delicate shit I tell ya!

Week 10 Sep. 27-Oct. 2, 2010

2010-10-04T21:23:00.003+02:00

Bonjour! Ca va? Ok my French sucks so that's where I'll stop that. Anyways, this week we had a practice exam for the escapement adjustment section of the course so there isn't as much to show about my school watch. We had the test on Monday and it was basically to see where everyone was at and if we could do the official exam. Needless to say we have some work to do! We were all quite slow and didn't finish in the 4 hours we are allowed. But we did get better as the week went on. I'm not sure when the test is yet but until then I have been doing a few things.

One of the things I did for my watch last week was finish the pallet fork bridge. I made the bevels polished and circular grained the top. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

It took me a while to get the graining correct. I still need to go over it again because there are still some straight marks from the previous graining. At first I tried using the M1 to do the graining but after about 10 different tries with different grains and speeds I realized that just turning the M1 by hand was the right way. It was turning too fast before and not leaving a nice grey finish like in the picture below.

Here is a pic of the interior corner I talked about in the last post. I think it turned out pretty nice being the first one I've done. It might not be "perfect" but I think it is good. You can see in the pic the difference in finish from the side (flank) of the bridge, the top, and the polished bevel.

Just a close-up of the jewel and bevels from the top.

And lastly here is a picture of the purpose of this piece! Looks cool with the escape wheel and bridge in. Obviously the banking pins still have to go in so it isn't functional per se. Also you can see I started beveling the escape wheel bridge as well. I don't think the bevel is quite big enough, do you? I suppose it's hard to tell from these pics...

The other thing I started last week was planning for the swan neck. After drawing it out on the CAD program I discovered I made a pretty big oopsie when I made the regulating arm. It isn't thick enough to have the screw from the swan neck hold it in the middle. So now I have to remake that part as well. Prototyping ain't easy! But it makes for a bigger bevel on the jewel sink so that is ok....

Cya next week

Week 9 Sep. 20-25, 2010

2010-09-27T20:58:00.005+02:00

Hello again. After quite a few weeks of travel and adventure I will hopefully be taking it easy for at least few weeks. Although I made promises to see people in Antwerp, Innsbruck and now Paris so it might not last for long!

Anyways back to the watchmaking. Last week I continued working on the regulating arm. I wasn't sure how I was going to set up the regulating pins but after a long debate I decided to use just 2 brass pins. There wont be a bottom cap on them but my teacher said it wouldn't be necessary. I don't have pictures of the pins. They are 1 degree conical and I will have to bend them straight once they are in. I had to drill 2 holes in the regulating arm and you can see them in the picture below. The holes are 0.18mm in diameter and only 0.08mm apart. Also in the picture you can see I have not yet made the straight interior corners. This is still in the just milled state. Later in the week I made nice sharp inside corners. You can kinda see them in the second photo.

I also had to do a bunch of figuring to see how big to open the hole in the middle. The Incabloc jewel will be holding down the regulating arm and stud holder so it has to be a good snug fit. But the regulating arm also has to be movable so not too tight. After a lot of drawing and checking I opened the hole to just the right size. It is on a 20 degree angle to fit the jewel setting I chose.

So after all that I filed the inside corners. I still have to harden and temper the piece, bevel the edges, and flat polish the top. So much more work left!

The other thing I did last week was make a new pallet fork bridge. If you remember from the older post the one I made before had the locating pins pushed into the bridge. Well after inspecting it further I noticed that you could kinda see the pins from the top from certain angles. And since the pin was so close to the edge of the bridge it had cracked the bridge. So my only option was to make another one. But this time I milled the pins out of the full material so I won't have this problem again.

I also worked on finishing this piece a little further than the rest. I made the bevel around the edge and for the screw and jewel. The bevels aren't polished yet but I can do that closer to the completion. I just wanted to get a feel for some bevel and finishing work. All of my bridges have interior angles (except the balance bridge). These are a sign of very high end finishing on watches because it can only be done by hand. Click this link to read more about what the hell I'm even talking about. It is not very easy to achieve. I'm sure I will be spending many hours trying to finish these interior angles. But it definitely looks the best to me. I think I have about 10-15 of these to do, so maybe I'll be decent at it by the end!

Here is the pallet fork bridge so far. Not very easy to see but it is beveled a bit! I will probably increase the bevel a bit and also once it is polished it will look much more obvious.

The balance bridge is coming along nicely. If only I would get the Incabloc jewels I ordered....

I still need to make the swan neck spring for the adjustment of the regulating arm. That has been a little tricky to design and map out for the milling process. I have to compensate for the fact the spring will be in a different position when in use so I have mill it out differently. It's a little bit of guesswork (I'm sure an engineer could figure it out) but nothing that important. Probably with 1 or 2 trial and errors I should be able to get it.

Just a picture of some of the bridges and parts I've made so far. Not everything of course but nice to look at!

And lastly a pic from my bench the other day. The sun has been hitting my bench at just the right angle in the morning for some nice light. I was adjusting the pallet jewels for a Rolex 3055 movement. And if you're interested I've posted pics from my travels on my flickr. They're also on the side of this blog. Cya!

Week 7 & 8 Sep. 6-18, 2010

2010-09-18T18:12:00.005+02:00

Sorry to the followers of this blog, I've been a bit slow with the whole process as of late so this is a double post. Been traveling to see the parents a bit so a bit less focused. But nonetheless I did a few things and here they are.

I started making the regulating assembly. It was milled out of a piece of steel. Lots of work to do at this point but I just left it for now.

A lot of regulating assembly's have the two pieces aligned but I didn't like the idea of it blocking the view of the pallet fork so I shifted it. This will also be better for timing as the regulating pins should be less than 90 degrees from the stud.

The rest of the week I spent planning for the power reserve system. But no pictures about that. Trying to figure out the best and easiest way to incorporate it in the movement. I believe I will be making some pinions.... not easy!

