Friday, August 25, 2017

Magic, Rhodium Plating, Polishing, Tools and Winding Stems

Keep working on our winding stems, tools, also we learned how to plating this week. Because everyone's progress is slightly different, we'll show more pictures to you.

Pre-clean for plating. Pre-clean decide the result of your plating.

Our exercise is plating rhodium on a bridge. Beware of the process condition for different plating such as voltage, temperature,  and time.  

Before.

After. By the way, learning how to judge the result is equally important. If the surface is like powderish and easy to remove then it probably not well coated.



Introducing Henrik's new finding, The Magic Rhodium from Horotec. We'll show how magic it is in below pictures.

Before, brass showing.

Apply some liqiud magic rhodium on the spot you would like to fix and rubb it around with pegwood, and finally clean with alcohol.

Ta da~~~~

CJ jig boring his tools. 

Final finish for the winding stem.

Sif Milling her screw polishing tool.

Henrik is a big fan of hot sauce. Check out his collection. ^^



Friday, August 18, 2017

Getting rusty after summer



After a great holiday we were back, refreshed and ready to go the next stage.  Henrik had a great time for his teaching on summer restoration course. 
Our skills needed polishing up slightly but we were soon on our way learning more practical and efficient methods to make windings stems. It will take only one third of the time to make winding stems compared to the traditional method. The new method is good for us to save lots time and has the better quality for winding stems.

A total of 6 watchmakers participated in the one week restoration course. The students tried out various restoration and part making techniques, machines, heat treatment, gold plating as well as other things, Henrik’s brother Kaj who is also a watchmaker joined in to assist Henrik. Below are some pictures from the course. 











Kaj showing students the various uses of a profile projector.


Learning how to make Breguet teeth on winding and sliding pinions.



Setup of tool and machine prior to cutting the Breguet teeth on a winding pinion.


Practicing turning with the Schaublin 70 lathe.

Bench work, Student testing spring tension.


Practicing of annealing, hardening and tempering of springs. 


The students also tried out to gold-plate some test bridges, this is before the gold plating.

Gold plating.

Students inspecting the gold platig. 

The bridges were red gold (5N) plated.

Som more practicing of turning.





The students also tried out making Geneva stripes.



The Jig-Boring machine was the last machine they tried out.


Group photo of students participating in the course. Everyone seemed to have a great time learning a lot in a short time.
















This week we also learned how to use the jig boring machine to make a precise hole in the precise locaton. The jig boring machine is a really an amazing machine, we can do very precise work on this machine. The precision is even beyond what we would need as watchmakers. This is really a dream machine to own.




Any tools that are left also needs to be completed as soon as possible so that we can then learn finishing techniques. 

Stan milling one of his tools.