whose pivot gauge? run's pivot gauge!
It looks like I passed, or will pass, or whatever, the final exam that's getting sent to WOSTEP in Neuchatel. My pivot gauge was good enough. The dimension on the pivot was 0.18 mm give or take .005 mm, and I wound up at 0.179, so that's well within the required range. There is damage to the surface finish of my pivot, but it's visible only under intense magnification, and I would describe it as the amount of damage done to a bronzed baby's shoe by the respiration of a fruit fly's ghost. So that's good. I'm spending the rest of my week in a contest with my benchmate to see who can do better on a less important test piece, to try to get my grade as high as I can for the semester. Basically, though, put a fork in this term, because it is done. Yeeow!The term, summarized:
Winding stems were a filthy whore. They were our introduction to micromechanical though, so our heartbreak was guaranteed. If I were making a stem for the first time, I'd want to use some normal steel, and once I got the hang of it, I'd switch over to sandvik's terribly expensive soft stuff. It cuts beautifully.
Pivot gauges weren't as bad, but the jacot tool kind of came out of left field. Getting the hang of that was fairly complicated. Keeping the burnisher going straight and not pushing too hard or fast was what I had to learn how to do. If anybody reading this wants to know something useful about bluing: when bluing the steel for the pivot gauge, cook it to purple and most of the way through blue. The hardness difference within the blue range is profound. If you get it right, which isn't that hard to do, you can cut it with plain old WS. Granted, it is sandvik.
So now it's back to school, and then next week my brother is moving here, then the bachelor party, and so on. I've got a feeling the next three weeks will pass in the blink of an eye.
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