At the end of the week I made a new balance staff for my movement. I am changing the whole balance bridge and jewel so the heights are different and I couldn't use the original one. Took about a day and a bit but I was able to make it to the dimensions I wanted in one try so that's ok. No guarantee it will work yet until I get the new jewel and fit it on the bridge... so I might have to make a new one. Plus I will have to make a spare in case it breaks sometime (hopefully not soon...). I'll try to take a picture of it to show. The original one was 3.57mm long and the new one is 3.41mm. It also has a few different dimensions in a few spots.

The second week I attempted to make a new click for the ratchet wheel. It didn't turn out so well so I don't have any pictures of that. I'll have to go back to the drawing board before attempting that again, oops!!

After failing in that venture I decided to spend the rest of the week adjusting watches so no more info or those weeks. But here are a few pics I should've included in the last post.

Here is the stud, the screw that holds it, and the bridge (with the threaded hole on top). Might be hard to see but it has a thread! The little hole at the end of the stud is where the hairspring will be attached to. And I also made a groove in it so the screw would grab in the same place.

This is the partially completed bridge. There's still no undercut for the balance and no hole for the jewel. Also the stud holder with the stud in. I actually might have to make a new stud again cause it will probably be too long. But that's what prototyping is I guess! Trial and error big time!

Cya next week, I promise a speedier update.

Week 6 Aug. 30-Sept. 4, 2010

2010-09-07T22:25:00.003+02:00

Just going to be a short post this week. And I don't have any photos cause I keep forgetting the camera at school!

Anyways, like I said things didn't go very well on Monday and I had to do a lot of fixing to make things work. Had to remake some locating pins and such. then I went to make the recess for the stud holder and made the recess too wide so the whole bridge was useless. So after attempting to make the bridge 4 times I finally got it right...

Then I milled out the spot for the stud holder fixing screw and drilled and tapped the hole to 0.50mm. The bridge still has the full material underneath but I will be cutting that out way later.

Next I decided to drill the hole for the stud screw. Unfortunately I wasn't thinking straight (like usual) and drilled it in a random spot. This wasn't a good idea if I was going to use the original stud because it has a slotted side and that has to line up with the center of the bridge so the hairspring comes out perpendicular to the balance staff. So of course that didn't work out so I had to make a stud as well. This wasn't that difficult though even though it is one of the smallest parts in the watch. It is a pin that is 0.75mm in diameter and 1.80mm long. Then at the end there is a 0.25mm hole drilled through and also a small slotted edge for the screw to catch. And I had to make sure the slot was at the right degree so the spring comes out at 90 degrees to the balance staff. but after drilling a few holes off center I got it and it was fine.

Then I had to adjust the stud screw. This was really really difficult. The dimensions I was working with were extremely small. The screw is 0.40mm thread, and the head is about 0.60mm. The plan was to hide the screw in a recessed part of the stud holder. I went through about 6-7 screws before I got it to grab the stud and be hidden in the side of the bridge. It's really hard to explain on here how hard this was. If I have to do it again I won't be pleased...

And that's about it for last week. Next week will be lots of planning to get the right size for the balance staff and the regulating pins (nightmares to come soon)....

Cya

Week 5 Aug 23-28, 2010

2010-08-24T20:11:00.011+02:00

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!

Week 4 Aug. 16-21, 2010

2010-08-22T23:01:00.004+02:00

Hello again. Here we go with week 4. Nice to know that some people are actually following this blog now. It makes posting new things feel a little more useful.

Anyways...

This week I started with turning the holes in the new bridges to 0.01mm smaller than the jewels. I did this by first centering the jewel I was working with on the M1. We have an attachment for it now that can be moved to the Schaublin lathe which makes things much easier. So after I had the jewel in the mainplate centered, I screwed the bridge onto the mainplate and turned the hole to the correct dimensions. It wasn't extremely difficult, but you have to be very precise. If the hole is too big the jewel will be too loose in the hole, and if the hole is too small the jewel can crack. I don't have any pictures but they would be pointless anyway, just jewels fit into the bridge. I'm sure you will see it in another photo later.

So then I set out making a new pallet fork bridge. The original one is quite ugly and had to be redesigned. I also decided to make locating pins on the bridge instead of on the mainplate like the original. I don't like the idea of being able to see locating pins.

It wasn't really easy designing something that went with the other bridges. The first design I came up with was kinda unique...

But there were some issues with this design. First of all it would've been extremely hard to bevel and polish. And secondly, when I put the balance bridge on it covered up the 'flames' or whatever you want to call them. So I just simplified it to this design:

So after making the shape how I wanted and screwing it on the plate, I had to turn the hole for the jewel like the other bridges. Unfortunately for me it was Monday and not my day. I had pre-drilled the hole for the jewel, but I wasn't thinking and drilled it too close to the final diameter. So when I went to center it on the bottom jewel it was way off. Like wayyyy off. So i had to make another bridge and pins. One of these days I'll start thinking things through better before proceeding. But for now I'll blame it on Monday.

Also because the bridge is in steel, the fit of the jewel has to be much more precise. Thankfully the school has many pivot gauges to help measure everything to pretty precise dimensions. The jewel fit great.

The next thing on the agenda was getting a nice new mainplate to do some actual official work. All of the other work on the mainplate is for trials and stuff. But now I have the actual mainplate so I need to be careful with it. The first thing to do was to plug all of the useless holes. Because I changed the design of the bridges, the screws and locating pins are all in different places so I needed to fill a lot of holes and also drill new ones. One other thing I wanted to do was get rid of the dial feet securing pins. The look horribly ugly and just not acceptable on my watch! I am planning on making a tapped hole from the side and a screw to hold the dial feet. And I will put it under a bridge so you can't see it.

So after drilling many new holes and plugging old ones, here is the result. There is still 4-5 holes that might get plugged, but I was not sure about them yet so I left them. Maybe I'll put a side by side picture of the new plate and the original to show how many holes are gone...

I also milled off the left part of the old pallet fork bridge, and milled off the part that said ETA 6498-1. Can't have that on my watch! Maybe I'll put AMS-01 on it haha....

Next thing I did was make the bronze bearings for the barrel arbor. The original design doesn't allow for any adjustment of endshakes. And if you went to school at WOSTEP you know that is just not acceptable. And the reason I am using bronze instead of jewels is because this is a lager watch with a big heavy barrel. So using bronze is just a bit more sturdy.

