Drilling center hole for dial.
Further drilling and facing of dial.
Facing of dial after having parted from the aluminum billet.
Turning the second's sub-dial outline.
Turning outer minute and hour ring size.
Area to be turned.
Placing a plastic 'bezel' to see what percentage of movement will be seen.
Fitting dial movement to make sure it is centered.
Tracing dial outline.
Areas to be milled out.
Initial milling.
Further milling.
Rough cutting.
Dial ready to be cemented.
Dia cemented to brass billet with natural shellac.
Initial facing, and turning of outer diameter of dial.
Further facing.
Ready to be transferred to a different support.
Placed on a smaller brass disk to allow for fine cutting and shaping.
Turning down of seconds area.
Outer diameter of seconds sub dial turned.
Turning interior portion of sub seconds dial.
Ready for more cutting.
Steel rod for making hands, with temper drawn to ease machining.
Drilling the hole for the pinion that drives the hands.
One hole drilled.
Minute and hour hands given initial, and smaller, holes drilled.
Rough turning of hand shape.
Further reducing hand diameter.
Reducing diameter by step so that the steel does not bend out of true.
First rough reduction of diameter done.
Minute and hour hands stock ready for further turning.
Milling out more of the dial.
Hand filing the dial.
Further finishing on the lathe, by hand turning.
Working on the sub-seconds dial.
Thin hand saw to get at interior portion of dial.
Further turning of sub-seconds dial.
Alining the dial for milling the minute markers.
Reducing the dial to size, sandwiched between brass disks to avoid distortion.
Calibrating the rotary table.
Milling minute marks.
Half done.
Milling hour indexes.
Milling out 5-second markers on sub-second dial.
Cutting out the sub-seconds dial.
Dial cut out.
Dial is 90% done, more fine tuning needed.
Dial placed on the movement.
Returning to the hands.
Turning the arbors (I create one on the top too to facilitate handling).
The rough turning of cylindrical arbors perpendicular to the hands.
Shaping the general shape of the hour hand.
Turning to the minute hands, it starts similar to the minute.
Thinning out the hand.
Marking where the lobes of the double feuille will be placed.
Starting to flatten out the minute hand.
Arriving at double lobed-minute hand.
Further shaping the feuille hour-hand.
Examining the hand.
Further shaping on the lathe for concentricity.
Shaping the outside of the hour-hand hub.
Nearing a circular hub, more work to be done.
Checking hands together- They will both be made thinner.
Work on a new dial. This will be made in two parts instead of one as the previous dial.
Facing off a piece for the main dial.
In order to check the size of the sub-seconds dial, I turned a small dial in acetal.
Checking the visuals for the sub-seconds dial.
Checking the size of the outer dial, still to broad.
Reducing the dial's footprint on the watch.
Working on the billet of the sub-dial.
Substantially reduced the billet in order to be able to part of the sub second's dial.
Working on the sub seconds diameter.
Milling out the sub dial in order to leave a 'lip' which will low it to connect with the main dial.
Further milling, on the right you can see the lip.
Checking the diameter with an etching tool.
Replicating the circle on the main dial.
A view of where to cut.
Drilling the center hole for the seconds in order to have a reference.
Reference hole drilled.
I set out the minute markers so that the alignment is correct on the sub-seconds dial.
Minute outer dial milled.
Placing the dial on a face-plate on the watchmaker's lathe to properly center the dial.
Transferred to the large lathe in order to machine better.
Initial cutting out of the sub-dial area. It will not be fully cut out yet.
Dial is reduced on another lathe to the diameter of the case.
A fail while working on the lathe. The face will be refinished and the process started again.
Checking the seating of the face.
Refaced and redrilling of holes.
Minute marks redrilled.
Marking out the sub-seconds dial.
Nearly finished marking out the sixty seconds, and then I pass with a slightly larger drill for the 5 second intervals.
Sub seconds is finished.
Facing off the sub seconds dial.
Parting off.
Parted, and will be transferred to a holder to further machine.
Cleaning out the thickness of the sub dial.
Using the jewelling tool as a drill to drill out the hole to unite the dials.
Checking the dials together.
Checking against a quadrant for another project, in order to see if the dials are aligned.
Starting the small seconds hand.
Drilled out the hole for the hand.
Turning the seconds hand from pivot wire.
The hand is turned and parted off.
Using the jewelling tool to drill the hole for the second's hand.
The center hole has to bipass the hard pivot wire and through to the body of the hub.
Clearing the hole for the hub first.
Hole was slowly and laboriously drilled.
First check of the seconds hand in place.
The original hour hand broke as I was thinking it out. The original minute cannot be used as it is too short.
Turning the new hour hand.
Shaping the hour hand.
Drilling the center hole
Shaped and ready for further polishing and bluing.
Now comes the start of a very comical escapade to create the minute hand.
Four minute hands were manufactured as all the previous versions broke at the final stages.
Shaping the 1st minute hand.
Rough shape and hubs created for the 1st hand.
Further turning of the hub, the hand is nearly finished.
Turning of the last bottom hub before polishing.
A very faint slip of the graver broke the hand, which was nowhere to be found.
A start of a second hand, bad luck as the HSS (high speed steel) drill fractured in the piece.
A new stock hand was turned, and again, the drill this time became distorted due to the heat, two ruined bits and two tries.
Turning another blank, and the whole process repeated.
Fast forwarding, the 2nd minute hand is ready to have the top contour of its hub finished.
Using a center trill with an oval shape the top of hub is shaped.
Checking both hands.
Further finishing the top of the hub.
Another fail due to the graver.
Starting another hand, this is the 3rd minute hand.
Turning hubs.
Giving the initial contour of th e
Filing away at the bottom of the hand.
Arriving at the final shape, with elongated tip to size once the hand is finished.
Again, this time the hand didn't break, but bent considerably!
I have skipped the making of the fourth hand, here were at the final stage where I am bluing it, here it sits in brass shavings to be heated.
After the hand is blued.
Placed on the watchmaker's lathe and the hub is polished, and treated with a graver.
Here the blued hands are being repolished.
The hubs are turned on the lathe, but the body of the hand is polished with polishing paste.
Here the hour hand is soaked with diamond paste and will be polished with wood.
Initial polishing.
Same process for the minute hand here initiated.
