The Watchmaker's Ball ...

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Check this out. Click here to read all about it !


What is this about ?


Apparently, this is a ball for Watchmakers. It promises to be and i quote " is a party for an industry that knows how to have fun. "


And its only 250 Francs and its in a pretty dam cool location. 


Is anyone going ?


And oh yeah, they have a facebook page in French and English. They also have a youtube video clip !


Facebook page is here.


Youtube introductory clip is here.

Should we have our own video clip ?

We were contemplating a short and simple video to promote watchmaking and the school so we made a quick search online, but nothing much came up. At least nothing much came up in English. And a quick search on youtube mainly turned up 2 clips made by St Paul's College in the US. Click here and here for the 2 clips. Oh, we also found a clip made by a Malaysian TV channel promoting the Nicholas Hayek Watchmaking school in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Click here but be warned, its in mandarin.

Where does that leave us ??? Yeah, we might have to make our own. Should we ?

Lacquering

We all know about enamel, guilloche and engraved dials but lacquer dials are rarer. Take a look at how they do it on a Seiko Ananta. Click here. Absolutely beautiful. 

But the problem would be finding the people who can do lacquering. Its an art form practiced by only a few and from the little research i did on the internet, it seems the Japanese are the more well known experts around. Look at this article on lacquered pens here.

Like it or not, a well made watch is only as nice as it looks. So, even if you have the finest finished piece made but it just looks horrible, no one is going to want to wear and appreciate it. 

we really have a BIG big school ...

Well, WOSTEP has a website with some really nice pictures. The Hayek School in Miami has a really cool facebook page ( which we are going to have as well ! ). Lititz has an awesome looking school. 

Anyway, don't we all love a little competition ? 

So here we go, we have a cool lab-like school !! 

 Classroom 1 : Henrik's teaching bench is housed here.

Our hallway 

Lecture room

Lathe works in Classroom 1

A typical 2nd year student's desk

Classroom 2 : 4 more benches are on the way. This is where Robert sits. 

Our Schaublins. We stress its PLURAL. We have more than one.

Student @ work on one of the Schaublins

Hallway again but from the 2nd level entrance.

We are so pretentious ! We just had to make the classrooms look cooler. Oh, if you look at the empty space on the right side of the picture, thats where we might put our own macro photo studio. We are lucky to have a professional photographer come down and set it up for us soon in June, so we're hoping the students will be posting some really cool pictures soon after.

Here is the main hall again. The table on the right is for our meals. We also have a Wii, Playstation and all you can drink beer. ( No we don't ! But we are working on it ! )

If you're sitting down at the meal table, this is what you see. On the room, left side, is where we place most of the bigger machines. The room in the middle is the Principal's private room. ( Henrik isn't usually in there because he's usually at his teacher's desk though ) And the room on the right is the Lecture room. There's a well stocked library in there as well. Its mainly modern books but there are a few old books as well. And when we say its well stocked, its very very well stocked. It costs the school a fortune to stock the library !

Say hi !!

The crew at KHWCC .... 

 The Korpelians ....

Left to right : Icelandic Cyclops, Wei-man, The real KGB, Tom yam goong, Stranger, Our Great Leader

Alrightey ... behave yourselves ...
Left to right : Robert Michelsen, He Wei, Olga, Oh, Phillipe, Henrik Korpela

Is this Japanese or chinese made ?

I saw this from a Japanese watch tool supplier at their website here.

It looks pretty cool and very well made. 

Anyone has used one of these before ?

Autodesk Inventor .. Great software for prototyping ...

AutoDesk Inventor

Here's another great tool for aspiring Independents. Its the AutoDesk Inventor software. Its essentially a 3D CAD/CAM programme but the great thing about the Inventor is that it is able to run simulations. Think about the benefits ! You could design a movement, put the dimensions through Inventor and make it run virtually. You would not need to spend 3 months actually building the parts to know if one thing or another is going to jam up.

And you can't go wrong if Ulysse Nardin uses it for quick prototyping. Read the article here.

And the BEST part. 

There is a FREE trial for students ! Click here for details.

Hey there ! Calling ALL watchmaking students ! This is something in ENGLISH and its free for us to try out !!