Armin Strom and start to prepare for final exam

We are going to have our final exam week at the end of February, so it's about time we start to prepare the oral practice every morning, and to train ourselves do quality service as well as quantities. Meanwhile prepare most of the tools we may use during the final exam, also for future works.

This week we are very glad to have Armin Strom team come to our school for two days specialized course, as well as sharing various ideas about finishing and decoration in watchmaking. What a wonderful experience, passionate and fun at the same time!

Claude (left) and his Armin Strom team with Henrik (right)

Hand lever from Sif, with nice polish.

Our photo studio in the school.

School watch from CJ, with classical bimetal cut balance with blue steel Breguet hairspring. Will do final finishing after final exam.

Busy week we had...

This week we had some interesting projects but also we had a bench tester (Alex) that surprisingly is from Taiwan, maybe he will continue the Taiwanese legacy here in the school in the next group, then it would be 3 groups in a row with someone from Taiwan.

The work we did this week will be better shown in pictures...

Alex the next Taiwanese legacy (Hopefully) 

Stan copying a minute jumper in the profile projector which he needs to remake 

Here's his drawing of the minuet jumper

Here we have a tiny little hair that was messing up the timing in the dial down position but no other positions, so if your timing doesn't make any sense make sure you check your incabloc! 

Stan's bridal rivet that he did this week 

Yiting was cutting a wheel for her school watch.

Let's make sure that you will get the same position back!

This is an old cannon pinion (lower one) that Yiting used as a reference, she made a smaller one from the older one that fitted better in her school watch.

Here she is finding the center distance of the cannon pinion and the wheel that she was cutting before.

Yiting at her work.

CJ making some magic for the school watch.

Sif is making some levers to be able to lift the hairspring collet higher up on the balance staff to fit it better under the bridge. 

Back to school

Happy new year, hope everyone had a nice holiday. After this last vacation, it's nice to see the snowy Le Locle, now we're one step closer to the final exam and graduation. So this week everyone was working pretty hard to pick up what ever was left from last year and find our pace back.

But this is also the period of the year that people get sick easily, beside one student we all catch a cold, that didn't do us any help to our job at all. :(    Take care guys !

Stan is doing a re-pivoting on a 4th wheel of his watch restoration.

The result looks very nice.

Jig boring is playing a super big role behind our school watch part.

Timing of the watch is very time consuming.

Refresh the drill can make sure the hole we drill will be nice and clean.

It's Winter Break!

The temperature drops right before our vacation, and we had a cheese fondue to wrap up the year.
As usual, we had a deep cleaning of the whole school before break. We are ready for our vacation, and wish everyone safe and sound during the break. See you next year :)











Finally, some of our works this week. Enjoy

CJ annealing the regulator back to normal carbon steel for easier machining.

Choose the proper Phillips curve according to the bridge.

Stan re-pivoting his restoration project.

One more week to the winter break

This week we try to finish as much of our project as possible, because our last winter break in school is coming. Waiting for us ahead is the final exam, time really flies by. :( 
let's check the pictures of what we are working at.

Last weekend the previous student Joe came for the finishing course. It's nice to have him here and we also had a chance to have dinner together with him. Thank you Joe, and all the best.

Yi-Ting is modifying the centre wheel to fit the snail cam into it. 

The challenge is to drill the hole through the whole pivot. The steel is very hard and she couldn't do the drilling in one shot because the hole burnished very easily. She had to drill a bit, clean, and remove the burnish with various compounds. It,s really time consuming. 

Stan accidentally break the fourth wheel pivot, and is a good chance to practice re-pivoting. 

Forth wheel with broken pivot.

After drilling a hole. After this, he still have to prepare the pivot to fit in the hole.

Very busy week for the lathes.

Balance before losing weight. CJ is preparing the bimetal balance for his prototyping, compare with 6498 it is way to heavy, so he has to do some filing to lose some the weight and make it look nice.

Balance after losing weight and some finishing.