Watch Making / SM #1

My first Self-Made Watch:

My first watch-making project. This is a fairly simple assembly of off-the-shelf components. The challenge for me lay in the fact that I had never done it before, and working with such tiny, delicate parts requires some skill and experience.

In the initial assembly stages, I knocked several parts in the keyless works out of alignment, which was a mixed-blessing: The keyless-works was the one part of the watch that I did not understand and could not get my head around. And now that was the part I broke. My only option was to dissassemble the keyless works, lay out all the pieces, and stare at them till they made sense.

After about 10 or 15 minutes...the pieces made sense! I put the keyless works back together, put the watch back together, and it worked! So, serendipity, I fixed my watch, and I learned how the keyless works functions.

The layout for the watch is pretty straightforward: The dial is a modified 'crosshairs' design, with the day-date window at 3:00. It is signed with my name (in Cyrillic) and my mon. The name and mon will be standard on any watches I make, although the rest of the dial designs will vary.

I selected the hands because I wanted something a little unusual, and with good contrast. The style of hour- and minute-hands are fairly common, but the Pink lume is not. The white second-hand with the pink tail is also somewhat uncommon. I think it makes for an interesting look to the watch.

The dial was designed in Appleworks, scaled and sized with Graphics Converter, then printed onto a laser-label with a high-resolution laser printer. I then punched out the centre-hole, and applied the label to a brass dial-blank. The label was then trimmed to the dial, and the day-date window was cut out.

I've "signed" the movement, on the rotor, using my 0.1mm Artists' stylus. Sooner or later I'll learn how to actually 'engrave' my marks into the metal rather than just writing on it.