Parting off the bearing on the lathe

A pretty easy and quick process on the lathe. I will still have to turn the holes in the mainplate and bridge to fit the new larger bearings.

The last thing I worked on this week was banking pins. If you are like "Aaron, WTF are banking pins?" then I suggest you click this link. It is a Swiss lever escapement in motion. I hope you are able to see the two pins that the pallet fork rests on.

Since got rid of the old pallet fork bridge that had the banking pins on it, I have to make new ones. The are a munch of different types. I am trying to make eccentric screws for mine. They are only seen in high end watches. And after trying to make a couple I can see why. They are probably one of the smallest parts I will have to make and, although not overly complicated, very tough to make precise. The first one I made didn't quite work out but I think I have the process figured out so hopefully it goes well next time.

The other thing is that the head of the eccentric screw will be flat polished so I can only really do this at the very end and after most of the watch is already finished. So it might be an interesting journey to get these things to a) function properly, and b) not leave a mark on them before I put the watch in the case at the very end. Hmmm...

Just a pic of the screw head cutting.

And this is the tempering.

That's all for now. Not sure what the plan this week is. Might try to do some actual school work. But this stuff is quite enjoyable so we'll see...

Week 3 Aug. 9-14, 2010

2010-08-15T14:00:00.010+02:00

It was quite a busy week this week. We didn't have much for actual lessons so I was able to get a lot of things done. Just to give people an idea of what I am trying to make here is a picture of the bridge side.

And here is a picture of what I want the dial side to look like.

So the first thing I worked on this week was making the third and escape wheel bridges. These bridges were a little bit more difficult than the big one because I needed to put the locating pins and screw hole in first so it they would stay in place for the milling.

Here's the escape wheel bridge with the pins in and screwed to the mainplate.

Just milling part of the bridge and the outline of the rest on the top

Here it is with the two sides milled and the rest is just an outline on the top.

That's why I made it thicker than the final dimensions so I could mill the shape on top to aid in the filing.

And after much filing here are all the bridges on. Final dimensions will come later but for now I think it is a good start. I still probably have to make a new balance bridge but I'll worry about that later...

Next I had to center each hole on the jewels on the mainplate. Then I milled out the holes to 0.20mm smaller than the final dimension. These holes are just so I had something to center on to mill out the underside of each bridge. These cut outs are to make room for the actual wheels.

Here are the bridges with the underside cut out to make space for the wheels. It took me about 4-5 hours to do all the re-centering and milling.

Here are all the pieces from the underside. You can see the locating pins sticking out. Two for each bridge.

I actually kinda milled out a bit too much around the center jewel, but I don't think it will be a problem. My mainplate will get a few hundredths thinner when I have to retouch it anyways.

The other thing I was doing this week was making the moon phase wheel. If you have talked with me about watches a lot you will notice I really like the moon phase complication. I just think it looks nice. Not the most complicated or useful thing but whatever, I like it! I could've just used a wheel from another watch somewhere but I thought it would cool to try and make one of my own and decorate it the way I see fit.

There are 59 teeth on the wheel. This is because the length of a moon phase is 29.53 days. Therefore to make the system more accurate we put 59 teeth on the wheel and make it jump 1 tooth per day. That is also why there are 2 moons on the disc.

Now to say the process of making this wheel was not easy/fun is a large understatement. Just to cut the teeth took about 8 hours. The reason for this is I had to cut each tooth in steps. Each one is 0.34mm deep and you can't just cut all the way in at once. I was cutting about 0.03-0.04mm per pass so that is about 9-10 passes per tooth. Times that by 59 and you get about 550-600 times back and forth. And you can only cut in one direction so I would have to go in, cut across, lift up, return to the start, and go in deeper.

On top of this there is a spacer wheel which divides the turning of the piece into 59 divisions. That's all good but you have to make sure you don't turn it 1 too many or too less holes or the whole wheel will be ruined. It was a lot of concentration for a full day. But it felt great when I was done!

All of this wouldn't be possible without my buddy Schaublin!

And here are the wheels I got from all that work. The one is a little blue because I heated it up a bit too much when I was ungluing it from the brass. But it won't make a difference once I harden and temper it.

The other thing with the holes is the container I made to hold the wheel when I have to harden the steel. I needed to make something to sandwich the wheel in there so it won't warp when it gets really hot. The holes are allow oil in to quench the steel and cool it down. Hopefully it all works out!

One other thing I did this week was mill out the location for the new hour/minute positions and the intermediate wheel. But everything looks like it will work out so far. I probably have to make another wheel that will only rotates once a day for the moon phase wheel, but that's a later project. I also need to figure out the power reserve system but I have a plan for that so I just have to figure out the details.

This week I will be enlarging the holes in the bridges for the jewels. Once I do this I can actually get the watch running again! It will be cool to have it running with the new bridges.

Here is one last pic this week. It kinda shows on the mainplate all the holes I might be have to plug. There are a lot of useless holes on the mainplate and I don't want any of them to be visible from the bridge side. Not very complicated to fill, just a lot of them!!

Bye for now!

Week 2 August 2-7, 2010

2010-08-10T21:38:00.011+02:00

This last week I started working on the bridges for the watch. I designed 3 bridges of which I will make from scratch. Hopefully I will use the stock barrel bridge but not quite sure about the balance bridge. I think I will end up making a new one since the stock one is a bit lower than the other bridges and probably won't work out, but I'll deal with that later.

First thing I did was mill out the new shape for the barrel bridge. This wasn't very difficult or time consuming. I just found the correct radius and milled it on the M1.

The next bridge I decided to do was the 3rd and center wheel bridge. It is the biggest so I thought it would be good to get out of the way first. I spent the first day trying to figure out how to actually go about making it. I ended up having to plug 2 holes on the mainplate so that I could make new ones in the spots I wanted. after that I glued a flattened piece of brass onto the mainplate and located where I needed to put the new screw holes and locating pins. Then I drilled the holes and tapped the screw holes.

Here you can see the rough piece after the screw head sink holes were done. The bridge is still way too high but this allows lots of room for milling the rough shape on top.

