Cool vibrations

The students in Workshop 2 have been for the last few weeks been working on balances and hairsprings. The students learn how to make a complete hairspring from a rough material and until it can be fitted in to a running watch. There are several different steps that have to be made and many considerations to think about when making a hairspring and it is quite a complicated procedure which requires a lot of practice and skills. In the video below, a hairspring being vibrated can be seen. This is a true classical method of finding the frequency of the hairspring and therefore the correct "speed" of the balance. One of our students has the new iPhone 6 and he recorded this video, using a pretty cool slow-motion feature on his phone.

In our school we accept hairsprings if the two balances are in sync for 30 seconds or more, for a higher precision of the vibrating point and this exact balance stayed in sync with the master balance for more than a minute! It can take several hours to find the correct vibrating point so this procedure can be rather time consuming and often tricky to achieve since it's not that easy to see if your balance is going too fast or too slow compared to the master balance.