THE INDESCRIBABLE.....INDESTRUCTIBLE! NOTHING CAN STOP IT! WATCHMAKING

WEEK 50

Pierre Aubert, James Punshon, Jayne Zhuo

Origin : Sydney, Australia. Toulouse, France. Singapore.

Age : 23

Watchmaking class: Technician Course

Current mood: Pierre here! Very intense week! We are now working from home...! Every one has set up their own little workshop at home and hope to keep moving forward with the program as usual! Jayne, James and I had to cover lots of theory earlier this week in order to be able to work independently from home. We covered as much as possible of the Swiss lever escapement theory! But we can now practice from home and follow the program remotely without falling behind. Stay safe and healthy everyone! See you next week. PS: This Friday was my first day of micro-mechanics at home- I initiated things by burnishing pivot gauges.

Markus McDonald 

Origin : Stockholm Sweden 

Age : 21

Watchmaking class: 2 years Fullskill Program

Current mood : This week I focused on continuing my pivot gauge aiming to make a piece that is within tolerance and includes all aspects. This was quiet hard as it demanded much trial and error as doing it needs a lot of focus as making the full pivot gauge needs precision to a thousand of tolerance but also the full piece required an intense degree of precision to the final section of the pivot being an even smaller pivot that can even be a 9 to a thousand. 

Additionally, we had to pack our equipment for the apartments as the coronavirus was becoming more and more intrusive being not only a danger to our work but also distracting.

Towards the end of the week we decided to move our equipment and work too home, not only would this reduce our risk of getting sick and spreading in school it would also be a good experiemnt to see how one could set up a workshop anywhere. We packed our equipment up and since I had some micromechanics in combination with the lathe and notes I found myself bringing a lot of things back so I could work efficiently from home. I proceed to fine-tune it and have to make some alterations to achieve the right height with my lathe and organization on my bench.

In conclusion, even though circumstances forced us too relocate too our apartments I found that it hasn't altered my work passed the expected change in efficency and although this change might have us working out of our apartments for a couple of weeks It hasn't disrupted my course as much as I predicted as the work that I will be doing is very much possible from any locations.

Michael

Origin : Malaysia

Age : 28

Watchmaking class : 2 years Fullskill Program

Current Mood : Despite the Corona virus, all of the students managed to set up their own home workshop. This is just my cosy place to work. The vacuum clamp doesn’t seem to hold to well and modification is required. 

Alex

Origin : Kaohsiung, Taiwan 

Age : 27

Watchmaking : 2Y Fullskill Program

Current mood: The corona virus is getting out of hand now. To insure we don't get infected and infect the others, we have decided to move the part of the bench home and will start working from home for at least the next two weeks. Setting a proper work space in a living environment is a bit tricky, the dust and everything. But it all turned out nicely and is very comfortable to work in. The only down side is that I have to pay extra attention and efforts to keep the surrounding clean, wouldn't want to step on the metal dust and chips after all. Well, that's it for me. Look forward to the days of not having to commute to school!!!

STEP 1: WORKING FROM HOME (PIERRE)

Pierre working on pivot gauges.

STEP 2: NEW WORK ENVIRONMENT (JAYNE)

STEP 3: READY FOR WINDING STEMS!  (ALEX)

STEP 4: MAKING PIVOT GAUGES FROM HOME (MARKUS)

HENRIK's WORDS:

So the virus situation did change really quickly as I suspected it would. So in alignment with recommendations from the government we setup home workshops for the period and are in contact through skype and WhatsApp. It’s a good experience for all of us, as we never know when something like this can happen again. From this move, we have at least one experience from changing to another workplace, which is our home in this case! Luckily watchmaking is such a profession its rather easily possible to do anywhere and takes little space, for most things we have to do as watchmakers, a small room is sufficient with one suitcase of the essential watchmaking tools. As I have an individual and modular program the students are practicing on the part of the program that only require hand tools and smaller watchmakers’ lathes, ones this is over we will resume the other parts of the program. During these trying times stay positive, healthy and safe!