Now that I had the 2 screw holes in the correct spots, I could just screw the bridge on to do the rough milling. I didn't put the locating pins in at this point because this bridge had two screws and didn't need them.

Here I am just milling out one of the sides on the M1. Because of the shape of the bridge I couldn't mill everything out on here so I had to mill a rough image of the final dimensions. This made it much easier to file the rest of the bridge out by hand.

Here is the bridge design I made. I think it looks pretty cool! Just for a reference, this is the original bridge design so you can see how much different it will be. You can see I only milled the two right hand edges. The rest I just milled on top so I would have a guide for filing. The reason I didn't mill it out was cause the milling cutter likes to catch sometimes if you don't control it properly and I didn't want to risk it slipping and ruining the whole bridge.

I had also milled the shape for the balance bridge (even if I don't use it). It was a quick job so not a big deal.

Above is the start of the filing process. Had to do a LOT of filing! I basically spent all of Friday (about 7 hours) filing this part to the shape I designed. Filing isn't the most fun activity but it's nice to see something actually taking shape!

So after many hours of filing I was pretty close. The dimensions aren't exact or anything yet. After that I milled the top down to about the same height as the original bridges. I still have to mill out the recesses for the wheels underneath. Then after that I will have to make the holes for the jewels.

Here is the piece being milled on the top:

After getting the top milled out I made some pins out of german silver to push into the underside of the bridge for locating pins. These pins and their location are very important because it will ensure the bridge is always screwed down to the same position every time. This maybe has more importance on a bridge with only 1 screw, but it still makes a difference on any bridge. So after all of that, here is the bridge on the mainplate with the other 2 bridges I finished, looks pretty good so far I think!

And this is the cluster-cuss that is my bench when working on this project! Not easy to keep clean when you are using so many tools at once....

See ya next week!

Week 1 July 26-30, 2010

2010-08-08T20:01:00.005+02:00

The first week was not a full week. I was technically still on holidays so I didn't come in every day or stay very long. It's not easy getting started on a project this big when there are many unanswered questions about what I am going to be doing at each step. So I figured I would just start by refinishing a few parts. All of the parts are from the setting/winding mechanism. These parts are just chrome plated on the original watch which just looks plain ugly. On the flip side of that, the finish on these parts has absolutely no impact on the look of the watch because all of these parts will be hidden under the dial. Nonetheless this is a part of fine watchmaking and is important.

All of the parts on the left are the originals, and the refinished ones on the right. Hopefully you can see that the ones on the right are much nicer. The are straight grained and the edges are beveled and polished by hand using files and special paper.

The part with the pins was the most difficult. There was no way to make the straight graining without first cutting off the pin. Then I had to drill a new hole in the same place the old one was. Next I had to make a new pin. The diameter of this pin is 0.50mm and the length is 1.00mm. I then had to make the nice straight graining on the top of the piece and also bevel and polish the edges. Then the last step was to push the new pin in place. The pin was 0.02mm bigger than the hole so that it is friction fitted and will hold when pushed in. I also had to be careful not to touch the finish or the piece would be ruined. The whole process took about 3-4 hours.

Unfortunately for me I had to do it twice because I used the wrong piece! There is also a mirrored version of the 6498 called the 6497. Basically all of the setting/winding mechanism parts are the exact opposite. So I was dumb and didn't check which one I was using. But on the plus side, the same part will be used in the WOSTEP school watch so it wasn't a total waste as I can use it in that watch.

So that was the first week.

Back to Basics

2010-08-08T19:43:00.002+02:00

Well I have pretty much neglected the blog full for the last 4 months or so. Nothing really worth talking about and well blogging is tedious and non-rewarding. But now that I have actually started to work on making a watch at WOSTEP, I suppose I should document it. So this will be the start of that. The blog will only be about that. I will make an honest attempt at updating once a week about the stuff I was able to do the past week. I started two weeks ago so this will be a double update. Here it goes.

Brief Background

The students at WOSTEP in Neuchatel are given the chance to make their own watch. None of the other WOSTEP schools in the past have had the opportunity to do this. However the school is trying to change this. This year the school decided to have their own custom designed "WOSTEP caliber W-01" The watches in the past were a pocket watch design and this one is no different. It is 40mm in diameter and very similar to the Unitas 6497. In fact it is pretty much the exact same watch but with a larger diameter and made with better materials and having a nicer finish.

Since the school decided to do this, we were also told that we would be limited in the freedom of customization to be done to the watch. This, along with the fact that I think pocket watches are dumb and completely useless led me to the decision to attempt to make another watch of which I would do whatever customizing I felt I could do. It will be a wristwatch and the movement is the base Unitas 6498-1 watch. This is what the watch looks like new. Of course there is a major time confliction considering we still have to do the WOSTEP school watch, along with actually learning watchmaking, and also doing another internship in January. Needless to say I will be putting in an extreme amount of hours to get all of these things done. But I think having a wristwatch I can actually wear and show to people will be much more rewarding than a pocket watch which will for surely collect dust in a box (no matter how nice I do make that one as well!) So with that said, the next posts are the first 2 weeks! I'll try to answer any questions about the stuff I'm doing...

Latest outings

2010-04-12T00:28:00.005+02:00

Just thought I'd post a link to the latest photos I took on a trip to southern France and Spain.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mygs29/sets/72157623832425362/

Comments always welcome but never expected...

Mastering

2010-04-01T21:58:00.002+02:00

I would like to say I hope that Tiger does extremely well at the Masters this year. Hopefully a top ten finish will calm some of the hoopla surrounding this boring situation and we can watch some spectacular golf. Can't wait til the irregular media ignores golf like it always has.

And then there were 6

2010-02-13T19:34:00.004+01:00

So we were informed a little while ago that our summer work experience is partially lined up. Usually there isn't as much participation from the different brands but apparently that has changed this year. There are 6 of us and 6 brands have joined to give us some experience on the job. The companies participating will be Patek Phillipe, Audemars Piguet, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Rolex, Omega, and Breitling. Our teacher is going to decide who gets to go to which company so maybe I'll have to slip him a few 50's to get where I want to go haha. But it should be interesting to see what it's like in one of these large companies.

