Fresh meat!

Eddie working the drilling machine

We have a new addition to our wolf pack, Eddie. He is from China. He has started making the tools the other students started on 4 months ago. We hope Eddie likes Le Locle and settles in soon.

Eddie taught how to use the profile projector

Theren and Tomas has moved on from winding stems to pivot gauge. To graduate from the winding stems they had to make 6 glorious looking stems.

Theren's 6 glorious winding stems

The process of getting there

The students learned the new way to turn, between centers. It takes while to get used to because there is less room to work in. They are honing their turning skills by turning blue steel with high speed steel gravers(they are probably sharpening more than they are cutting).

Tomas checking his pivot gauges

Theren turning between centers

Tools of all kinds

Tomas cleaning the winding stems and Simone turning his first winding stem

This week our students continued black polishing their 6 glorious winding stems.  Henrik taught the students how to turn between centers so that the stems can be polished without any wobble.  The students even tried using different materials combined with diamond paste to achieve the best polishing effect.

Theren polishing his winding stem between centers

On Tuesday we had a visit from a representative of Bergeon.  He showed them the new products of 2015, from new screw drivers to watch analyzers.  We can only say that Bergeon makes some pretty good looking tools.  The students really enjoyed to have a visit from someone in the tool industry come and talk to them.  It was nice of the representative to give us some sample to play with.

The representative from Bergeon showing the students a new silicon pad

The samples given to the school

The students set up a photography tent to take sexy photos of their finished tools. From now on we will be able to provide professional looking photos of students' accomplishments.

picture of the students' tools scattered

Top: Simone
Middle: Theren
Bottom: Tomas

Welcome Back

Hope everyone had a great holiday! The students had a well-deserved break, but are also happy to be back!  The first week is always about getting back into the hang of things.  To ease the struggle, Henrik introduced the students to the art of polishing.  The goal was to black polish a ratchet wheel to perfection.  It is harder than it sounds.  Some people even say the weather affects the result.  And the weather has been bad all week...

Theren trying out the new polishing skill

Simone polishing away

The students continued their mission to make 6 gloriously looking winding stems.  It is a lot of work to achieve that goal especially with Henrik's standards.

Tomas perfecting his winding stems

To make things interesting, Henrik also showed them another way to thread holes by using a staking set.  This method is used to thread smaller holes usually.

Henrik showing the students how to thread using the staking tool