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Jacot tool and pivot file burnisher question


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20 hours ago, jdrichard said:

Watch Maker's Jacot Tool - Setup and Use https://youtu.be/f-8Vd2m-WBs

Thanks @jdrichard, I've seen it previously, it is very helpful, and I should have mentioned it in my post. What I found additionally useful in the video I linked to was that the Jacot was being used by someone who's probably been using it for hundred of hours. It gives you a good feeling for what speed and pressure to use. Of course, I wouldn't really know, but perhaps @nickelsilver could shim in if I'm wrong in my assumption!?

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  • 6 months later...

I have recently used a jacot tool to successfully re-polish a badly worn pivot in a pocket watch the first time in my life. I have watched Richard's videos about it and I also went to a book printed in the same year I was born in 1976.  This book is written in Hungarian and was one of the book used by the state sponsored and only one watchmaker school as far as I understand. (To my knowledge you cannot learn watchmaking any longer in Hungary as of now.) I scanned the corresponding pages as how to re-finish a pivot including the usage of a jacot tool. It was a great help to me so I thought I share these pages with you. After scanning the pages i sent the pdf through a pdf to txt engine then sentence by sentence I translated the Hungarian text to English. I learnt watchmaking in English and it might sound strange but the Hungarian name of the parts and methods were unknown to me. This added some more difficulty on top of the fact that my English is far from perfect. I am writing this because I am not sure how good the end result is. If anyone feels that could correct the text so it would be more readable or would make better sense please do so. Enjoy if you can. 🙂

jacot_tool.pdf jacot_tool_Kopasok_javitasa_magyar.txt jacot_tool_repairing_wear.txt

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8 hours ago, luiazazrambo said:

I learnt watchmaking in English and it might sound strange but the Hungarian name of the parts and methods were unknown to me.

I find the "native names" to be lovely, a peculiarity of languages that are rich enough to have them. Thank you for your work, will read it with interest!

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22 hours ago, luiazazrambo said:

I have recently used a jacot tool to successfully re-polish a badly worn pivot in a pocket watch the first time in my life.

Congrats! It's a great feeling to be able to improve the quality of something so small and so important for the optimum performance of the movement.

22 hours ago, luiazazrambo said:

This added some more difficulty on top of the fact that my English is far from perfect.

It would appear to me (although I'm Swedish) that your English is excellent and better used by you than by many English speaking people, whose texts I must sometime struggle to understand. I read through your translation and I had no problem comprehending it. I'm sure something could be improved but I don't think it would bring anything essential to the table. Well done and hats off! Thank you!

Perhaps the most important sentence in the entire document is...

"The handling of the jacot tool requires great practice, good tactile sense, light hands."

I have used my Jacot tool to restore a coupe of pivots in real projects, but I still need more knowledge, practice and experience. So your translation is a welcome addition.

Coincidentally I'm in the process of taking apart some scrap movements extracting wheels for Jacot tool practice trying to gain more and more skill. I just don't want to fail when that precious George Daniels or Philippe Dufour pivot comes along 😉

Edited by VWatchie
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 9/23/2021 at 11:04 PM, nickelsilver said:

You'd get slapped in watchmaking school with such short strokes.

Thanks for the comment! I noticed it because it was so dramatically different to seeing Philippe Dufour (I believe) handling the burnisher in the video I linked to previously, and I was wondering which approach would be considered best practice. It is indeed more difficult to move the burnisher in longer strokes, but practice makes perfect. Learning this technique I actually think I have an advantage as I used to play the violin with professional ambitions when I was young. That is, making the left hand and the right hand do two very different things at the same time.

Edited by VWatchie
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Yes, Dufour went to school at a time when they spent 6 months doing pivotage. The director of WOSTEP when I was there is of the same vintage, he said his teacher would walk around and if your strokes were too short he'd shout "longer!" and maybe smack you with his pointer if a repeat offender, haha. The fellow who taught me learned with Dufour, so I never got yelled at at WOSTEP, thankfully!

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Hello,

Please forgive me if I should be starting a new thread, but I have a question about a burnisher I purchased that's sapphire rather than steel.

End on, it's rectangular in shape and I'm assuming that I should round one of the corners to stop cutting into the pivot?
How is this done with a sapphire pivot burnisher please? Oil stones? If so, what grits should I use?

Thank you for your time,

Ed.

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Hello @nickelsilver,

I can't believe it's been over a week before I have replied. I'm sorry for being so tardy, my day job  is really busy at the moment.

Thank you for your reply, duly noted not to use sapphire on the jacot.

Out of interest, when would one use a sapphire burnisher for pivots?

Best regards,

Ed.

Edited by EScissorhands
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2 hours ago, EScissorhands said:

Hello @nickelsilver,

I can't believe it's been over a week before I have replied. I'm sorry for being so tardy, my day job  is really busy at the moment.

Thank you for your reply, duly noted not to use sapphire on the jacot.

