Servicing of a pocket watch

Mechanical watches is fascinating. A mechanical timepiece that gets its energy from unwinding a tightly coiled flat spring. All this energy does feed another spring-driven balance wheel that oscillates back and forth in a given frequency. All without any batteries. Isn't that cool?

Mechanical watches is quite expensive and need regular services, so I bought a no-name brand pocket watch that suddenly could stop tick and didn't keep time very well. A perfect restoration project for me.

Here is the watch I bought:

The watch

The lovely clockwork from the backside:

The dial is in a quite bad shape. I have not decided if I should try to get/make a new one or just let it be.

Here are the main components of the watch.

A:	Mainspring
B:	Jewels
C:	Gear train
D:	Balance wheel with escapement mechanism

Clockwork

A clockwork consists of mowing parts, mostly gears, and all friction does not work for the good. One way to reduce friction is to use jewel bearings as those are much harder than metal. Nowadays these jewels are made out of synthetic rubies or sapphires.

Oil does also help to reduce friction.

The movement parts of a mechanical watch have at least these five parts:

Mainspring

The mainspring is a torsion spring made out of spring steel and is the power source of the whole watch. When you wind up a clock, it is this spring that you are tensioning.

Wristwatches could have an automatic wind up that use your arm movement to tension the spring.

Gear train

The gear train transmit the force of the mainspring to the balance wheel and also, by gear ratios, divide the rotation into convenient time of hours, minutes and seconds.

Usually a clockwork consists of five wheels, these are:

First wheel:	Attached to the mainspring and slowly unwinds and feed the other wheels.
Second wheel:	This wheel turns once per hour and also drives the minute wheels and third wheel.
Third wheel:	Used to shift down the speed of the forthcoming gears.
Forth wheel:	Turns once per minute, so it holds the second hand.
Escape wheel:	Releases one tooth at a time and keeps the balance swinging by giving a small push on the fork each time.

Balance wheel

This part is the coolest.

It is an oscillating part that work as the timekeeping device in the clockwork. In mechanical clocks, the heart is a torsion spring (known ans hairspring) that form a harmonic oscillator which oscillates at a certain rate due to its resonance. The length of the hairspring determine its resonant frequency, so many clocks does have a lever that simply adjust the length of the spring, this lets you tune the clockwork.

After 1970, these mechanical timekeeping parts was replaced by quartz crystals with better timekeeping. But not as cool as springs.

See the lever for adjusting hairspring length on top of the balance wheel:

Escapement

The escapement makes the balance rotate by giving small pushes with enough energy to feed the oscillator.

The goal

The goal is to disassembly all parts, clean it up and apply oil for all mowing parts.

Disassembly

First remove the hands. I put a paper beneath then hands and dial to not scratch the dial even more.

These two gears is the reduction gears for the hour hand and minute hands. Those were locked in place by the dial only, so we could just take them out:

Put the clock in a fixture for easier disassembly:

First I remove the balance wheel. We have to be careful with the hair spring. If we get a crease on it it will not oscillate at the right frequency. Here it is:

Then I remove the fork and escape wheel. Here is the fork:

All parts disassembled. I have not open up the mainspring as I do not have tools to put it back. Now it is time to clean the parts. I bought small baskets to be used in an ultrasonic cleaner, but somehow I lost the baskets. So I clean every part by hand with isopropanol to dissolve all old residues from oil.

A:	Balance wheel
B:	Fork
C:	Minute and hour gear
D:	Mainspring gear
E:	Hands
F:	Dial
G:	Escape wheel
H:	Train gears

Clean up and oil

I use isopropanol and a cotton top to rub the parts clean.

After that it is time to oil the mowing parts. Actually you should have oil of different viscosity for the different parts, but I use Moebius 8000 for everything, which is a general purpose oil.. which is probably not good at anything, but better than nothing. The reason is that I do not want to spend too much money on this clock and oil costs about 50 bucks per bottle

Apply oil on all jewels.

Assembly

The assembly was not as hard as i imagined that it should be. It turned out smooth, just doing things in the reverse order.

The last step before putting the clockwork back into the case is to press on the hands:

The result

I have let the clockwork run for 24h now, it has not stopped a single time and, what I can tell, it has drifted a couple of seconds at most. I can probably get it better by adjusting the length of the hair spring with the lever, but it takes a few more days to evaluate.

Razor leather case

Razor Leather Case

My safety razor broke during usage last week, so I sadly had to order a new one.

