I haven't been doing much watch wise, but lots of work on watch tools.
I ended up needing to make a bunch of parts for a lever action tailstock for a small Schaublin lathe. I have the factory main casting and quill (the critical parts) but all the auxiliary bits are missing. The lathe is a duplicate so fortunately I had a set of parts to copy from.
First is the tailstock drawbar. Toughest part was it’s a 11.75 mm metric buttress thread. For those not familair, look at the collet; the flanks are 45 and 5 degrees vs every other thread that is symetrical. It took longer messing about grinding the tool than cutting the thread, but it worked out well – its for a W12 collets
Next up, is the tailstock lever. Not particularly difficult, but man, it was a lot of whittling! Files and die grinder mostly after roughing to shape in the mill. The turned portion I did by measuring the existing one, making grooves every ½” to the right depth, then roughing and finally finishing by hand turning. I stuck the dull end of a 1” boring bar out in front of the work grabbed a large radius nose tool (maybe 1.5” radius, ½” tool bit) in a pair of vise grips and went at it as you would with a graver in a watchmakers lathe.
Paint is sprayed via airbrush, with talc in it to reduce the gloss. In the last pic, I have some touch up to do….the quills were slightly different dia so I had to grind a bit out of the inside so it would fit.
Its watch tool related, but for a sure little different for this site so thought you might find it interesting....now back to the salt mine!