Also knowing that the thing will last forever, take care of it and it will probably outlive you. Can't say that about an Apple Watch.
If you want a good mechanical watch that won't break the bank I suggest picking up a Seiko SKX (though prices have been going up), a Vostok Amphibia (might be hard with the ukraine conflict) or a Timex Marlin.
My favourite escapement is the detent escapment. I saw a cutout model at the Imperial Science Museum in London. Even after staring at it for ages I could not figure out how it worked!
It was only in 2017 that China joined the elite club of countries capable of making ballpoint pens. Is it that hard?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/18...
A word of warning, diving into watches and clocks can be a time/money sink.
If you're not careful you'll end up building something like this: https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/projects/electromechanical-c...
https://www.amazon.com/Watchmaking-George-Daniels/dp/0856677...
it has a cool [8800] co-axial escapement: https://www.kapoorwatch.com/blogs/through-the-scope-the-omeg...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BCiechanowski Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ciechanowski
Definitely helped me to understand how clocks work. And it’s fun to watch it.
If mechanical watches tickle your fancy, there is a ton of watch repair video on YT. I particularly enjoy wristwatch revival (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD80T1s2Za4K682CQDGwEKQ).
A warning though, if you consider to get into that hobby. I tried, it's really hard, expensive (I spend close to €1k and that is with b-quality stuff. Good stuff is 5-10x more expensive.) and can be rather frustrating. Finding parts to buy can be complicated depending on your locale, loosing parts is very easy and destroying parts, even when gentle and careful is par for the course.
I hat to put my repair hobby on halt after running out of practice pieces. All now have broken or missing parts. your milage may vary ofcourse :)
> However, when the driving gear can’t rotate because it’s blocked by the rest of the gear train, the cannon pinion can overpower the friction of that tight fit and rotate on its own. This lets us set time without interfering with the gear train, which could break the delicate parts.
How can the cannon pinion (green) both overpower the friction to slide freely and also be attached to the driving gear (blue) when functioning regularly?
Does this imply that the driving gear and cannon pinion wear each other out every time you adjust the time?
This creator is absolutely among the best at his craft. I lack the words to properly describe my admiration.
https://www.watchtime.com/featured/watch-spotting-at-the-vie...
The hardest part for me when doing open source work full time was giving it up and getting a day job. I was fortunate that my wife was the breadwinner, and that I got to see what it was like to be a stay at home husband. I’ve often wished to go back to it. Did the author figure out a way, or is he wealthy?
He could also be a Superman, being able to do this with a full time job or contracting work.
I spent a few days studying their blog. The work is so good that when I retire, I’ll make a conscious effort to copy their style as closely as possible. It seems like the optimal way to transmit knowledge.
I wish there was an equivalent to YouTube sponsorships for blogs. If this had a 3 minute preroll ad, they would be rolling in money.
If Bartosz is reading this, I'm genuinely curious how much time did it take him to create this post. It looks like an insane amount of work with all the knowledge acquisition, write up, animation and so on..
whoa, is this the origin of the word "hacking" in the "throw something into the wheels to make it work" sense? very interesting.
This article is pure gold. It makes me thinking how much of know-how is already lost and how much can we find in some old book stores... I'd buy a book about clock making.
This site, and the most recent blog entries on this site, are excellent examples of why web technologies are not all bad. People seeking new ways to make money make everything bad, eventually, and thankfully there are bastions of utility without sales still to be found, sprinkled around.
I have been wanting to buy an old mechanical watch. When I do, I will never again complain about how much a watch repair shop charges.
Also, the explanation, presentation, and animations are top-notch. Amazing work by the author!!
One of my favorite memories, as a kid, was visiting a museum in Toronto (I think it was the Science Museum).
Many of the exhibits had buttons that you could press, to make them go.
I remember a giant steam piston. That was cool.
Gerald Sussman Teaches Mechanical Watch Ideas at MIT:
Also, seeing this web page I got frustrated by the fact it doesn't tackle what got me the hardest time: how can the crown move the hands without any clutch mechanism (some have) ? It's a matter of friction and torque, so it's hard to get while reasoning on a "perfect" mechanism.
(The div needs the class 'playing' added, e.g.
<div id="stop_lever_interaction" [...]>
[...]
<div class="play_pause_button playing"></div>
</div>
<div class="play_pause_button"></div>[0] https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/#stop_lever_interacti...
You could do it cheaper by buying random parts off eBay or Taobao, I did this for a second watch - using the following video from the "Watch Repair Channel" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rieKmfaKMCY
But having your initial attempt somewhat de-risked gave me the confidence to dive head first into other concepts and ideas.
I'm not quite ready to do a tear down and service of a movement, but with a timegrapher on the way... it won't be long before I'll end up scratching that itch too!
Check out this site for many others: https://explorabl.es/
Full build playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsETq9h35dgQ...
Direct link to the first episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Y146v8HxE&list=PLZioPDnFPN...
If every subject could have visualization like this I could learn anything!
Max Hetzel's patents are a good starting point - https://www.accutrons.com/tuning-fork-watch-patents
This is peak Internet, huge congrats to the author(s).
1. building a custom mechanical timer, which I want for practical use.
2. designing a real-world alethiometer - a fictional watch/compass device with chaotic (magical) behavior - which runs entirely on clockwork. I've been wondering how to incorporate a source of significant entropy into a watch movement. One idea, for example, is something like a double pendulum, but made from torsion springs.
I feel like the field of actually nicely designed quartz watches is dead from competition with mechanical and smart watches. Where smart watches are just ugly, and mechanical watches look amazing but are more hobby or conversation pieces than actually good for telling time.
Watches are robust technologies that work without internet connectivity, are crafted/maintained by people paying attention to mechanical parts that are sometimes about as thin as human hairs. Humans have used them for hundreds of years and they are really freaking cool.
If you think the animation is awesome(it is), consider owning the real thing. Not just for my brother's sake, but maybe for your families.
Creating something like this takes a lot of work. Consider supporting the creator on Patreon if you want to enable them to create more of these: https://www.patreon.com/ciechanowski
I'm using
wget --page-requisites \
--span-hosts \
--execute robots=off \
--adjust-extension \
--convert-links \
https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
Overall, a fascinating workflow.
I want future generations to have access this so I have to ask - how can I back up this page with all of the interactive 3D animations still operational? Simply saving the HTML file doesn't seem to work.
I think that should say "unlocks the escape wheel", not the balance wheel.
If there's one thing I'd love to see, it would be a similar breakdown of manual and automatic transmissions.
I really like the correspondence between the respect for the ingenuity of this technology and the "handcrafted" WebGL.
Last line:
"With creative use of miniature gears, levers, and springs, a mechanical watch rises from its dormant components to become truly alive."
I wonder how minimal this kind of watch could be if you had a unrealistically accurate 3d printer and the design was essentially optimal (done by machine learning perhaps).
I've understand mechanical watch internals thanks to hundreds of hours of procrastination spent on watch-repairing youtube channels, but I wish I had such presentation several years ago.
Same with GPS - I've deep-dive into GPS when I've bought my first receiver, I think in year 2002 or something like this, and it was HARD at these times (there was Internet, of course, but good texts on GPS were very hard to find).
Now, thank you to Bartosz, I have two excellent links to hand out if I'm asked about these topics. I understand them well, but I never ever will be able to explain them so clear and accessible.
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