- Posts
- 87
- Likes
- 738
mcgyver
·Making a replacement bezel
I got a request to make a new bezel for a Zenith CP-2 that had lost the original bezel a long time ago. At the time I had to much on my bench so could not take on the job, and later when the bench cleared the owner had second taughts and was thinking of selling the watch.
A couple of years went by then suddenly, last week, I got a email asking if I would like to take on this project.
The watch
The original bezels looks like they where pad printed and the black on the top surface does not go all the way out to the "teeth" . As my pad printer is in a semi finished state - I tried some thing else.
A couple of blanks where milled from 7075 aluminium. I wanted to mill the "teeth" but after three 0.8mm mills decided to break mid job- I whent old school!
Made a simple tool holder for a 0.8mm circular mill
Set it up in my small mill on a rotary table and started the fun part of manually milling 60 teeth.
When done, i deburred and cleaned the surfaces and then anodized the part far abt 1 hour.
After anodization I coloured the upper surface of the bezel and the edge closest to the glass. This was done by setting up the bezel in my lathe and and using a felt tip soaked in dye mounted on the cross slide - this way I could easily see to it that the color did not go all the way out and "over" the teeth at the edge.
The bezel was sealed by boiling in water for abt 10min.
One messed up bezel (small error in teeth division) made to test engraving settings on and the ok bezel ready to be engraved.
The bezel was then engraved using a fiber laser and finally the pip was deep etched at 12 o´clock and filled with paint/lume.
End result
I got a request to make a new bezel for a Zenith CP-2 that had lost the original bezel a long time ago. At the time I had to much on my bench so could not take on the job, and later when the bench cleared the owner had second taughts and was thinking of selling the watch.
A couple of years went by then suddenly, last week, I got a email asking if I would like to take on this project.
The watch
The original bezels looks like they where pad printed and the black on the top surface does not go all the way out to the "teeth" . As my pad printer is in a semi finished state - I tried some thing else.
A couple of blanks where milled from 7075 aluminium. I wanted to mill the "teeth" but after three 0.8mm mills decided to break mid job- I whent old school!
Made a simple tool holder for a 0.8mm circular mill
Set it up in my small mill on a rotary table and started the fun part of manually milling 60 teeth.
When done, i deburred and cleaned the surfaces and then anodized the part far abt 1 hour.
After anodization I coloured the upper surface of the bezel and the edge closest to the glass. This was done by setting up the bezel in my lathe and and using a felt tip soaked in dye mounted on the cross slide - this way I could easily see to it that the color did not go all the way out and "over" the teeth at the edge.
The bezel was sealed by boiling in water for abt 10min.
One messed up bezel (small error in teeth division) made to test engraving settings on and the ok bezel ready to be engraved.
The bezel was then engraved using a fiber laser and finally the pip was deep etched at 12 o´clock and filled with paint/lume.
End result
Edited:
