Homecoming

The quarter repeater in all it's glory

Henrik's new toys

Henrik purchased a Billodes (aka Zenith) quarter repeater pocket watch and a Cyma full calendar wrist watch for the students to repair in the near future.  The quarter repeater was built in Le Locle where the Billodes factory used to be located.  The watches are in working conditions, but still need a lot of work done to make them perfect.

Theren milling the prototype escape wheel.

Lining up the cutter to the correct angle for the escape wheel

Hand filing the spokes of the wheels

Theren continues to work on his escape wheel.  He was able to finish the brass prototyping this week and has started on the real steel piece.  He has to do some minor modifications to the cutters he made, and now things look to be promising.

Shuai trying out different techniques to prevent bending

Shuai is working on the winding stem and as we all know, the bending from the heat treatment has caused the students the most trouble in the past.  Shuai has developed a new technique to try and overcome this obstacle.  He made a special tool to hold the stem and avoid bending.  The experimentation is still in progress.

Eddie working on burnishing pivot gauge pivots

Tomas disassembling his Russian watch

Tomas has finished his escapement exercises and has started working on his own watch repairs.  He started with a Russian Slava watch and from the design of it, it is nothing like the Swiss counter part.  He has another Swiss pocket watch which he need to make a swan neck for.  The original is gone forever, so he will need to do some research and design a new "original".

Simone finishing up his escapement exercises

Felix trying out assembling and disassembling different movements

This week we also hosted a new bench tester coming in from Oxford, England.  His name is Felix and he has already fell in love with watchmaking, and the school!