What’s on your watchmaker's bench today?

I actually might skip... all of the sewing needles in my wife's needle drawer are WAY too large to spin the regulator. THis one might just be a 'runs not bad' for now 😀

In a moment of ~bordem~ ~stupidity~ inspiration, I decided to try adjusting the collet without removing it from the balance cock. I just put it on a spike, and carefully put a screwdriver down from the top and tweaked it. It took about a half dozen tries, but I managed to just get silly--lucky all at once.

Dial up is ~+10s/d, -15amp, and 0.1ms beat error (I figure the two are a rounding error apart). So way better than I am typically capable of 😀

Good notes about the screwdriver!

I've seen those tools! I actually tried to pick up a few about 4-5 months ago and it was either "wouldn't ship because europe" or out of stock. I should go looking again. Obviously they are pretty expensive. Seems easy enough to make from tube stock! Though this is a task I've done pretty rarely, so shrug

Esslinger sells a version of the collet turning tool Al posted above here: https://www.esslinger.com/watchmakers-hairspring-setting-tool/?searchid=16413773

Comes in three sizes:

• 1.10mm; hole size: 0.45mm
• 1.60mm; hole size: 0.55mm
• 2.10mm; hole size: 0.75mm

ooh, neat! Any idea which ones are a 'good' size? It would be nice to not buy the whole set particularly if 1 size was a 'never use'.

Good question that I don't have an answer for, but I'm curious to know as well. Maybe Al can share which size he uses for vintage Omegas like the 50X movements.

This the Bergeon version of the tool from Cousins. I'm assuming they sell the 1mm and 1.2mm sizes more than the others.

Something a bit different. Cleaning up a mechanical bird mechanism, Oiling it and dusting things off. I have a number of these, This one I keep uncovered for when I would give lectures on automata.

Tomorrow I am giving a talk titled "A child's history of AI." A subject I have been researching since the maker faire last fall.

This one is sponsored by the local maker space, and called a S.T.E.A.M discovery festival.

I also have my crank organ which I have been bringing for over a decade.

I would do a bit at the Dickens fair noting how Ada Lovelace's abstractions evolved the music box into a cell phone. I would start by stating she told me to connect my music box to the telegraph?

... the wires would get all tangled, would be my implied response.

Her counter argument would be that she wanted to study with Michael Faraday who said electricity and magnetism were the same thing and the music could be sent wirelessly.

The next part would be about sending pictures through the transatlantic cable. And so on. Relating how the punched holes in the paper could not simply represent words. They could be sounds or colors.

For this lecture I want to explain Time space transforms. Which involve the sums of sin and cos waves. So the birdie is the perfect example. In a lot of way neural network activation functions can be modeled as cam follower systems.

To the Romans and the 18th century audience, what rediscovered the technology, Such toys were much like AI is now. They seemed alive.

1655 with the electronics disassembled.

Looks like the issue was water damage. There was still liquid between the display and the reflector. I do not think it is the nematic crystal fluid as the glass seals look to be intact.

The gunk on the battery was cardboard used to wedge it in. One screw which hold the + battery contact and retains the battery is rusted in place. I put some penitrating sili-kroil on it. This also holds a strip of plastic coated insulating paper, which is basically parchment paper.

Part of the plastic retainer frame, what holds the display, has disintegrated. Sadly this was the part where the serial number sticker was. Not sure why they did not engrave this onto a metal part. Now this information is irrevocably lost. Part of the retaining clips also seem to be missing.

The spotting on the display does seem to be between the glass plates. If I can figure out a way to connect tiny probes, I can see if the nematic fluid is still active. If I hold the glass at an angle I can see the plate contacts.

The whole point of this project is to revive my old LCD testing setup. Where I was probing unknown displays. That is a subject unto itself.

The circuit board looks to be in better shape than the one offered on line. (I see the seller made me an offer on theirs.) There is some obvious rework on one of the traces. Everything is gold plated, although this would amount to a microscopic amount of gold.

Modern chip packages can be moisture sensitive. So are baked before re flow soldering. This is more to keep them from blowing up when the steam escapes. Not sure if the epoxy potting compound is water resistant. Most of the water damage is around the chime speaker and the transistor what powers it.

From skimming the literature, this is an hourly chime and not an alarm. There are quite a few functions this can do as there are 5 contact buttons. There are also a number of test points on the side of the PCB.

The analog side looks to be in good condition. There is no signs of rust or water damage. The coil seems to be in good shape. I have not measured it yet as it was pretty late by the time I got this apart.

Finished up (I hope!) my Rolex Date project, and started a new one! An Omega 865 Chronostop.

I managed to end up with TWO Chronostops, this is a grey dial "Driver" model. I also have an incoming white one that also needs a seconds hand, but I have two new ones showing up!

Fun movement so far, pretty easy to tear down. I'll have a bit of work to get it together, but I ran out of time not long after I took it out of the cleaning machine.