BOOKS & ESCAPEMENTS!

 WEEK 201

Team A

Origin: Sweden, The Philippines & Taiwan

Name: Daniel, Miguel, & David

Watchmaking class: Fullskill

Current mood: n/a

Team B

Origin: Japan/Switzerland & Canada

Name: Tetsu & Dean

Watchmaking class: Fullskill 

Current mood:

This week, (6-10 February) Tetsu and Dean worked on their seven movements, including the assembly of barrels, truing train wheels, and end shakes of those wheels.

Dean earned his first repair service points this week by overhauling a Rolex GMT-Master II, including the replacement of the oscillating weight axle.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Tetsu & Dean

Team C

Origin: Switzerland, Norway & USA

Name: Renato, David, Francesco, Åsmund & Robert

Watchmaking class: Fullskill 

Current mood:

This week I successfully took the last exam (hairspring) before the final exam, i.e. before graduation. Now only smaller things are left to do, mainly finishing the hairspring part on the standard movements we work on. Also, I need to finish the work on several vintage chronographs of mine. Looking forward to reach the end of the 2 year program and then have more flexibility in time/task planning for my own projects afterwards. Well, I guess it'll get busy before that...!

-Renato

We missed contributing to the blog last week because of the best of circumstances:

We were at Mr. Simonin's bookstore!

He was also kind enough to give some in-depth insights on various movements he had on display. It was an opportunity to learn from decades of learning and acquired knowledge, this was a rare chance to get exposure to history and types of movements that would be hard to match anywhere else..and then we got to pick books off his shelves for our own reference libraries.  We look forward to these visits!

At school this week, the 3 of us were doing practice exams on escapement systems. (Getting practice under the constraint of time.)

Local weather news: Gorgeous sunny days, it takes until noon to get above freezing after evenings that sometimes have temperatures into negative centigrade double-digits. Our snow is s-l-o-w-l-y disappearing.

-Robert

Team D

Origin: Finland

Name: Xinying

Watchmaking class: Technician

Current mood:

This week I continued Swiss lever escapement course and had two practice test for it that went quite well. I will take the real trst next weekly and I am feeling happy with my progress. I also made couple tools to make work easier with the movements.

-Xinying 

STEP 1: BOOKS & ESCAPEMENTS! (EVERYONE)

We had the good fortune to visit Mr. Simonin in the right moment as he had prepared a nice presentation of historical escapements, this was really very interesting and we all went home inspired and in awe! Thank you so very much Mr. Simonin for taking the time to inspire all of us!!

Here you can find the horological bookstore of legendary Mr. Simonin: https://www.booksimonin.ch/home.php

This new book about the watch industry was highly recommended! Its written by the co-founder of De Bethune, a watchbrand we all are fans of!

STEP 2: THE OSCILLATOR! (RENATO & DAVID)

David L. and Renato did some more balance and hairspring (oscillator) trial exams and Renato also decided to take the real balance/hairspring and timing exam!

STEP 3: DIGITAL MECHANICAL WATCHES! (RENATO)

Renato enjoyed this cool watch for the week!

STEP 4: ESCAPEMENTS! (XIN, ROBERT, ÅSMUND & FRANCESCO)

Xin, Robert, Francesco and Asmund were very busy making as many escapement trial exams as possible before the real one which could happen already next week!

STEP 5: TOOLS! (DAVID, MIGUEL & DANIEL)

Daniel, David & Miguel worked on their tools!

STEP 6: SUNSHINE! (EVERYONE)

We had wonderful sunny views when working this week!!

HENRIK's WORDS:

 

The entire week was sunshine!!! Nice and crispy in the morning and beautiful views when working during the day! Francesco, Asmund, Robert and Xin did a couple of escapement trial exams! Daniel, David and Miguel continued making their tools! Renato and David L. continued timing movements and Renato also took the real exam while David will take his next week! Tetsu and Dean continued with the geartrain, completing as much of the excercises as possible before starting to take trial exams probably next week! We also went to Mr. Simonin's bookstore: https://www.booksimonin.ch/home.php  we were very lucky as he had just completed a display of rare historical watches with exotic and experimental escapements from the history of horology!! It was a very exciting and inspiring week! Have a nice weekend everyone!