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I'm currently in my second year of studying via night class at ' The Watch & Clockmakers School of Western Australia' I've still got a long way to go before I could even call myself a 'bad' watchmaker but I am slowly getting there. The School is run by the Master Clock and Watch Makers of Western Australia Inc which has a Facebook page, but doesn't see very regular posting and it was decided earlier this year the school needed to feature more prominently on the page and on Wednesday night during our class it was decided to give me admin rights to the page so I could post photos on it. Going forward I will try and post something from the classes atleast every other week, if not every week. For those interested the Facebook page is called 'Through the Loupe' and this is a link to it. https://www.facebook.com/Through-the-Loupe-284491725079688/ A few of the guild members do infrequently post on it showing interesting items they are working on too, good for when you have some time to kill.

Welcome back, looking forward to unusual questions. What's that saying? It's lonely at the top?

At the beginning of my watch and clock repair class tonight one of the lecturers had a verge pocket watch that needed the pivots polished on the balance so he brought it in to show a safe method of doing this. The issue with this compared to a normal balance is one of the pallets are very close to the pivot and if you are not careful its very easy to damage the pallet when you polish the pivot.. Below is a photo of the balance and although the pallet is out of focus you can see how close it is to the pivot Before you attempt to polish the pivot you need to protect the pallet. Here you can see the pivot set up to be polished on the Jacot tool with a small wheel which was removed from a junked cheap Japanese watch just slid over the pivot and sitting hard up against the pallet. It had been sanded down in thickness so it was the same thickness as the gap between the end of the pallet and the start of the pivot, providing a barrier to protect the pallet. Photo from the other side. And once the pivot had been polished and burnished how it was protected again when rounding off the end of the pivot Other side Job done. Something so obvious when you are shown it, but not something I would of thought of doing myself

They still use 17th century French in Quebec so I guess old clock cleaner recipes is understandable.