Making my own watch

[Ophiuchus]

Paul, looks fantastic so far. Endmills are really not that expensive, cheap ones are only about 8$ USD each, and can go up from there. The smaller they are, the cheaper.
If you did a high quality endmill, solid carbide or even polycrystalline diamond, I can't see you spending more than 25$ each for a bit small enough for normal use in
watchmaking, more realistically 15$ or so for super high end stuff in that size. Really, you don't need that high end stuff- for brass in watchmaking, a good HSS (high speed steel)
or solid carbide bit would be excellent. Normally, you get the best finish from high RPM and slow feedrate, but that creates a lot of surface heat that could warp small or thin parts
in watchmaking- I'd say try a medium RPM with a low feedrate, and multiple back passes for best surface finish with minimal heat distortion.

I'm impressed that you made your own endmill rather than buy one- a nice touch, it looks like it works well.

Sorry I didn't catch your post asking about the ken nagasa- I'll PM you when I get a picture of them- I don't want to disrupt your wonderful thread, but I do like that I found someone
else with a keen interest in Japanese cutlery.

[Paul Loatman]

Paul, looks fantastic so far. Endmills are really not that expensive, cheap ones are only about 8$ USD each, and can go up from there. The smaller they are, the cheaper.
If you did a high quality endmill, solid carbide or even polycrystalline diamond, I can't see you spending more than 25$ each for a bit small enough for normal use in
watchmaking, more realistically 15$ or so for super high end stuff in that size. Really, you don't need that high end stuff- for brass in watchmaking, a good HSS (high speed steel)
or solid carbide bit would be excellent. Normally, you get the best finish from high RPM and slow feedrate, but that creates a lot of surface heat that could warp small or thin parts
in watchmaking- I'd say try a medium RPM with a low feedrate, and multiple back passes for best surface finish with minimal heat distortion.

I'm impressed that you made your own endmill rather than buy one- a nice touch, it looks like it works well.

Sorry I didn't catch your post asking about the ken nagasa- I'll PM you when I get a picture of them- I don't want to disrupt your wonderful thread, but I do like that I found someone
else with a keen interest in Japanese cutlery.

Haha, well i was just trying to come up with any excuse. A better one is that i don't want to wait to get one delivered to me. Seriously though, there is a deeper reasoning for making my own endmill and not just for the sake of it. Making my own end-mills has the same advantage as making my own drill bits, i can make them whatever size i wish, and it really doesn't take long to do, the one i just made must have taken about 10 minutes total. It just feels better to have total control over the tools i use, since i shape them and harden them myself, i know exactly how they should work and that makes it turn out better in the end.

I had to experiment a bit with the spindle speeds and feed rates, but i found high speeds on the spindle with a fairly slow feed rate to work best as you said. I doubt i'll be milling anything other than the pillar plate though, so, i'm not really worried about over-heating. Although, i did take that into consideration with the pillar plate, but only for the endmill, as i didn't want it to overheat and ruin the hardness.

I'll keep an eye out for that message. I'm more interested in nihon-to but most people who make swords also make knives so it's nice to see all the other things they work with.

[Paul Loatman]

I'm currently working on the barrel bridge. This bridge will also hold the second center pinion which will ultimately hold the cannon pinion and show the time, while the actual center wheel which connects with the rest of the train won't have a cannon pinion at all.

Start off with the steel, this is precision ground O1.


Then drill the holes.


Then machine all the recesses.



Then Harden and temper. I don't know why it looks green in the picture, but it was blueish purple in person.


Now, shaped out a bit and fitted on the watch with the barrel. That particular pillar in the picture is too low and is going to be turned down and will be replaced by a steel pillar of the correct height. If you look the bridge looks tilted towards the pillar, but that's only because the pillar is shorter than the other side, when i have the new pillar on it'll fit perfectly.



All that's left is beveling and polishing.

[Paul Loatman]

Made the set lever spring today.

From the precision ground O1 again. Drill some holes, cut it out, shape it a bit, harden and temper it.


Grind it down perfectly flat to the correct thickness.


Finish the shape.


All it needs now is to be polished.

