NEW BLOOD!

  WEEK 114

Willy, Yuriy, Alex, Michael

Origin : Singapore, Canada, Taiwan, Malaysia 

Watchmaking class: Technician & Fullskill 

Current mood: New blood has arrived!! The workshop is more lively than ever before!! Just listening to the filling is giving me the illusion that I am 2 years younger already. Apart from that, we had lectures on calendar and automatic mechanism, casing, how to differentiate crystal as well as the installation. We will learn the making of hour wheel along side with its exam next week. Yep, see you next week!

Renato & David

Origin: Zug, Zürich, Switzerland

Watchmaking class: Fullskill

Current mood: This week i worked on milling the brass anvil. This tool was of 50x50mm diameter and 8mm thick. At first I had to hand file the brass piece. I used a practice piece to test my milling accuracy, then I moved on to the main piece. In the end the piece turned out nicely (David). Renato finished milling the detachable pieces for his design of the head nose vise in the lathe. Then glued them to the main vise parts and will continue with milling them next week. He did his own design/drawing for a balance wheel/bridge 'vise' that will be used for poising. He also did the design of a pallet fork holder. Besides that he turned several base pieces to make custom Horis tool pushers/anvils later on.

Francesco, Asmund & Robert

Origin: Italy, Norway, USA

Watchmaking class: Fullskill

Current mood: Coming soon!

Name: Markus McDonald.
Origin: Stockholm, Sweden. 
Course: 2 years full skill course.
Current mode: This week was fast and intense being focused on practical and theory preperation for the final exam week.

Specically for the practical I did movement work including a vintage Omega 284 to practice the execution for clients watches and real world trouble shooting that would be foundamental to the practical side of the exams. Additionally we also had some small demonstrations such as with the case. For the theory side of this week I would work from 5-7 everyday going through the questions and additionally today we had a lecture where we went through various questions.

All and all it was an intense week but a good week as I covered a lot.

STEP 1:  NEW FULLSKILL STUDENTS! (ASMUND, ROBERT & FRANCESCO)

New Fullskill students Checking the filed bottom side if its straight and flat against a square.

Asmund seems happy with the design of one of his tools!

Robert extracting brass for his tools!

Francesco making his own design on the balance support!

STEP 2:  MILLING! (DAVID)

David practicing milling slots with the Aciera F1!

STEP 3:  MACHINING! (RENATO)

Renato was machining his replaceable jaws for the pointed nose vice! 

STEP 4:  SAWING! (FRANCESCO, ASMUND & ROBERT)

Extracting the 8 mm thick brass plate for larger tools!

Brass is money!

We got 3 squares each for the larger tools!

STEP 5:  BOOKS! (RENATO)

Very nice books from Renato!

STEP 6:  JIG-BORING MACHINE! (RENATO & DAVID)

HENRIK's WORDS:

 

Very busy week! we had 3 new Fullskill students starting on Monday, I was mainly busy introducing them to the workshops and the basics of filing and sawing, I also got some time to introduce David and Renato to the jig boring machine as well as having another session on cases and crystals for the technicians. Very good week!! Have a great weekend everyone!

CALM BEFORE THE STORM!

 WEEK 113

Willy, Yuriy, Alex, Michael

Origin : Singapore, Canada, Taiwan, Malaysia 

Watchmaking class: Technician & Fullskill 

Current mood: We had the 3rd batch technician graduation on Monday! Harman to Yuriy and Willy! We had a BBQ session to celebrate their graduation as well. It was fun setting up bonfire and spend time with everyone. We definitely had Friday and Monday mixed up. Anyways, despite the departure of our fellow technicians, the Fullskill lads have to get back to reality and finish all of the movements that were given. Michael had his casing up and water resistance test demonstration and practice during the week too. The weather is absolutely lovely for the week as well.

Renato & David

Origin: Zug, Zürich, Switzerland

Watchmaking class: Fullskill

Current mood: David machined his cool looking brass screw heads with eight cut outs (check out the KHWCC Instagram video!) and screws for the polishing tripod. For this he learned how to use the Schaublin 70 milling attachment and dividing head. I milled the tapered parts of the two main brass pieces for my customized pointed head nose vise tool according to my drawing. Then did plenty of drilling on the milling machine on same pieces. Afterwards I started to create the detachable brass pieces for the vise, i.e. doing the round parts on the lathe first. Then I learned how to use the milling attachment on the Schaublin. With that I'll do the rectangular part on the vise attachments next week. Interesting part will be the precise adaptation of the round part on the attachment to the holes on the main brass pieces as those are never perfectly cylindrical and precise.

Name: Markus McDonald.
Origin: Stockholm, Sweden. 
Course: 2 years full skill course.
Current mode: N/A

STEP 1:  TECHNICIAN COURSE ENDING! (WILLY & YURIY)

Got the fire started!

The team!

Busy at the grill!

Yuriy on his throne!

STEP 2:  WATER RESISTANCE TESTING! (TECHNICIAN)

Water resistant watch!

Leak finding, in this case it was found that the case-back seal was damaged!

