Hi everyone,

I just wanted to share a couple of photos from a project that I completed recently during my watchmaking apprenticeship in Geneva.

I won’t talk too much about the apprenticeship or the company, but part of it was to complete a school watch based on a set of technical drawings and a procedure.

The watch is based on an ETA 6497, we were provided with a main plate and an ébauche for the bridges which were all pierced, shaped and finished by hand.

The bridges for the wheels are all split off with new locating feet marked out and drilled. The bridges were shaped using multiple graded files, the external bevels were also mostly done by hand with some of the internal bevels on the barrel bridge completed on the lathe with jigs and fixtures.

I then sand blasted the top surfaces, polished the bevels and straight grained the sides.

The main plate was also sand blasted and then perlaged, all the brass parts were then gold plated.

We separated the great, third and second wheel from their staffs, circular grained them and then rose gold plated them.

Snail grained the ratchet and crown wheel and polished the click and screw heads.

The balance, is screwed but also has a micro-metric screw for the regulator pins, so multiple options for timing. The balance spring was also counted and cut by myself to have the correct frequency.

Please see the pics below, it’s was a hell of a lot of work and lots of mistakes along the way, but the end result isn’t bad, but I’m by no means any kind of expert haha.





If anyone has any questions I’d be happy to explain in a bit more detail where I can.


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