[Paul Loatman]

I was working on various bits and pieces today, i didn't complete anything since everything relies on everything else. I don't design things on a CAD program, or even on paper really, i just do it all in my head as i go along so it's not as simple as making a part and moving onto the next. Right now i only have a vague design of the keyless works setup in my head, i'm pretty positive the design will all fit since most of the difficult stuff has already been done in the "canvass watch", i just don't have all the little details so i have to do various things before other things to make sure it all works properly in the end.

Anyways, enough of my rant, below are some pictures.

The ratchet wheel recess was done a few days ago when i was milling, i went ahead and milled the recess instead of turning it for convenience since i had my lathe already setup for milling and needed to mill some other things later.


Now with the wheels in place, the crown wheel hasn't been placed yet because it won't actually be connected directly to the pillar plate.

[R_Belanger]

Hey Paul, I've been enjoying your post. It's nice to see someone forging ahead with there ideas and succeeding with them.

What did you use to shape the set spring after it was tempered. Diamond files?... what did you use to secure it while you were working on it?

Love the barrel bridge. The design is going to complement the delicate look of your carriage.

[Paul Loatman]

Hey Paul, I've been enjoying your post. It's nice to see someone forging ahead with there ideas and succeeding with them.

What did you use to shape the set spring after it was tempered. Diamond files?... what did you use to secure it while you were working on it?

Love the barrel bridge. The design is going to complement the delicate look of your carriage.

Hi R,

Thanks for the questions and compliments, they're much appreciated. The set spring along with the barrel bridge were both shaped using a small stone cutoff wheel held and turned in my lathe headstock, the set spring (or whatever you want to shape) is held on top of a miniature saw table held in the hand graving tool post, it's quite hard to find these small saw tables, and even harder to find one with the correct size shaft to fit into any random tool post, so i made my own. This method seems almost common sense when you first try it because it works so amazingly well, you can be so accurate in your shaping with it that it could easily be used to make pallet forks and other precision work out of flat stock.

It's described in more detail in the book "Twenty-First Century Watchmaking" Book One by William O. Smith Jr. CMW, CMC. I got the second to last copy that my school had available, the last copy was bought by a friend who was also at the school at the same time, it's difficult to find now as AWI Press (the publisher) no longer has it in stock, but they're working on a softbound version. I'm also not even sure if there's anymore in this series, i believe it may just be "Book one" at least for now.

I would have used this on the tourbillon carriage, but obviously the cutoff wheel is far too large to fit inside the carriage openings. The bridges, on the other hand, were shaped this way.

This technique like a lot of others i've learned has probably been used for as long as lathes and small cutoff wheels existed.

[Paul Loatman]

I've been working on the keyless works and haven't really had much to photograph, but i'll post an update.

Now, since my watch is really quite different from the canvass watch (Unitas 6498/7) the keyless works has an apparently odd setup, but is fundamentally the same. Since my watch has all of the train components visible from the dial side, the pillar plate is on the opposite side compared with the Unitas movement, so in order to keep things simple and easy for assembly and disassembly i made the keyless works pretty much the same way as the Unitas, the parts are held in the same manner, but since the pillar plate is on the opposite side, as i've already mentioned, there had to be something to go under the wind and set pinions to hold the crown wheel, so this is what i came up with.







Note: The set wheel does not rest on the small pillar under it on the picture. That pillar will have a small hole drilled into it for the stem, the set wheel will be held by another means which i will explain in another update.

So far all it needs is the crown wheel recess and it'll be done. One thing that i will add to the keyless works that the Unitas doesn't have will be a steel bridge for the winding stem, this bridge will hold the stem at the right position from just above the set lever, a stem bridge would have been used on high quality pocket watches where wear on the stem area of the plates wanted to be minimized.

[Paul Loatman]

Quick update:

I've been working on engraving.

I've been practicing here and there for the past 2 days.

I just did this, this morning on a brass tweezer.





Would anyone here by chance have any hand engraving experience with any practical advice? I'm using a palm-pushing method which means i don't use an engraving block or vice, i just held the tweezer with my left hand and engraved with my right.

[Paul Loatman]

I just finished shaping the click.

Started with O1 flat stock again.

This is pretty much how they looked after getting cut out of the flat stock. I'm figuring out the positioning of the click first; which you can see on the pillar plate.


Now here's the click being fitted against the ratchet wheel.


Once i got the important part of the click finished the rest was pretty simple. Now here's the click spring being fitted. I gauge the dimensions of these parts by eye so i had to make some brass pins to hold the parts in their exact place while still being easily placed onto the watch and removed.


