daydaily

In these days of “fast” and “convenient” I decided to commence a work of “painstaking” and “craftsmanship”, making my own wristwatch.  I have had the idea for a certain arrangement of the watch dial, as on the image at the right, for a while now.  My investigations into available movements showed that no production movement would give me this layout.  After a long period of indecision and wondering what I was really getting myself into I decided to make my own movement, followed by the case and dial.

That is a big jump, but we engineers are used to creating things that didn’t exist before so it was mostly the craftsmanship portion of the work that worried me.  Am I able to do this watchmakers work, work at such a small scale?  To put the chances on my side I decided to do two things:  1) take the watchmaking correspondence course of the BHI, which gave me a lot of the basic skills, but which I have to admit I haven’t even finished the first of three years, and 2) make a complete CAD model of the movement and watch before starting.

My first attempt at making a movement was to make one with all the pinions in a straight line. A simplified movement with the largest possible expansion, to be able to see and work on everything as easily as possible.  Even so that first attempt at a movement was not crowned with success.  But one learns fastest through failure and the attempt to fathom why, despite ones best efforts, things did not go right.  And learn I did.
The following are posts I made to an Internet watchmaking forum describing the advancement of my work during the course of almost a year. From a few square pieces of cold brass to a working movement in a one-of-a-kind case. One of the joys of this work was the constant changes in skillset needed. From machinist to watchmaker to silversmith, etc.. As such the work is never boring, never repetitive, always new challenges and unknowns to be overcome.

The articles below describe the work to make this watch in approximately chronological order starting with cutting the first pieces of brass.  At that time I had already spent about 6 months making a complete 3D CAD model of the movement and case along with production drawings of each piece I was going to make.  Without such complete preparation such a project is doomed to failure from the beginning.  And in spite this preparation, there was still enough that got changed underway or that I discovered that I had forgotten.

I hope that you enjoy following this odyssey into the very esoteric world of watchmaking.

sources : http://web.ticino.com/dcorson/watch/ by : Donald W. Corson, 18.6.2006

first, i want to tell to you all reader that this articles taken from link above, the articles are made by Donald W. Corson, because i am a watch lover, and i apreciate him so much. so this articles are tribute to him and we will update this article as soon as posible.

Related posts:

1. how to identify genuine and fake watches Watches have become a very important symbol of status and...
2. about u-boat watches In the year 1942, the Fontana workshop was poised to...
3. $6000 dollar seiko watches | review A sick thing happens when you are involved with watches...
4. Top 10 Of The World’s Most Expensive Watches A good watch should long outlive its wearer. The great...
5. How to Buy Luxury Watches for Under $500 You may think that it’s impossible to find a brand...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.