On another note, I finished a few more little projects. This first one is a hand setting tool. I made the tips with color markers and designed the case myself. If you can't tell I sort of put the olympic feel too it by arranging the tips like the rings and with the same colors. The handle is aluminum and the tips are plexiglass. The tips are just screwed into the handle according to which size pinion you are working with.

And this was a trial for something I am going to do for the school watch. It is a bushing for the barrel on a Unitas 6497 movement. I made this one from german silver but I will probably use bronze for the actual watch. I had to enlarge the hole that was originally in the watch and make the piece to very specific dimensions to be able to fit it in properly. Then I chamfered the hole and polished the chamfer. I suppose I should include pics of the original. Maybe I'll try to do that monday...

So the part I changed is in the middle of the gold colored part. You can see it is almost a silver color in the middle. Normally the barrel would ride on jewels but this is a very large barrel and would be much better if we used the bronze we are planning to use. You can see the polishing on the inside chamfer of the bushing. This also acts as a lubrication spot to hold the oil in place properly.

The gold colored part was originally the same color as the other recessed parts of the bridge but I retouched the whole surface as to be even.

Underside of the bridge

All of this was just a trial to see if I could make it properly and it worked great the first time. Should work great for the real project when I get to it.

Any questions? I didn't think so...

New Tools

2010-02-05T12:59:00.004+01:00

Here are the latest tools I've built

This is a custom tool to adjust the hand of the chronograph on one particular movement only. It sets where the hand resets to when you push the reset button. Obviously you want it to reset to zero. Took a while to make but I will need it for the final exam next year

The little pin holds the arm of the wheel. When you put the top on and twist it, it turns the friction fitted part that determines the position.

This is a barrel closer. The barrel is shown here too. If you have no clue what a barrel is, it holds the mainspring which is the power that drives the escapement and on to the rest of the watch. This is what you are winding when you wind a mechanical watch.

These are just a couple special screwdrivers for a certain eccentric screw. Can't remember what movement it's for but no one cares anyway...

Weekending...

2010-02-04T07:28:00.005+01:00

The last 2 weeks I took a couple day trips in Switzerland, about 2 hours away from Neuchatel. Went to Montreux, Zermatt and a balloon festival in Chateau D-Oex. Here are some photos:

On the way to Chillon Castle in Montreux

The view from the top of Chillon Castle

The Matterhorn in Zermatt

Random pic from Neuchatel on a very rare sunny hour or two....

Balloon festival in Chateau D-Oex. Unfortunately not as many balloons were up as we had hoped. There were pictures on the website with about 15 in the air at once. I don't really think it was the right weather for it.

One of few balloons we saw

I wanted to take a balloon ride but after realizing it was 300 CHF for a trip we decided a 10 minute helicopter ride would have to do.

Too bad it wasn't sunny out...

After we got back from the festival we came back to Montreux. Who says Saskatchewan has the best sunsets? I think this wins....

This was my attempt at doing an HDR photo. I think it turned out pretty good.

We wanted to take the boat back to Lausanne but it wasn't going that day, would've been nice.

That's all for now. I'm planning on taking some photos of the latest tools I've made so maybe I'll post again later today. Ciao

MIA

2010-01-21T20:54:00.003+01:00

Well I have pretty much abandoned the blogging as of late so I guess this is an attempt at an update.

Anyways, since last update I have made a few more winding stems but after about 6-7 it got a tad repetitive so I moved on to pivot gauges. Pivot gauges are basically a measuring device for jewels and such. They are small, I mean small!!! We are making about 8-10 of them and the range of sizes is 7/100ths to 23/100ths of a millimeter. The length of the whole thing is about 15mm long and the actual pivot on the end is between 20-50/100ths of a mm long. Once we finish turning it to the wanted diameter we have to burnish the pivot using a Jacot Tool. I'm sure none of this makes sense but maybe I'll try to explain it later. Anyways here are a few pics, bye for now....

Hole-In-Ten?

2009-12-15T22:15:00.002+01:00

Well I figured I'd put my 2 cents in about this whole Tiger Woods fiasco. So here it goes....

It was clearly only a matter of time before he put his balls in the wrong hole. He'd put them in many holes before but this was all types of wrong.

Personally I am a little disappointed. I am disappointed for two reasons. 1 - cheating is just shitty. I know 'shit' happens but come on. It can't be that difficult to stay faithful. I doubt he's getting drunk on a regular basis so he can't blame it on that. And to do it that many times? Weak. No one likes a cheater or to get cheated so it's hard to have positive thoughts about someone like that.

But I am not really sure I can believe all the allegations, nor have I read every article about it. Which leads me to number 2 - the media. I am plenty aware that it is the medias job to publish any and every possible thing be it true or not but it's just terrible to see how things can escalate. Granted he is the most popular man in sports, but who really cares? I could give less than two fucks about what he does in his personal life. I like him cause he's an amazing golfer not because he's an amazing person. I don't think he ever claimed to be a perfect person outside of golf. He's just that good at golf so 'oh well how could he do something like that, he's supposed to be a perfect citizen'. That's ridiculous.

So with that said I will continue to fully support Tiger. I don't respect the decisions he made off the course but I sure as shit want to see him golfing like he does. You can't say you don't like to watch a guy who can pull off shots like this just cause he cheated on his wife.....

I'm a real boy!

2009-12-07T23:19:00.004+01:00

I'm a real boy

Ok I always have been but in the words of Pinocchio "I'm a real watchmaker!". But seriously I have actually made a real part that works in an actual watch. How about that. And it's a part that is used by the watch wearer to boot! Maybe this doesn't technically qualify me to be a full watchmaker just yet but hey, feels important to me so suck it!

So what part am I talking about you might be wondering now (if you haven't skipped to a much more interesting blog)? Well it's a winding stem folks. You know, that part that connects the crown you pull out to set the time.

