Cover well !

A shiny example of good watchmaker housekeeping habits. Always cover your components at the end of the day or have dust and other contaminations infiltrate your parts.

Mysterious projections ..

Henrik was being camera shy when this picture was taken. And he claims he needs a haircut ? Metrosexuals and their vain-ness ! 

Anyway, what was he doing ? He was trying to measure a component on the profile projector. Profile projectors are very important in watchmaking. Without them, its almost like driving in the dark without headlights. Not only can you trace outlines of components accurately on the profile projector, you're also able to do accurate measurements. This is a rather important machine for restoration as well as sometimes, you just can't get spare parts for 100 yr old watches and you need to make some parts from scratch. Profile projectors are godsends then ! 

UPDATE : Fullskill course 2012 intake

So far, there have been more than 20 Full skill applicants. 

There are only 4 places for the 2012 Full Skill watchmaking course but as of today, we have only given out 4 bench test placements.

If all 4 candidates pass their bench test, then the 2012 intake would be FULL. 

However, due to the overwhelming enquiries from interested students, we may increase the intake to 6 but that is a BIG "if".

Or you could bribe one of the lucky 4 to swap places secretly ... *wink *

What a little love can do ....

It was an old watch. 

He came to Switzerland to learn restoration. 

He wanted to do something for her. 

She was his first love. 

And this was his first time away from home .... 

He dedicated his first restoration project to his wife ... 

And this was what came forth .... 

Does anyone know what this movement is or where it came from ?

The school always stock up old pocket watch movements and when we buy them, they often come in batches of about 20 - 100 pieces per box. Anyway, occasionally, we get a few movements in the bunch which we just cannot identify. Does anyone know where this one came from ? Its got pretty high-end finishing in some places like circular perlage etc etc .....

German silver

German silver is an alloy made up of Copper, nickel and Zinc. Most high-end watches are made with this alloy. Even though the namesake suggests that there is silver, in reality, there is actually none contained. The school teaches restoration and often, some of the movements we get are more than 50 years old, so basically, we can't just call the watch company up to order spare parts like we do with ETA movements. What do we do ? We build them from scratch ! And german silver and brass are the usual suspects !

For more information about German, go and read it in Wikipedia ! Of course ! The link is here.

Brass on the left and German Silver on the right.

German silver on the right. Its silvery appearance caused the metal to be called German silver even though there is no silver present in the alloy at all.

We sandblasted and coated this with Black Rhodium.

This is not finished yet but yeah, you get the idea. Ha ha. Its not that we have too much time on our hands but we really needed to do something cool and fun once in a while ..