STEP 3:  MACHINING! (DAVID)

David came up with this design for his blocking screws for the polishing tripod, very cool look!!

Raw machined straight from the lathe! Will at a later stage be finished.

STEP 4:  QUARTZ WATCH! (TECHNICIAN)

We also had a moment for quartz analysing!

STEP 5:  MILLING! (RENATO)

Aciera F1 set up for milling pointed nose vice!

Renato practicing milling the brass anvil!

Partially machined pointed nose vice!

STEP 6:  BOOKS! (RENATO)

Highly recommending this book for anyone interested in ship's chronometers, it also includes tips on maintenance and repairs!!

HENRIK's WORDS:

 

Summer continued! Unfortunately this was the last week we will see Yuriy and Willy! As a celebration for the graduation we had an amazing barbecue evening! We will never forget them and hope they will come and visit us in the future if they get the chance! The week was very busy but really fun and interesting as well, we also had some visitors which you will meet next week, stay tuned! Have a great weekend everyone!

SUNNY WEEK!

WEEK 112

Willy, Yuriy, Alex, Michael

Origin : Singapore, Canada, Taiwan, Malaysia 

Watchmaking class: Technician & Fullskill 

Current mood: It's graduation time again, how time flies. Willy and Yuriy will be leaving the school sometime after next week. But it is still no reason to slack off. The week remains to be high productive. We went through several subjects including hand removal and installation, winding stem replacement and restoration, water resistance check, and received a bunch of notes. Overall a good week.

Renato & David

Origin: Zug, Zürich, Switzerland

Watchmaking class: Fullskill

Current mood: David worked on the 8mm thick squares for the brass anvil tool (filing) and finished the base plate for the poising tool. I worked on the pointed head nose vice tool. This one we can design partially as we want. Learned the fundamentals of technical drawing and did the two drawings for my modified version of the tool, which will be ready for two-sided use, where one side is designed to accept detachable/exchangeable end pieces (separate drawing) to clamp smaller watch parts like hands and similar. Also there will be 2 vs. 1 fixation screw(s) and one height adjustment screw between them. Milled the 2 symmetrical brass pieces for the vice accurately to measure incl. the 90° angles via dial gauge adjustment. Then glued together the 2 pieces with Loctite 480 to mill the angled parts next week.

Name: Markus McDonald.
Origin: Stockholm, Sweden. 
Course: 2 years full skill course.
Current mode: This week a lot happened from movement work, consisting of various different checks and additionally demonstrations for other smaller modules. These demonstrations consisted of the Automatic module, encasing work, repairing the winding stem and correcting a tilted crown. These demonstrations where spread out from the middle to the end of the week. Which in addition to the main work made the week very dense.

STEP 1:  ! (WILLY)

Wow! That is very cool and a great honour!! Thank you Willy we will never forget you!!

STEP 2:  ZODIAC PROJECT! (YURIY) 

There were lots of issues with this watch before Yuriy got it to run again, Its alive and well again and he did some really nice black polishing on some parts and polishing and bluing on the screws that are shifting to purple which looks really cool with the blue jewels!

STEP 3:  OSCILLATING WEIGHTS & BALL BEARINGS! (TECHNICIAN) 

The technicians practiced replacing ball bearings on oscillating weights for automatic watches.

STEP 4:  POINTED NOSE VICE! (RENATO) 

Renato decided to have detachable jaws on his pointed nose vice!

STEP 5:  TOOL REPAIRS! (RENATO & DAVID) 

In each Fullskill class we had, we always had at least one screw broken that needed to be machined out due to the very extreme tensions some of them are under, golden lessons!

The plan!

STEP 6:  FINAL CHECKS! (RENATO) 

Renato making final checks in the profile projector on his brass piece soon to be milled to be the pointed nose vice!

STEP 7:  FRIENDS! (ALL) 

Our friends came for a visit and enjoyed the green pastures!

HENRIK's WORDS:

 

Finally, we got some sun! Things are looking brighter now and even our friends came for visit 😊 Very busy week for everyone! Yuriy and Willy will soon leave us and it will be a bit sad, however, we will very soon receive new students! The perfect circle continues! We covered some last aspects of the technician course such as the automatic watch, ball bearing replacement, hand setting, water resistance issues how to deal with different type of cases etc. Yuriy finished one of his side projects, a beautiful pocket watch with a Zodiac movement with blue jewels! Absolutely stunning looking movement! On this project he learned black polishing as well as bluing screws, making bushings to replace the worn ones among many other techniques to make it run with good amplitude and timing ones again, and he even learn how to gold plate, unfortunately the hands he wanted to gold plate did not fit in the end so he had to use the old ones, but at least he learned the process! David and Renato continued machining tools and learn how to extract a broken screw from a tool holder which is always an interesting process!

Willy handed over a unique special commemorative plaque as a token of appreciation of the education he received, what an honourable thing to do! Thank you so much Willy! we will certainly never forget you!

We probably covered more things this week that I already forgot about as the week was so fast! It was an awesome week overall! Have a great weekend everyone!