Post by Archer on Jan 27, 2008 17:12:06 GMT -6
Since I saw the work of Philippe Dufour last summer, I've wanted to try some of the techniques that he, and others like him, have done on their watches. Some time ago I purchased a bare bones 6497 movement. Here it is as I received it:
It comes with a nickel plating on the plates, but absolutely no finishing at all. So a while back I took it all apart, and started working on putting together the materials I thought I needed to do some finishing work. I started on it over the weekend. The first thing I tried my hand at was anglage. Basically this is putting a 45 degree chamfer on the edges of the movement plates, and then rounding them off, and polishing them to a mirror finish. I started out by trying to figure out how I was going to hold the pieces while I put the angle on. I took some spare wood and cut it at about 45 degrees, and two of these together clamped in a workbench held the first plate I tackled.
I started off using a needle file, but quickly realized that was far too aggressive for the brass plate. Now I had my first mistakes to fix.
I switched to 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper, glued to small flat wooden sticks as a backer. This worked pretty well - a shot in progress.
I put the chamfer on all the way around the plate, then moved to 600 grit, then 1500 grit. By this time the heavy file marks were gone and the finish was getting better and better. I then moved on to 5 micron paper, which is very fine indeed. I finished with 0.5 micron paper - the finest paper I could find. I then realized that I had to go backwards to remove some scratches that I had missed, so back to 1500 grit and then back to 5 and 0.5 micron again. It's not perfect by any means, but not bad for my first attempt.
Here is the plate I did beside one that I haven't touched yet.
Here is a close up of the section I've done - very hard to see the level of polish, and it actually looks more shiny in real life than it does here.
Mr, Dufour is safe for now, but this will be an interesting project as I plan to do more than just anglage.
Thanks for looking.
Al
It comes with a nickel plating on the plates, but absolutely no finishing at all. So a while back I took it all apart, and started working on putting together the materials I thought I needed to do some finishing work. I started on it over the weekend. The first thing I tried my hand at was anglage. Basically this is putting a 45 degree chamfer on the edges of the movement plates, and then rounding them off, and polishing them to a mirror finish. I started out by trying to figure out how I was going to hold the pieces while I put the angle on. I took some spare wood and cut it at about 45 degrees, and two of these together clamped in a workbench held the first plate I tackled.
I started off using a needle file, but quickly realized that was far too aggressive for the brass plate. Now I had my first mistakes to fix.
I switched to 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper, glued to small flat wooden sticks as a backer. This worked pretty well - a shot in progress.I put the chamfer on all the way around the plate, then moved to 600 grit, then 1500 grit. By this time the heavy file marks were gone and the finish was getting better and better. I then moved on to 5 micron paper, which is very fine indeed. I finished with 0.5 micron paper - the finest paper I could find. I then realized that I had to go backwards to remove some scratches that I had missed, so back to 1500 grit and then back to 5 and 0.5 micron again. It's not perfect by any means, but not bad for my first attempt.
Here is the plate I did beside one that I haven't touched yet.
Here is a close up of the section I've done - very hard to see the level of polish, and it actually looks more shiny in real life than it does here.
Mr, Dufour is safe for now, but this will be an interesting project as I plan to do more than just anglage.
Thanks for looking.
Al
