Thursday, July 18, 2013

Levers.

Now that I have passed my SAWTA 2 exam I am taking a break from overhauling and have been manufacturing.  Today I made a small set of hairspring collet levers.  Yesterday I turned out a sharp lever with a plastic handle which is good for popping of case backs.

Monday, July 15, 2013

SAWTA 2

Today I took my SAWTA 2 exam.  It consisted of overhauling a quartz movement and polishing a steel case.   We take the written portion tomorrow and get graded Wednesday. 

The watch movement, before overhaul

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Steel Setting Train Bushing

I have just begun the last quarter of the first year of watch school here at NSCC.  Focus has been working mainly on ETA 255.112 quartz movements.  The biggest challenge there is to learn the precise amounts of the different oils to apply to lubricate the mechanism while not allowing the oil to spread to other parts of the watch. 

I did get a chance to work on a customers watch however, this was an old pin-pallet alarm watch.  The alarm, winding and hand setting were all not working.

To fix the hand setting, which was extremely rough due to wear in the keyless works I needed to bush the first intermediate setting wheel's post.  I decided to go with a steel bushing to prevent future wear on the soft brass underneath.  I took a picture of a few of the steps below.

After drilling the center hole

Hardening the steel tube

The drilling phase

Turning the outside diameter with a carbide cutter

The badly worn original post