There are plenty of hard jobs out there, like founding your country’s nuclear program, or changing the timing chain on a BMW diesel. Making your own mechanical watch from scratch falls under that umbrella, too. And yet, [John Raffaelli] did just that, and prevailed!
Only a handful of components were purchased—[John] grabbed jewels, sapphire crystals, the strap, and the hairspring and mainspring off the shelf. Everything else, he made himself, using a fine touch, a sharp eye, and some deft work on his machine tools. If you’ve never worked at this scale before, it’s astounding to see—[John] steps through how he produced tiny pinions and balance wheels that exist at sub-fingertip scale. Even just assembling something this tiny would be a challenge, but [John] was able to craft it all from scratch and put it together into a functioning timepiece when he was done.
The final piece doesn’t just look great—we’re told it keeps good time as well. People like [John] don’t come along every day, though we do have one similar story in our deep archives from well over a decade ago. If you’re cooking up your own bespoke time pieces in your home workshop, don’t hesitate to drop your story on the tipsline!
https://www.youtube.com/@Clickspring is worth a look if you are into clock/watch/sundial making.
Amazing that this was just under a simple post in r/watchmaking. Makes me wonder what other incredible feats are out there.
And that’s a relatively ordinary analog watch. I saw a video on the production of some of the parts for a Patek Phillipe(sp?) watch. Holy crap.
Seeing the work that went into this explains why fine Swiss chronometers cost so much.
Sort of the “hello world” for mechanical engineers.
If you haven’t yet, go watch Clickspring’s series on his recreation of the Antikythera mechanism. It is so extremely high-quality that it has produced academic papers and new discoveries about that singular piece of mechanical-engineering history.
It isn’t as tiny or sophisticated as a modern watch, but the real treat is that he uses materials and tooling (and tool-making tools!) that are period-possible if not necessarily period-correct. The metallurgy and hardening techniques used for making things like files are especially fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRXI9KLImC4&list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0to4RXv4_jDU2
Good stuff. It was even covered here:
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/08/clickspring-imagines-the-workshop-that-built-the-antikythera-mechanism/