I'm not really into shaving at all, but I want something that works and safety razors does both work and is cheap in the long run. For those interested, I bought a AL13 razor from Henson Shaving [1].

This time I used my Laser cutting machine to cut out the leather.

The steps

I use Librecad [2] to create my patterns. It works well, but I miss functionality to add stitch holes in a good way.

Maybe I will write a plugin to fix that some day..

I use Lightburn [3] to control the laser. It is simple and does what I want. It works with Linux as well.

One tip is to heavily wet the leather to keep it flat on the laser board:

It takes one day for the leather to dry, so continue the next day.

I should probably have run one more pass, the leather was not completely cut out. The scalpel came into use.

Groove to cut a channel in which stitching can be set.

Beavel the edges

Stamp the holes:

All holes stamped!:

Dye the parts, i use the oil based Pro Dye with Saddle Tan.

Apply black edge color and burn the edges. It became quite smudgy this time..

Stitch the parts together.

At last, apply a sealing to protect the dye.

The result

The intention was to use a leather flap to close the case, but the text would end up behind so I had to use a button instead.

References

[1]	https://hensonshaving.com/products/henson-al13-in-aircraft-aluminum

[2]	https://librecad.org/

[3]	https://lightburnsoftware.com/

Leather watch strap keeper

My watch was missing the strap keeper, so I had to make one.

To be honest, I did not put my soul into this project, I had an urge to fix it while the food was getting ready in the oven.

Anyway, here is my steps to make one.

The steps

Cut out a leather strap. My final size was about 14mm wide.

Bevel the edges:

The leather I was using was about 4oz, that is too thick, so thin it out:

Cut it to the right length. Also thin out the ends so that the overlapping becomes smooth:

Paint it black:

Mark where to stamp the holes:

Stamp the holes:

Add leather edge color and burn the edges:

Apply shene to make the finish look good:

Hand stitch and glue the keeper together. The stitches is both for cosmetic and functional. It prevents the leather from stretching.

The result

I'm actually pretty happy with the result. It took approx 1 hour and that was what I had.

I should probably have used the sewing machine though, I think it would look better with finer stitches and thinner thread.

Forge a hoof scratch

In this project I made a hoof scratch as a gift to a friend - made out of a horse shoe of course.

I do have a few different forges depending on what to forge. The induction forge is great for thick and straight materials such like hammer heads and tongs. One of the greatest benefit is that there is only 30s startup time as it requires no preparations at all.

The coal forge is good for all kind of stuff that requires much bending. It is also the forge that has the "right" feeling. It is simply much more satisfying to feel the heat of burning coal than press a foot pedal.

I do also have a gas forge that I intend to use for knives. The induction heater requires thicker goods and the the gas forge is more clean than the coal forge, which is a good thing when you forge-weld.

However, for this project I'm going to use the gas forge.

The process

Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures on the process.

The steps I made where:

Take a horse shoe, cut it in half on the cut hardy.
Start to make a long tip at the cutted end.
When the tip is long enough bend it in a nice curve.
Forge a horse head on the other end.
Stamp hair and mouth with a (self-made) cutting tool.
Polish the tip.
Dye a leather strap black and fasten it in the holes.

The result

The hoof scratch turned out nice, it lays nice in the hand and the bend of the tip is just right to get the force where you want it.

Leather sewing machine

I have worked with leather for some time which I enjoyed a lot. Leather is so general purpose and is both robust and nice looking. So far I've made myself a wizard hat, dice bags, mug pads, bookmarks..

The majority of all leather projects involves a sewing, which is quite entertaining but really time consuming so I invested in a $60 leader sewing machine which make the whole process a lot smoother.

It is a hand cranked machine machine.

The stand

The stand that comes with the machine is really shitty, so I had to make a better one. I also wanted to have the machine on the table rather than on a tripod.

So I took some pieces of oak I had and glued them together. I picked oak as it is both aesthetically nice looking and because of its weight - I do not want the machine to move around as I'm sewing. As oak is quite hard, I tried to thread the holes and use a bolt instead of screws, and it worked out quite well. The flexible lump did not even needed any extra support.

The end result

The machine

The machine is impressive, especially for that low price. It was delivered with ten extra needles, three extra bobbins and one extra shuttle with shuttle bearer.

The machine is also surprisingly intuitive despite all tuning knobs, the mechanical design makes it easy to see where you need to adjust to achieve the desired result.

I also like that the sewing head it rotatable, it helps you sew those tricky parts that you need sometimes.

