Double Flee A

boards

As I write these words, my fiancee is taking her nursing boards. She's been sweating over this for some time now, and I wished her the best of luck, which is about all I can do. Later I'll make her some dinner and take her for a walk. And maybe drink a bottle of wine down by the lake. Et cetera. It really depends on how it went, I'd imagine. I can almost tell you now that it will be what happens after all big tests, a complete loss of perspective and a weary sort of panic. She's smart and has been working hard and I have complete faith in her.

I'm leaving school a little early today. This is because what I have to do next requires more time than is left to do it in, and getting started now won't save me any time when it comes time to finish it. Things flex. Centers change. And when you're cutting a click recess, which is what is next, you don't want centers changed. You want them right where you think they are. Right where they're supposed to be. In the middle.

I did one click recess today, on plate B, my backup. It came out fine and it works. I was about six hundredths of a millimeter narrow on the click-pivot post, but it will work. As a result, over time the click will have the tendency to wear on one side of the post, but that will take maybe years to establish, and it may never be anything but a pain in my conscience. What if I'd got it perfect... not a biggie. Like I said, when I put the pieces on there, they all function, and that's what we need.

So I spent the day doing that, which was after the ratchet wheel recess, which went just fine. The click recess is the hardest bit yet for its comparatively wide range of width and depth variations, but the crown wheel situation is going to be much worse still, and that's next. The crown wheel connects to the regular (not breguet) toothing on the winding pinion (I think) and is for winding the watch, and since it turns counter clockwise, it requires a left-handed screw. No taps exist to tap left-handed in this size, so we have to come up with a way to modify the wheel itself and put a post in the middle of it, that will make it possible to use a right-handed screw. This takes some doing, and we have to use steel for it, which is hell on the gravers. It should be difficult. One of my classmates has been chipping away at it for a couple of days now. It's something that if we had a print for it wouldn't be that hard, I don't think, but it's up to us to make it so that it fits and works, which makes it more interesting and more difficult. Sort of an engineer-it-as-you-go thing. I was thinking about this at lunch but forgot to look into it, why don't we modify the end of the screw, stick some pins through it, and right-handed screw it in from the opposite side. There's probably a very simple reason for this, but not having the piece in front of me I can't visualize it. Oh well. That's what tomorrow's for.

posted by dale @ 3:41 PM