Week 42 May 9-14th, 2011

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.