Out of interest, when would one use a sapphire burnisher for pivots?

Best regards,

Ed.

The Americans (and I'm one) were big on working pivots in "free space", not so big on Jacot tools. So sapphire burnishers got used. I jokingly think this is one of the reasons they came up with truly drop-in interchangeable parts when the rest of the world was individually fitting parts, haha.

 

But it's more like my Japanese watchmaker friend says- laziness begets efficiency. The U.S. makers came up with ways to make watches work with interchangeable parts because they wanted to make a BUNCH of them.

 

Still, I love my Jacot tool, and use it at least once weekly. One of my spare Jacots is behind me at a friend's bench, and he uses it regularly. With carbide burnishers, both of us. Almost 20 years on my (already secondhand Steiner) and no visible wear on the beds.

Edited by nickelsilver
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Hi @nickelsilver

Thanks again for the info. Based on what you said before, I'm guessing that as sapphire needs diamond to modify, it's harder than the jacot, thus will wear it down?

Also, I think I read (probably here!) that polishing and burnishing are two different things.
Polishing removes material, whereas burnishing moves material, taking the bumpy stuff and smearing it around so it's smooth. The added effect of burnishing is it also hardens then the material, something polishing can't do.

Is that correct?

Thanks again for your patience!

 

Hi @LittleWatchShop,

I've a premonition that my new sapphire burnisher will also languish in a little draw, never to be used 😞
Still, it will serve as a reminder to do proper research and ask people more skilled than me first 🙂

Best regards to you both,

Ed.

 

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Burnishing removes a tiny bit, and compresses. Burnishers are textured for a reason, they are essentially ultrafine files. If they only compressed they would be mirror finish (and there are burnishers like that for beveling work). A pivot finished by burnishing, with a proper burnisher, has an extra hard skin with a perfect finish.

 

There are commercial machines that use carbide wheels that are for production work, and also smaller wheel based machines for repair work like the Rollimat for clocks (awesome machine), or Pivofix for watches. I prefer a regular Jacot for watch work except for large diameters- those can take forever with a hand burnisher to take off even a couple microns.

 

I have a commercial machine I break out if I have to make a barrel arbor or something. Here I needed to make 16 barrel arbors so I was happy to set up the machine.

 

 

20211207_154959.jpg

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  • 4 months later...

Does anyone know where I can get the interchangeable bits for a Jacot pivoting tool from? Does anyone also know the proper name for the bits with the sizes written on them? Any help would be appreciated... D

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There were many makers of these, and they aren't interchangeable. Even from a single maker, they were each matched sets, and if you needed a new part, depending on the part, it would have to go back to the factory.

 

They are comprised of the main body, and runners. Runners are the parts with notched index that have the beds on one side, that the pivot sits in, and lanterns on the other side, that allow working the pivot ends. Some tools have a runner for larger pivots, often called a center wheel runner, which has beds at both ends. This would be the only notched runner not condsidered "matched", and usually aren't numbered to match the tool. The small simple shaft that carries the pulley doesn't have a specific name (Horia just calles it "cylinder"). These are much simpler and not matched to the tool.

 

Horia is the only maker of these tools now. They took over the Steiner brand, often referred to as Hahn in German as their logo is a rooster. A single notched runner new costs more than most complete and usable second hand Steiner Jacot tools you might find. You can however get small parts like the pulley or drive finger from them at a reasonable cost.

 

Horia

 

Spindle, Runner, and lantern

spindle pulley carrier.png

runner.jpg

lantern.jpg

Edited by nickelsilver
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Thanks for the swift reply. I didn't so much mean interchangeable to different sets but interchangeable between the parts in the set. But as I'm looking for extra bits for mine I obviously did hope there were truly interchangeable peaces! But it dont look good. I brought a set off ebay very cheap. Its still boxed, complete & VERY clean, but the flanged part the has sized holes right through the flange is chipped on one side which takes out two of the smaller holes! And the smaller of the two bits where the pivot lays in the slot is very worn in places! But OK for £41 I guess?!

 Many thanks.....

16496076825378495957456395831297.jpg

16496077883315537548269315642271.jpg

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It looks in decent shape, but the single-ended runners, one of which is in the tool the other lower left in the pic, are 4th wheel runners (they have longer tapered beds for extended 4th wheel pivots), and are wrong. Or rather, one is wrong- a tool like yours would be supplied with one of them, and there would be another double-ended runner. You can see the decorative knob at the end of your 4th wheel runners are different from each other; which one is correct is a guess but if you check the notched index there is probably a number, and it will match a number somewhere on the tool body.

 

That's a bigger issue than your chipped lantern. You are missing half the possible sizes the tool was intended to provide. A chipped lantern isn't too bad, you don't need an exact match of the hole to pivot, just one that lets the pivot through well enough to round the end. If you have a lathe that works too- when I make a staff I finish the pivot diameter on the Jacot, then the end in the lathe.

Edited by nickelsilver
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