The important parts of the click spring have been shaped, so after this i hardened them.


Now after hardening, i grind them perfectly flat to the exact thickness i need, then i finish the shape of the click spring.



All they need now is beveling and polishing.

[Paul Loatman]

I finally got back to my watch after a bit of a hiatus. I had to remake a few parts in the set works and here's what i've ended up with so far.


This clutch lever is original and hasn't been remade.


This set lever spring is the second one i've made, i ended up grinding the original down too thin, it may have still worked in the watch but i'd rather not use sub-par parts just for convenience.


The clutch lever (on the left) is another re-make, the first one distorted during quenching.


Most of these parts still need tempering and their final shapes given.

Now for an interesting part which will end up adding another jewel to the watch, making this now a 20 jewel movement. The set wheel is from the canvas watch, but i had to modify it to fit the jewel, the jewel is snuggly fit and requires a bit of force to remove, but isn't a real friction fit.




I bought a new tool recently as well, i'll get pictures of it when i receive it, it's a very rare thing.

Also, here's something to freak you guys out. It wandered onto my bench a couple of weeks ago and i kept it for a few hours, i also fed it a bit of melon, then let it go outside. It's the strangest insect i've seen in person before. It eats with the long needle-like protrusion that it has extended towards the melon in the picture. Maybe someone here can identify it?

[Ophiuchus]

I bought a new tool recently as well, i'll get pictures of it when i receive it, it's a very rare thing.

You peaked my curiosity yet again. Is it, maybe....
An Ingold's Fraise? Oh, I hope so.

I can't wait to see what you found.
Insect is strange. Can't say what it is- never seen anything like it.

Your work is progressing nicely.

[Paul Loatman]

I bought a new tool recently as well, i'll get pictures of it when i receive it, it's a very rare thing.

You peaked my curiosity yet again. Is it, maybe....
An Ingold's Fraise? Oh, I hope so.

I can't wait to see what you found.
Insect is strange. Can't say what it is- never seen anything like it.

Your work is progressing nicely.

Not an Ingold Fraise, i wish, but i haven't seen one of those for sale before, other than the one posted on the thread about them, which was already sold. It is, however, similar to an Ingold Fraise, it'll help me tremendously with finishing, finishing of screws to be exact. It's a screw polisher, it can polish the head, the sides of the heads, and even the tips of screws. Mine is made by Lorch, Schmidt & Co., same with my 6mm lathe, i'm not sure if anyone else made these.

Here it is in the box. It's missing a few collets but i can make collets like this easily, although i doubt i'll have to, despite missing a few, it's still a good selection of sizes.


Here's a shot showing the polishing disks. In order of the polishing process it goes from steel, brass, then wood.


Here's the main part of the tool, the drawbar sort of thing rests into the arms of the base, which has to be held by a vise, the drawbar spins freely but very accurately.


Now, these are used to polish the tips, you hold the screw in these brass holders with the threaded shaft securing the screw from the head side.



Here's one of the collets, it's held in another steel collet which is on the drawbar.


Finally, here are some shots of a screw head being polished, it's just the top of the head, but i went through the whole process fairly quickly and it polished it surprisingly well.

The steel disk.


This is the screw after the steel disk.


Here it is after the brass disk.


Here it is after the wood disk.


The screw isn't perfect, but i didn't spend much time on each process, if i were doing this on screws that i plan on using in my watch i would take the extra time, of course.

Also, here's how the sides of the head can be polished. The portion which holds the polishing disks can swivel which allows the side of the disks to be used against the sides of the screw head.




Here's also some more of my watch. This is a bridge that covers the set and minute wheel, it holds the pivot for the set wheel, but only holds the minute wheel down. This is obviously not finished yet.

[Ophiuchus]

Paul, that is a fascinating device. And strange that I was about to start making a screw polishing jig, the kind used by Jere.

I'd much rather make something like this instead- it even polishes the rounds.

Could you post more pictures of it? I'm thinking a foot treadle powered version could be nice.

[Reparatheure]

Hi. This tool is really usefull, but not so rare as said.
Boley made these type of tool in a bigger assortment including a D lathe bed mount.

(PS: Sorry for my english which is not so precise as my job... )