Archives October 2017

The top ring section is made in pretty much the same way as the centre section. I get a bar of brass and bend it into a ring and solder the joints. This technique is worth developing here because it can be extended to precious metals even though, with brass, the relatively inexpensive cost of the metal means the ring section could be machined from a solid piece of metal.

The ring, now with lugs attached, goes back on the lathe. Since I'll be cutting the outside of the watch I put the clamps on the inside of the ring.

To solder the lugs onto the centre watch section I'm using hard solder and borax flux. The helping hands make things a lot easier as the watch ring needs to stay in the same position. The lugs fit well enough in the ring not to fall over.

The centre ring needs two sets of lugs for the strap pin to attach to. The lugs need to angle somewhat, so as to wrap around the wrist. I'm not too sure what angle to use, so I've chosen 10° for this watch. As with all of this watch design, I'll feedback any alterations into the next iteration through the design.

The next thing I did was to cut a dial shelf into the centre body of the watch case, i.e. into the ring I'd just made. I was designing as I went! As it turns out this is not the way the watch progressed but it did give me a wonderful way to display the cloisonné frog, or any circular enamel piece for that matter!

The ring is placed into a three jaw self-centering chuck. The three jaws automatically move together towards the centre of the chuck so the piece is automatically centred. If I've hammered the ring to a good circle then the ring should be pretty near centre too.

To solder the ring together I'll be using hard solder, hammered into a thin ribbon. This will be drapped over the joint with plenty of borax flux.

I watched the case making videos by Roger Smith on YouTube and followed, in part, the steps that he shows on the vidoes. I'm using brass, though, for this initial trial not gold!