VIBRATING/COUNTING & BLUING AND MORE

WEEK 58

Pierre Aubert, James Punshon, Jayne Zhuo

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

Age : 23

Watchmaking class: Technician Course

Current mood: Pierre here!

Really interesting and intensive week! We covered a lot of material. We started repairing hairsprings as well as preparing new hairsprings from scratch in my case. That included preparing new balances, pinning up the hairspring to its collet, vibrating and second counting! More to come next week..! In the meantime, let’s get some rest :) Have a good weekend everyone.

Name: Markus McDonald.
Origin: Stockholm, Sweden. 
Course: 2 years full skill course.
Current mode: This week I focused on preparing for the exam specifically on minimizing my time for two sections that combine for the exam. Making of the body and pivot/ burnish.

Section one went very well as over a couple of trials I was able to bring down from three hours too one hour and twenty minutes whilst producing both a consistent and solid body.

The second part was making the smaller pivot and burnishing it at the dimension of 20 this was not as simple as it required more use of the microscope as even with the ten times making out the details and consistency and quality of once’s application of the technique was harder. Although this was a bit more challenging I was able to improve. In conclusion this week was quiet intense in preparation for the exam as it required a more condensed approach and modifying of tools too meet the requirements.

Michael

Origin : Malaysia

Age : 28

Watchmaking class : 2 years Fullskill Program

Current Mood: Really enjoyed the week. Had fun tempering/bluing and making the pallet fork holder working. The lower spring pushes the upper spring upwards and downwards when it moves along the pivot. Spring hole is intended for using tweezer to micro adjusting the height when moving the spring. Extra or substitute screw type holder will be added for more mobility in the future courses. Looking forward to next week for more of watchmaking.

Alex

Origin : Kaohsiung, Taiwan 

Age : 27

Watchmaking : 2Y Fullskill Program

Current mood: Did a bit of everything this week. The milling machine, the lathe, the drilling machine, ,the 8mm lathe, also tried bluing for the first time. Getting to see the color shift is very interesting and intoxicating. If only I have all the time in the world...

STEP 1: PREPARING HARD METAL HAND GRAVER'S (ALEX)

GRAVER BEFORE 

GRINDING GRAVER

AFTER GRINDING GRAVER

STEP 2: EXPERIMENTING WITH HEAT BLUING (ALEX & MICHAEL)

DIFFERENT HEAT BLUING COLORS ON SOME STEEL TEST PIECES (DISREGARD THE FINISH, THESE ARE ONLY TEST PIECES IN SEARCH OF THE TEMPERATURE THAT GIVES THE DESIRED COLOR).

COLORS AT DIFFERENT TEMPERATURES NOW NOTED DOWN FOR THE REAL PIECES THAT WILL LATER BE MADE.

STEP 3: VIBRATING/COUNTING (PIERRE)

VIBRATING THE OSCILLATOR TO 18000/VPH (2.5 Hz)

 STEP 4: SEARCHING FOR THE CALIBRE (JAMES)

JAMES HAD TO IDENTIFY THE CALIBRE FOR ONE OF HIS VINTAGE MOVEMENT'S IN ORDER TO FIND A BALANCE STAFF FOR IT, USING HERE THE BESTFIT CATALOGUE IDENTIFYING THE PATTERN OF THE WINDING AND SETTING MECHANISM PARTS, BINGO! IT'S A PARRENIN 160.

HENRIK's WORDS:

This week was amazing! So much going on with the student’s projects! Hairsprings adjustments and balances are going really well at the moment, learning to vibrate balance and hairsprings to the correct frequency for the ETA 6498-1 which is 18000 vibrations per hour (half oscillations) or 2.5Hz. The micromechanics course continues to be very creative with practicing bluing and experimenting with shapes. I also had a look at my two marine chronometers I have in my possession to show the students, I got the electric one running for the first time since I got it, thought it would need some serious attention, but I was surprised, it started to run immediately when feeding it with 6 Volt DC (recommended voltage from an article I found online writing about the exact same one I have!) I fed it with my pen plater which can be adjusted from 1-10 Volt, feeling like Frankenstein the moment when the monster started to make noise and move! you can find them on my Instagram, search for;  henrikkorpela. Have a great weekend everyone!