February 19, 2008 – 9:01 pm
It’s tuesday and time for Tuesday’s Tools. This week I’ll talk about stones; sharpening stones to be specific. When I was a boy I remember my father having a nice oil stone in his toolbox in a leather pouch which he used to sharpen his tools, and he would let me use if for my [...]
February 18, 2008 – 8:54 pm
When I was in watchmaking school I had access to some of the best lathes made today. We had a Schaublin 70, a Schaublin 102, and 16 Horia lathes all with just about every attachment available. I learned to use them all and I got spoiled. We were manufacturing parts and making our school watch, [...]
February 15, 2008 – 9:13 pm
Some days I feel like a watch repairer or a watch technician. Other days I feel like a real watchmaker. Today was a watchmaker day! Today I worked on a Rolex Caliber 1400. It is a small movement. As you can see from the picture it is smaller than a dime, but it isn’t the [...]
February 14, 2008 – 8:54 pm
Floorology – the art of finding things you’ve dropped on the floor. I’ve been thinking about this post for a while and something I read over on timezone today made be decide to go ahead with it. It is better to drop a part on the table because one didn’t use enough pressure holding it [...]
February 13, 2008 – 9:07 pm
It has been a while since I worked on an ETA 6497, but I did so today and it reminded me how much I like this movement. The 6497 and 6498 began as UNITAS calibers, but when UNITAS became a part of swatch group (through a series of acquisitions) it became an ETA caliber, like [...]
February 12, 2008 – 9:05 pm
Today for Tuesday’s Tools I’ll focus on case tools. These are the tools we use to open and close watch cases. There are many different kinds of case tools. They range from a simple knife to complex steering wheel devices. First, these are the big guns. In the middle is the Rolex 1019, the best [...]
February 11, 2008 – 8:33 pm
Watchmaking demands perfection. Unfortunately that is something which cannot truly be attained. Yet, we strive for it, and we (hopefully) come very close. Watches are not very forgiving. It only takes one piece of lint, or one speck of dust in the wrong place to bring a watch to a grinding halt. You only have [...]
February 8, 2008 – 10:08 pm
Part I With our first exam out of the way we turned to our lathes. Before you can turn on the lathe however, you need sharp gravers. We were given a dozen gravers with beautiful diamond shape lozenge tips and then our instructors took them to the grinding wheel and squared them off. Using only [...]
February 6, 2008 – 9:36 pm
By request, today I will go into more depth on my micromechanics training. To review, I attended the Lititz Watch Technicum. It is a WOSTEP Partner school in Lititz, PA fully funded by Rolex. The first major segment of the training covers micromechanical skills needed for watch repair. Before we ever started working on actual [...]
February 5, 2008 – 10:26 pm
On this Super Tuesday edition of Tuesday Tools I focus on mainspring winders. Why does a watchmaker need mainspring winders, if we always replace the mainspring when we service it? Occasionally when you receive a new mainspring from a supply house it is wound too large to simply “shoot” it into the barrel. When this [...]
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