Making of a wooden watch

by **Daniele Sabbatini** » Fri Feb 21, 2014 4:28 pm

Hi, i would like to open tis thread with a presenting myself.
I'm Daniele (for those of you that don't know it, this is a masculine name) from Fermo (a small but very interesting and historical city in the center of Italy). I'm 19 years old and I'm a surveyor student. How I became interested in watches or more specifically in watchmaking...? Well it's a long long story. All started at the age of seven when, at school my teacher teached us how to read the hour from a timepiece dial. My nature is of a person who wants to know many things. So i wanted to know what was that moved the watch hands. So i took my watch ( a cheap quartz watch) and i've disassembled it and tried to understeand how it was working and then riassembled it with success because it's running still today! So i got enthused by timekeepers for a while. Then somehow, i forgot about horology and got interested in many other things such as telescopes, photography, biology... At the age of 17, i watched a video in youtube about cookoo clock making. Watching all this gears, gave me back this hidden great passion for horology. Than, as you know, on youtube there are releated videos and i saw that there was one that was speaking about mechanical watches. This video ( a Hamilton watch company video that is very popular) magnified my passion. So i made a decision: "I want to make a watch!" But there is the first problem.....I can't work metal!! How am i going to make a watch without knowing how to work metal ? The only material that i can work with is wood. Why? Well because i come from a 3 generation carpenter tradition and also of luthiery background (the luthier is my job). Since i was 4 i played with wood.. so i have skills with such material. Then, while thinking on these matters, it came to my mind:" and if i make a wooden watch? Is it possible to do this?" So i made some researches on the Internet about wooden watches. So it came out that in 19th century Russia, some carpennters called Bronnikov, started to make wooden pocket watches. And so this gave me a great imput. Then, visiting other pages, i came to visit pages that where speaking about another carpenter that turned into this other form of craftmanship. His name is Valerii Danevych member of the AHCI from Kiev. He made and is making very fine watches and clocks out of wood and his timepieces are fully working since 2005. He made the world's first tourbillon also the flying version and the first retrograde time. So i started to practice with some different woods. I spend 2 entire years making pieces just for improving my craft. And now i'm having very good resoults. The woods that i'm using are: Olive wood for all the gear train, all the balance assembly and for the screws; Maple for the decorative parts and for the bridges; Iroko for pivots and some pinions; Snake-wood for the balance roller and palletts jewels; Lignum vitae or guaiacum for the jewels bearings and Bamboo for some small screws, pins and for some small pivots. Then i'm going to use bone for the barrel arbour and for the ratched wheel of the stop work.
To show you some pictures of the works, i should need to know how to post pictures. Can you please tell me how to do it?
My ispiration comes from 3 grat masters: John Harrison, Abram Louis Breguet and George Daniels. So the design of my watch, has some features from the works of these 3 masters.

Hope i've not been boring.

Thanks for attention,
sincerely,
Daniele J. Sabbatini

by **Daniele Sabbatini** » Sun Feb 23, 2014 10:25 am

This link is of a video that i've made some month ago about my works
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r8dkzwPhYM. Many things are changed since this video.. Hope you enjoy it
If you want to see more things, please visit my youtube profile http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-3hyUw ... ture=watch

Greetings, Daniele

by **Daniele Sabbatini** » Wed Feb 26, 2014 2:57 pm

Hi all,
i want to share my latest video concerning wooden watchmaking. It's about black ploshing wood. It might sound odd but it's possible. Just watch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrvLanr1r-k

Cheers

Daniele S.

by **Daniele Sabbatini** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 12:30 pm

Hi there, i'm at the moment making the balance cock, b. cock regulator and the Breguet's parachute spring. Here there are some photos
The balance cock in maple
The regulator in olive wood
[URL=http://www.imagestime.com/show.php/930632_018800x6002.jpg.html]

The b. cock screw

The parachute spring in olive wood

The spring need to be finished.
Some other works:
The center wheel, the balance wheel, the Daniels' co-axial escapement and finally the grar train. All of this is olive wood

Hope you enjoy it

Cheers
Daniele

by **Daniele Sabbatini** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 5:04 pm

Hi guys new photos!
So i'm near to finish the balance cock in it's completeness.

Notice the black-polish finish (i've posted a video on how i achieve this). And there it is almost complete.

That is all for now

Cheers,
Daniele

by **Daniele Sabbatini** » Thu Mar 20, 2014 4:58 pm

Hi there this is my latest work:
I've black-polished the regulator and the screws.
Here is the video of the finished product
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frOWq--C ... e=youtu.be

Regards,

Daniele J.S.

Daniele Sabbatini · by **Daniele Sabbatini** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 10:17 am

Many things have changed since the last time wrote here. Here are some photos
So..let's open the box and let's see

Here some bridges

...and here a set of hands..yes! they are made from wood! (of course they are to be finish)

here after painting

Then the plates

then one pinion

the moon phases wheel made from olivewood

And finally the dial ring made from maple

See you soon!

Paul Loatman · by **Paul Loatman** » Mon Jul 21, 2014 6:20 pm

Hi Daniele,

This is very interesting stuff. I've seen Danevych's watches so i know it's possible to make a completely wooden watch, but it's still hard to believe.

Something i've been wondering though is; are you cutting out the gear teeth by hand or using a gear cutter? I'm not sure if you have the resources to do so, but buying a small lathe with a good set of attachments would help you massively if you're not already using one.

Anyway, i hope you continue to post your work here, it reminds me a lot of my own work, except of course in wood.

Daniele Sabbatini · by **Daniele Sabbatini** » Fri Sep 05, 2014 10:41 am

Hi Paul, sorry if I reply after so long... No, I'm cutting the gear teeth by hand. Hope in the future, if I will continue with watchmaking, to use some cutters. And you know, I should buy a lathe because I'm using a DREMEL...

Best regards for your project too

Sincerely,

Daniele S.