The first two I made (the ones on the outside that look the same) are not really very common dimensions if at all for a real watch. But the one in the middle is fully functional in a 6497 movement. Which coincidentally enough is supposed to be the movement we are basing our school watch on (however there are talks of a completely original WOSTEP movement, cross your fingers!). So this was finally a project that had some more depth and purpose (not to discredit toolmaking in any way). It was nice to finish something that would serve a purpose in a real watch. Anyways, the one in the middle took me about 8 hours to make which seems like a long time but for the 3rd one made in my life I think it's a decent time. The one I made today (no picture) took about 6 hours so it's getting much easier. I was told some people take 3 days or so the first few times. I'm glad this wasn't the case for me since I am not sure I have learned the patience for that just yet!

Scaled picture. Measurements were within .03 mm everywhere on the bottom one. Except the threaded part which I left cause it didn't matter...

Three Hundred and Sixty-Five

2009-12-06T14:37:00.002+01:00

So I started a new project the other day. If you are familiar with photography there is this thing called a 365 Project. I think it was originally done by taking a self portrait every day for a year. But some people weren't into the idea of taking photos of themselves that many times so it turned into a "take a photo of something every day for a year" type thing. If you type 365 project on flickr I'm sure it will provide many results...

flickr 365

Anyways I took it upon myself to start a project of this nature. It will be based on time and watches and since I only have Nixon watches and have a fond liking of them, it will be mostly featuring just that. Hopefully I can learn a thing or two about photography and maybe some other things I can't think of.

Here is a link to my flickr 365 project:

Aaron's 365 project

Hope you like it!

P.S. I will post about watchmaking in a couple days, good news to tell!

Day Trippin'

2009-11-26T21:55:00.006+01:00

Went on a couple day trips a while back and thought I'd share some pictures.

Vallorbe, Switzerland

Bex, Switzerland

Montreux, Switzerland

Finished projects

2009-11-21T13:35:00.004+01:00

Here are some pictures of the projects I finished last week. The first is the polishing tool I mentioned before and the second is a couple staking blocks. Thanks Rob for mentioning about the plastic one in that forum. I whipped that one up in a couple hours. Just to let you guys know, these tools are not cheap to buy from tool making companies. The plastic staking block I made is bigger than the one you can buy from Bergeon and that one is $60. So I'm glad we are able to make some of these tools rather than buying them.

I have also started a somewhat new section in the course. It is still turning but now it is turning between centers. The reason for this is to create a lot more accuracy in small and important work like balance staffs and pivot gauges. It also makes it so you can remove the piece you are working on to measure and still be able to trust the centering after. This method seemed quite intimidating at first since you have to turn the piece by hand and use the graver with the other. It requires a lot of coordination but it isn't as bad as I thought. Here is a video of what I'm talking about:

I says pardon??

2009-11-17T21:57:00.003+01:00

Some great comments made in the sports world:

Basketball:

- "He dribbles a lot and the opposition doesn't like it. In fact you can see it all over their faces."

- "Any time Detroit scores more than 100 points and holds the other team below 100 points, they almost always win."

Soccer:

- "Julian Dicks is everywhere. It's like they've got eleven Dicks on the field."

- "He had an eternity to play that ball... but he took too long over it."

Tennis:

- "These ball boys are marvelous. You don't even notice them. There's a left handed one over there. I noticed him earlier."

Weightlifting:

- "This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning during her warm-up and it was amazing."

Boxing:

- "Sure there have been injuries, and even some deaths in boxing, but none of them serious."

- "He's a guy that gets up at 6 o'clock in the morning regardless of what time it is."

Softball:

- "If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again."

Game, set, match

2009-11-12T21:30:00.005+01:00

Most of you who know me well (hell even if you don't know me that well) know that I have grown a serious love for the sport of tennis. Well this love has increased even more. I got to attend an ATP tennis tournament last weekend in Basel. It's only a 500 level tournament so it didn't have all of the top players but it did however have the number 1, Mr. Roger Federer.

I had bought a ticket for the final back in April so it was a long wait. I took the train to Basel on Saturday and decided to go and check out the stadium. As far as I knew the tickets were sold out, but after checking things out for a bit, I realized they still had some tickets. Of course I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see Federer play twice in one weekend and got a ticket. Before I went in I was walking around by the players entrance and who pulls up and gets out of the car.... Mirka Federer! I thought it was pretty cool anyways.

The semi-finals was Federer vs. Chiudinelli. Chiudinelli is also from Switzerland so it was a good match to watch. Here are some pics:

Federer ended up winning 7-6(7), 6-3. Novak Djokovich won the other semi-final (he's ranked #3 in the world and the second seeded player in the tournament).

Here are some pictures from the final. Unfortunately Federer didn't win the final (he won the the last 3 years), but there was some great tennis played. One game lasted almost 25 minutes long!! (normally about 2-5 minutes). It was absolutely awesome to see live tennis. I will definately be getting tickets to the tournament next year and hopefully a couple other tournaments in Europe.

Djokovich played a great game

Both of these guys have unreal serves. Watching them serve 200 km/h to exactly where they want is awesome.

See you next year Basel!!

Handle this!

2009-11-06T12:57:00.006+01:00

Just some photos of the handle for the polishing tripod. Designed everything myself. I had to design it so that the blue wouldn't get scratched off with the turning piece. I did this by making it a bit smaller so the cylinder rides on the outside only.

Enjoy!

Comments are always welcome!

Update

2009-11-05T12:47:00.008+01:00

Hey there. Here's an update on the project I've been working on the last 2+ weeks.

This is what it supposed to look like in the end. Obviously it will look much better than this but this is just a reference to get ideas from. We also have a book of the last groups projects to look at to get ideas from as well. It is a polishing tripod. It's what I have been using to polish the screws for the other projects and also for the screws for the one I'm making. The pictures are missing part of the handle that is used to turn the operating screw.

This is the base piece and was cut and filed by hand.

I had to make a holder to screw into the holes on the edge so I had a guide to file a nice round corner.

This is the sliding piece that goes in the middle. It is held by 2 screws.

Here is a few pictures from making the knobs for the height adjusters. This was all my own design and ideas based on the above example.

This is actually two pieces that are screwed together using the brass holder. I did this purely for a visual aesthetic so that if you screw the bottom holder up to the top one, the slots line up (this stuff is really hard to explain without showing in a video).

