A special order commemorative watch

A prominent journalist, Mr Srinivas Laxman, who is passionate about and has covered space exploration for a long time wanted a watch to commemorate the recent Mars orbiter mission. Here is what I did for him.

 The little red dot marks the time when the orbiter was inserted into Mars' orbit, 07.42 AM.

And here are the other options-

In option-2 I aligned everything to the the 07.42 position. This was to give that time it's due importance.

Thank you for the opportunity Mr. Laxman!

No.5, Videos

Some videos of No.5-00

No.5 Skeleton wristwatch

It gives me great pleasure to announce a new model, the No.5 skeleton wristwatch. 

This is my most adventurous skeleton design yet. The movement floats in the 41mm case supported only by an elegant yet robust bridge at the 3 o'clock position. The extreme skeletonising and the additional breathing space throw open almost the entire movement. 

As usual, I allow the movement pride of place. The aesthetics are governed by the machine and the flowing lines frame key components. The movement is in frosted brass complemented by the heat blued steel 'Sambhare' hands.

This design requires greater precision. With such a small bearing surface even a small error can result in misaligned dial & hands or faulty winding/setting. The dimensions need to be perfect but the surfaces need to perfectly true as well.

I am particularly pleased with the tweaked proportions of the 'Sambhare' hands.

Making a hand

At some point in it's long life this watch lost all of  it's hands. Some research indicated that I had a minute hand in the correct style in my parts box. The hour hand had to be made.

I started with sheet brass. The hole for the cannon/hour wheel is always the starting point of any hand. Below, you can see the basic design has been scribed with the hole as reference.

Rough milling- 

 Basic shaping-

 All shaping done, polishing not done yet-

Brass is much softer than tempered steel. This makes filing and sanding much easier. But therein lies the problem. It is also much easier to remove too much material and bend the hand. I have a renewed respect for those who make hands out of gold!

Where would one find an A D Sambhare watch in the wild?

Over the last few years I have received inquiries from all over the world, in fact right from Hawaii to Arunachal pradesh! As of today this is where my watches have gone. 

Needless to say, My aim is world domination!!

163 years old!

This is a seven jewel English fusee from 1851. I just finished restoring this watch to working condition. A lot was wrong with it. It took a lot of work to sort everything out but I think it is ready for another 163 years of service. And this is one of the reasons why I love mechanical timepieces, they can be fixed!

So here it is. The dial is a little tired but I think it wears it's age with pride. The case is sterling silver and hallmarked for Birmingham, 1851.

And here is the lovely movement. 

The hole for the fusee arbour in the back plate presented a bit of a problem. Most of these watches had a bush at this location even when new. This is corroborated by the fact that often the bush too is gilded. Well, in this watch the hole for the arbour was not concentric with the bush. Since it was worn I had to replace it. So I plugged the hole, took the fusee-centre wheel and fusee-third wheel centre distances from the dial plate, and marked them on the plug (red arrow, below). 

The barrel hook for the fusee chain had to be made 

The balance cock had indentations on the underside to increase the end-shake. Closer examination revealed that the entire backplate was bent, it would not sit flush on all the pillars. So, the resultant reduction in end-shake was compensated for by punching up material in this manner. A good example of how one problem is solved but another is created. Needless to say, I straightened the plate and cleaned up the underside of the balance cock. 

This watch has an English lever escapement. In this watch the exit pallet was locking too deeply, with the result that the tooth of the escape wheel would not leave the pallet. The cure is to adjust the locking. This is done by adjusting the lever. The lever is two parts held together with a brass rivet (red arrow, below). The locking can be adjusted by rotating the parts relative to each other (green arrow, below). The trouble is that one cannot see the escapement in action. The only way is to make an adjustment and test in the movement using ones judgement. 

The dial carrier plate had a missing foot. This was causing the motion works to foul and stop the watch. A new foot was made (red arrow, below) and installed.

One of the pins that help keep the back cover in place was missing. Due to this, the back cover would occasionally foul with the lever and stop the watch. A new foot was made and installed (red arrow, below) 

I find this sort of work very fulfilling!