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Making a Watch by Hand - Top - Previous
- Only fools will go… step 9 - Finishing up. This has been a long saga, but now the
final result is on the table and I am very satisfied. It has been a lot of
work and many hours, but the result is everything I was hoping for. Before
going through the last steps to finish the watch, here a sneak preview of the
finished product.
The last steps have been very time
consuming. Especially making the dial. You remember the first dial I made, in
brass and then rhodium plated. It is just too shiny. So after taking a good
look in all the watchmaking texts I have, mostly the Daniels, of course, I
decided to try making a bleached silver dial, bleached silver being white.
The “bleaching” is a simple heat treatment with subsequent bathing in a
dilute acid solution to remove any oxidation. But before doing this I need to solder the dial feet on the back of the dial. To tell the truth, the pictures below are of my third attempt at making a silver dial. In the first the feet were placed wrong and I ruined the dial while unsoldering them. For the second attempt I drilled shallow blind holes in the back of the dial to position the dial feet. They were then positioned OK, but after bleaching the silver you could see little dark spots where the copper feet were soldered on from the back. I guess that during the heating to bleach the copper was leaching in to the silver. In any case it was not pretty and I had to start over. To put all the chances on my side I made a jig to hold the feet while soldering and used silver for the feet. No possibility for the positioning holes to be too deep and/or for copper feet to cause discoloring. Here is the dial blank and the positioning jig holding the feet.
With the feet well attached, using medium
temperature silver solder, I could commence bleaching the surface. In the
picture I have a copper wire to hold the dial and lower it into the acid,
after it has cooled. I discovered, however, that the copper was oxidizing
much more than the silver and polluting my acid solution leaving particles
that stuck to the dial surface. So I soon went to moving the dial using only
pegwood, which is unaffected by the acid solution. Several bleaching and
pickling cycles were necessary to get an even white color over the whole
surface. But even the pegwwod seemed to be leaving discoloration so I went to
using a piece of thick plastic line to suspend the dial in the acid. That
worked. And be sure to allow the piece to cool completely before placing in
the acid. Otherwise the dial will distort and need much reworking to get flat
again (realizing that you can’t touch the bleached surface without leaving traces,
that flattening will be a real trick). Below you can see how it came out. I
did the same procedure for the frame portion of the dial, to then scribe the
indexes and cut out the center as I did with the brass dial too.
Unfortunately, I again have some
unforeseen problems at this point. The bleached surface is very delicate. The
chips of silver simply falling from the surface have caused imperfections in
the white. You can see them in the following picture at around 20 seconds (4
o’clock on the upper dial if you prefer). But the whole impression of the
white dial is much better than the brass dial, as you can see.
What to do? I could bleach the whole piece
again and leave the indexes white too, but I wanted the contrast. So I tried
re-bleaching and then polishing the indexes. I am just not good enough,
‘though. It only takes one little wrong move the ruin the whole thing again.
Which, of course I did. I did get about half way through polishing the
indexes without a mishap ‘though. Anyway, in the end I decided to make a
circular brushed surface until I have the final good idea of how to make that
frame. (Maybe hanging the lathe from the ceiling in such a way that the chips
fall away from the work piece?).
After a soak in alcohol over night to
dissolve the rest of shellac on it the dial is ready to be lacquered so it
doesn’t tarnish and the two pieces glued together. I won’t bore you with the complete story
of lacquering this dial. Suffice it to say that the 5th lacquer I tried was
the first that is really clear and doesn’t have a slight yellow tinge. It is
a good thing that the gods blessed the world with acetone to easily remove
lacquer. You can imagine that by the time I found a lacquer that didn’t
yellow I was getting close to despairing. Then came the problems of
application. I first tried using spray lacquer… that yellows and raises dust
during the application. This crystal clear lacquer I found is liquid and not
having an airbrush I dunked the dial in it. This caused problems because the
layer was too thick and running. I was first able to get reasonable results
after thinning the lacquer by 50%. Although not planned, I like the subtly
mottled effect I am able to produce with this lacquer. After finally getting a reasonable dial it is time to case-up. Here some last pictures of the movement before it disappears in the case.
As you can see I am unable to decide if a
black crocodile strap is better than a brown ostrich strap, but I think I
will go for the ostrich for everyday wear. The crocodile is very elegant. Finally arrived at the end of this saga,
this watch, my nr.1, is now my daily wearer. I have been looking forward to
this moment so long. But as with all sagas worth their salt, the end of this
saga is just the beginning of the next. My wife has been clamoring for her
watch for months already. I have a long list of things to improve and change,
like a better time setting mechanism and having the dial frame such that the
second hand really follows the edge of the frame exactly. I will continue my
formation in horlogerie to perfect my skills. I am finding great enjoyment in carrying
out as many steps as possible of this creation myself and aim to increase
that portion with each watch that I make (I will place
the limit there at going out to hunt a crocodile and/or an ostrich for the
band). Following the complete series of steps to make a watch from some brass
stock to a finished watch requires many different skills, always something
new, is not repetitive at all. Just up my ally. I plan to keep on making
unique pieces, each one customized for its owner, each one with new
challenges for me, the maker. Watch Nr. 2 for my wife will have a different
case in 18k gold, gold hands and a mother-of-pearl dial as well as a movement
with a much-improved setting mechanism, among other things. If you have ideas you can contact me at dcorson (at) isuisse
(dot) com (insert the correct characters and remove the spaces). I hope that you have enjoyed this series
of posts documenting the creation of this watch and had as much fun watching
its evolution as I have had in making it. Don Copyright © 2006 Donald W. Corson |