This is what the milling attachment for the lathe looks like.

And here is the piece after all 9 slots have been milled out. This splits into 2 pieces.

Here's a collection of some of the pieces for the tripod. Everything is kept in benzine so it won't oxidize. I also keep some parts in isopropanol alcohol. usually the polished parts.

Oops.... I did it again

2009-10-28T12:36:00.003+01:00

Here's the finished pallet fork holder. The first brass plate I made was fine until I broke 3 0.30 mm drill bits in it. So I had to make a whole new one. It probably took about 5 hours to make the first one without bevels. But since then I have gotten a bit better at the process and this one only took 2.5 hours with the bevels (bevels take a long time). There aren't any holes in the plate for these pictures. There should be a few holes at the end of the blue spring so the pivot of the pallet fork can sit in but I'll just drill them later.

More pictures

2009-10-17T17:28:00.005+02:00

Here are a few more pictures of my projects. Just trying to be creative...

This one is of a piece I decided to flat polish. It is a piece of steel that has an absolute mirror finish. It's quite cool, but took a LONG time to do. Just trying to show the reflection on it. The piece is actually just the silver-ish part going from the bottom left to the top right of the reflection. It is the piece in my last post with the little ruler.

This is just a practice piece of the tempering process

Truing caliper for wheels

Angle tool

I know they kinda look dirty...

Try squares

Stand for setting tweezers and other tools on

Putting the stand to use

Making parts

2009-10-14T19:06:00.004+02:00

Just a few pictures on the process of making a screw. It is for a pallet fork holder.

First step is to thread the end

This screw has a different purpose. It's meant to have a spot that I can grab with tweezers to pick up the plate. That's why it looks like this.

And here is the screw pretty much done except the slot for the screwdriver

To make the slot in the head there is a milling attachment for the lathe. It's pretty easy to use and takes about 10-15 minutes.

This is what the screw is for. This plate is a pallet fork holder. In the other hole there will be another screw that hold down a spring that will hold down the pallet fork. Then I'll drill some holes to hold the pivot. I'll provide a better explanation when it's done.

Here is the start of the spring

I'm just polishing this spring right now which is an extremely slow process. I think I spent 6 hours polishing today so far. Just one side to do though thankfully. If it was a screw I'd have been done in 30 minutes. After this I have to blue the spring so it looks nice and then polish the screw to hold the spring to the plate. Might have some pictures tomorrow.

Completions

2009-10-13T20:59:00.007+02:00

Here are some photos of those projects I talked earlier about. Still working on other ones and I'll post pics as I finish them.

Heating plate for bluing screws. If you don't know anything about blue screws then I will try to explain it for you. Basically the steel made for screws must be hardened and then tempered. When tempering, the steel goes through a unique range of colors according to the hardness it is. This color is due to a reaction with the air but that's not really important. What is important is the correct hardness which, thankfully for aesthetic purposes, is a really nice shade of blue. It is known in watchmaking that this bluing of screws and hands is a sign of extra care and effort. Some companies with less time and money will fake this color. Here are are two examples:

Real blue screws

Fake blue screws

Now obviously to the majority of people it is hard to tell. But once you actually blue the steel yourself and know what you are looking for, it's a little bit easier. The real blue screws have a deeper blue and the fake ones more of an 'electric' blue. It's much easier to tell from magazine photos but also the price of the watch can sometimes tip you off as well.

Anyways to get to the point, I made a table to blue these screws. The pattern of the holes was personal choice.

If you hadn't noticed, the pattern is made to look like the Swiss cross

And here are some pics of those other tools I talked about. Most people will just buy these tools from a company like Bergeon but it was pretty cool to be able to build these all by hand. Many hours were put into these (like 20+ each).

More to come tomorrow!

Watch-not-really-maker

2009-10-11T22:27:00.002+02:00

I have received the following question now over a dozen times and feel I should settle the issue:

"So Aaron, have you made any watches yet?"

The final answer to this question is a resounding "Hell NO!" I will try to explain in short form why.

A. It can take some companies 5 years to build some watches with experienced engineers and watchmakers

B. I have only been doing this for 2 months

C. The part of the course I am doing right now is called micro-mechanics

D. The term 'Watchmaker' is not as it sounds. I technically will not be 'making' any watches. Watchmaker is a term given to the skilled individuals who service and repair watches. Here is a link to explain a little better: Watchmaker

E. Although when I am finished the course I will probably possess the skills to make a watch, the time and amount of work put in is ridiculous in comparison to the return if said watch was sold. Maybe this is why most people don't understand why or how a watch could cost over $100,000.

So with that said I hope all of you will understand that it is not really about 'making' watches. It is more about learning how they work and how to fix and repair them quickly and easily. I know it doesn't make sense why I would be called a Watchmaker, but hey I didn't invent the name.

We are however planning to modify a watch in class and will get to build parts for it and add our own personal touch to it. But by no means are we building a watch from scratch. The 2 years of school with no experience would definately not be enough time to complete such a project. I have already been told that a lot of extra hours aside from class are needed to do the school watch. I am looking forward to it and will definately have lots of updates when we start.

Population: 60 Million

2009-09-28T21:44:00.011+02:00

Went on a weekend trip to Italy 2 weekends ago. It was an extra long weekend for us so it allowed us a little more time to see most of the standard sights. We rented a car and left Friday at about 9 AM.

The first place we got to was Pisa to see the leaning tower. And if you're wondering if I took a picture pretending to keep the tower from falling you are going to be disappointed. Thinking about it now, I should've got a picture of other people taking these pictures... shit.

Anyways, after seeing the tower and having a bite to eat we left for Florence. We didn't have a place to stay yet so that ended up consuming a little time when we got there. But after we got that settled we found an obvious tourist spot to take some nice pics. Florence was pretty nice and it was here I discovered my new love for gelato. That stuff is magnificent...

The next day we drove to Rome. After arriving and asking someone for a little direction, we left our car at an train station and headed into the center. We walked around for a solid 5-6 hours and after that lost it's enjoyability we just had a few drinks at a nice bar.

