"WINTER" IS HERE!

"WINTER" IS HERE

Week 31

Harman Wadhwa 

Origin : New Delhi, India

Age : 28

Watchmaking class : 8 month Service & Technician course

Current mood : My Hair spring exam result was good, now I am working on chronograph and side by side pushing my pending work. Hectic days ahead as my final exam is before the winter vacation. See you next week. :)

Pierre Aubert

Origin : Toulouse, France

Age : 23

Watchmaking class : 2Y Fullskill Program

Current mood: I finished the raw stocks for my pivot gauges and learned burnishing, a skill I need to practice a lot in order to deliver quality pivot gauges. Burnishing is really interesting and satisfying. Unlike other areas of watchmaking, theory is not of much help once you have the right set-up. Instead, practice and only practice is the key. I finally managed to get some decent results, and this was only achieved by fine tuning my reading of what was happening on the pivot as well as the minor differences "felt" during the burnishing process. It is a lot about reading and feeling what is happening. I look forward to practicing more and improving this beautiful and rare skill. 

Markus McDonald 

Origin : Stockholm Sweden 

Age : 20

Watchmaking class: 2 years Fullskill Program

Current mood : This week was focused on expanding and improving the techniques of the lathe, being split between techniques for both manual and machine. Although both techniques had similarities the manual technique was the most challenging to begin with as it required maintaining a straight file whilst holding the piece and filling simultaneously, however after several attempts I was able to get a hang of it and improve the finish and consistency greatly. The second approach which was the machine was more straight forward as after setting it up with the lathe and the guard the only focus was on the filling. 

in conclusion after much trail and error I was able to get a hang of it and improve tremendously on both techniques. 

Alex

Origin : Kaohsiung, Taiwan 

Age : 26

Watchmaking : 2Y Fullskill Program

Current mood: Nothing special happened to me. Been filling for 8 days straight now. No more, no more...

STEP 1: BURNISHING! (PIERRE)

STEP 2: INTRODUCTION TO BURNISHING! (Harman)

Burnishing of pivots

STEP 3: BALANCE WHEEL HOLDER (ALEX)

HENRIK's WORDS:

I can feel the winter is knocking on the door! This morning I even had some snow on my car, but nothing too fancy, I am actually looking forward to see some snow as it lightens up the day a bit, I have been busy with a lot of different work; got to show Pierre and Harman how to burnish pivots in the Jacot tool thats always very exciting! Alex continued with his balance support tool, its coming along very nicely! Markus is progressing well with learning to first hand file squares and also guided in the lathe so that he can later make the squares on the winding stems. I also started to prepare for the next upcoming restoration class which I think will be very exciting for the students as I have prepared some interesting examples for them to analyze regarding gear train problems as well as how to deal with old hairsprings in restoration, Oh! and I also got celebrated again by the team here for my BHI Felloship! And got some nice presents! its like the celebrations never ends :) I also forgot to mention; but last week I had a really nice visit of 5 watchmakers from Spain who where very passionate and may come in the future to take various short courses. Have a great weekend to all and see you next week!

Nice visitors from Spain!

The celebration continues, thank you everyone!