This is actually a picture I took, not a drawing or art project. (I'm really enjoying learning about editing photos!)

Then on Sunday we drove to Venice. Didn't realize it was an island! But it is a really nice city and was nice to see a city with no cars. But we really need to keep the kids off the canals.

It was quite a whirlwind trip seeing this much in 3.5 days but it was well worth it. I will hopefully be making a trip back for some more gelato and delicious pasta. If you would like to see the rest of the photos I took on the trip (the ones worth keeping) here is a link:

Italy Photos

Vid-yo

2009-09-17T18:38:00.012+02:00

Just a quick video from today. This is basically what I do all day right now... and yeah that is the sound of the motor. Imagine 4 of those going at once and that's what it's like. That's why I like to listen to tunes. It also helps me focus. I was just turning a cylinder at 3.00 mm for a tool. I have to do only half at a time since the tool rest isn't wide enough to cover the 20.00 mm long I wanted. It's sort of dumb but you get used to it I guess.

If you can't see the video from your RSS reader go to the actual website...

And here are a few more photo's from the recent projects.

The milk's gone bad

2009-09-14T12:53:00.012+02:00

Went on a hike this Sunday which showed me a few things about the strange Swiss culture. Hiking is a pretty big deal over here and even though it's not my most favorite activities, it's the best way to see the sweet views. Anyways this hike was about 4.5 hours and about 350m up the mountain. Now there are a plethora of hiking trails and most are indicated with these little yellow signs. At first these would appear to be helpful, but not being from around here I didn't know the little things that makes this system work. First of all there are many trails that to a Canadian non-hiker are not technically trails. Walking through a random field on the side of a mountain just doesn't seem right to me. Second, since there is not always a trail you will be dodging the many piles of cow shit on the steep slopes. It just didn't feel quite right to me. But allegedly the GPS we had indicated us to be on a trail (even though it was in the middle of a field). The third thing is that all areas of the mountain (and I mean ALL) are surrounded by electric fences. It's just one little wire or braided rope. There were usually little gates but sometimes the path (or lack there-of) would make it so you had to crawl under or over said fence. This seems ridiculous to me. Why would a mapped out hiking trail lead you to have to navigate electric fences? I guess I will just have to get used to this system.

This is an example of some of the signs. This tree is growing through the fence ha.

As for the cows, I found 99% of them to have full out cowbells. You can tell exactly where they are even though they are pretty much everywhere. It's pretty crazy to see these cows just chillin' out on the side of some pretty steep slopes. I bet the Swiss cows would easily win a balance battle against the sad flatland Saskatchewan cows.

MORE COWBELL!!!

As for the rest of the trip it was not very nice weather until the end of the day so most pictures are kinda sad. But we had a fondue when we got up to Moleson Village. It was a little heavy for my taste but not bad. I am realizing I don't have the palette needed for all these cheeses here.

The end of the day got sunny which was nice because we went to this castle. It's called the Chateau de Gruyeres. We got there to late to go inside but it was a cool little place outside of it. Also found it weird that this was the place I saw my first Harley Davidson in Switzerland.

I'm sure I will end up on many more hiking trips in the future and maybe will come back with some much better pictures.

Wait, wait

2009-09-14T12:25:00.011+02:00

This is what I've been doing, this is what I've been doing...

I've basically been sitting in front of the lathe for the last 2 weeks straight and have gotten pretty decent at it. Just making some more tools.

This first one is a 3 toothed cutter. I have to finish the knurling part of it and also harden the steel. It is quite difficult to get those 3 little faces flat and even and to the right angles. Each end takes me a few days to complete. And of course there are tolerances to be aware of. All my measurements are within 2-3 hundredths of a millimeter.

This next one is a chamfering tool. I've done part of it but not enough worth taking pictures of.

This piece is a center punch. It's used to make a center point as a guide for when I drill into a piece.

This last one is a polishing tool. It's about 180mm x 6mm x 2mm and is tapered to 0.5mm at the point. Took me about 3 hours and one painful cut on the finger.

I'll post more pictures as I complete more on these projects...

New girlfriend

2009-09-04T18:15:00.005+02:00

Last week I moved on to the turning part of the course. I was told when I started that I was to receive a new girlfriend. Now I am a little unimpressed with this since I wasn't ready to be dating and well, it's a mechanical lathe. I have to clean it and make sure it doesn't rust, and generally take care of it. Unfortunately it returns none of the favors, unless you count the work I can achieve using it. But I tell you it's just not the same...

So I decided to take a few pictures with my new gal, who shall remain unnamed at this point. Here is the first of I'm sure many pictures behind this "beauty":

The majority of this week consisted of using hand gravers to make perfect cylinders with the lathe. I am now capable of turning perfect cylinders accurate to within 1/100th of a millimeter. I've now moved on to making 4 more tools for watchmaking. They all are made of steel and I will have some pictures when I finish them. But for now, here's a picture of the start of a cylinder I was doing for practice:

Anyways, I will be doing this for more than a few weeks I'm sure so don't expect too many new and interesting things on the watchmaking front.

Random thought #2

- I don't understand the purpose of the line, "I don't need to drink to have fun." Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they've invented the lighter?

coolest thing i've seen in a while

2009-08-30T16:24:00.008+02:00

Since I got a DSLR camera a few months ago, I have been scouring the internet for tips and info on taking better pictures. Of course I am still not very good and need to take more photos. But while searching for info today I came across one of the coolest damn things I have ever heard of in photography.

It is 3D photography and it's basically creating 2 images from almost the same point of view and using a cross-eyed technique to see the image in 3D. Here is a link to how to view the images in 3D:

http://www.neilcreek.com/blog/2008/02/28/how-to-see-3d-photos/

and here are some to look at:

http://www.neilcreek.com/blog/2008/02/28/how-to-see-3d-photos/

If this isn't the coolest thing you've seen, well tell me what the hell you've been seeing cause I don't know of any. Hopefully I could possibly experiment into this with my own camera but I'd better try to tackle regular photography first, ha. For now here's a few regular photos from Geneva...

fountain in Geneva

swans everywhere

sweet organ in a cool cathedral

the Swiss are very patriotic...