The thread

I've tested it out with several different threads. Nylon thread is very strong and works well with the machine, however I don't think it give the right impression on a leather project, so I go all in cotton.

Waxed thread should not be used in the machine as the wax goes off the thread and it ends up with cleaning the thread bearers..

The result

The first test project I made was a pencil case for my fountain pen. I've made a few before with hand stitching, the diffrence now is that it took 1 minute to stitch instead of 30+. The result is quite good too. It missed a few stitches, but that is now fixed after that I have adjusted the thread tension.

The capacity of the machine is also impressive. It can sew three 2.5mm leather pieces stacked together complete unchallenged whatsoever.

Leather penguin

A Linux guy needs his penguin, right?

I found this pattern [1] on etsy and thought it would be a fun project to make a little companion.

The leather I'm using for this is a 2-3oz veg-tanned goat skin. It is a little too thin to make a robust penguin, but I rather want it soft and squeeze-friendly than robust. That's how I prefer to have my companions.

The steps

Print out the pattern and tape to the leather. Punch the holes before cutting:

Cut out all parts:

Time to dye! Yellow feets and neb. Other colored parts will be black:

I use white waxed linen thread that I dye for the feets and neb.

The penguin does already looks happy :-) :

The rest is to stitch all parts together.

Before I finished sewing everything, I stuffed it with cotton and a big glass ball to give it some weight.

The result

And yes. Penguins need their hat.

Things to improve

Dye both sides of the leather. In this project I did only dye the top grain leather. Some of the holes are not dyed completely.

Use round punch instead of diamond, it would have been much easier to sew.

References

[1]	https://www.etsy.com/se-en/listing/895018318/toy-penguin-leather-pattern-pdf-by

Player's handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual

These three books are the "core books" for Dungeons and Dragons 5e.

This is not an in depth review of these books as they are so fundamental. But I think it is good to mention them at least, before I go any further with the more cool-but-not-so-neccessary-books.

Player's Handbook

The Players Handbook [1] (PHB) contains all the basic rules that the player needs to know to play the game, equipment, spells, character options, feats, races, backgrounds and everything to put it all together.

The book is a reference for everyone at the table, both for the players and the dungeon master, and it is a good idea to become familiar with it. So take your time and scroll through the book a little now and then.

PHB is the only neccessary book if you only intend to attend as a player.

Dungeon Master's Guide

The Dungeon Master's Guide [2] (DMG) contains ton of magical items, variant rules and greate tips on how to DM. I'm not sure if I would classify this book as neccessary as I think it would be possible to play as a DM without even open this book. But it will for sure simplify your role as a DM.

The parts I found most useful is tips on how to balance an encounter which is really hard, especially for new DMs like myself. All magical items with nice lore and description is also fun to scroll through and gives you inspiration for your upcoming adventures. How more advanced mechanics work and all these random tables (e.g. treassure tables) that let you create a more dynamic game will also help you a lot.

Monster Manual

The Monster Manual [3] (MM) contains several hundreds of monsters that you could encounter on your adventures. Every monster has a stat block and often a descriptive text about the monsters life and surroundings. MM is a must have to DM's but could also be useful for some players who has the character class Druid as they could transform into animals and need to have the stat block available.

References

[1]	https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/rpg_playershandbook

[2]	https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/dungeon-masters-guide

[3]	https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/monster-manual

D&D - My confession

Dungeons and dragons - My confession

I have always been fascinated about fantasy. The computer games I appreciated most during my young days was role-playing game such as Baldur's Gate, Diablo and Neverwinter Nights, all games with their own mysterious setting there evil lurks at every corner. For half a year ago, a friend of mine introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons 5e and I was hooked. Maybe a little too much. As usual.

Now, six months later I have spent several hundreds of hours of reading adventures, D&D lore, creating characters, being a Dungeon Master (DM) for my kids, got a resin printer [1] and printed out miniatures, sanded, airbrushed and painted these miniatures, watching lore and D&D tips on Youtube, supporting D&D related kickstarter projects ( [2], [3], [4]) and (too) much more.

I've even begun to read solo adventures (Endless Quest [5] ) just to get more of this fantasy world.

The purpose of this post is to give you a little hint (warning?) about that the following posts probably contains a lot of D&D stuff including book reviews, campaigns and so on.

D&D is also so separated from my other stuff so it has also got its own submenu.

References

[1]	https://www.3dprima.com/3d-printers/creality-ld-002r-dlp-3d-printer/a-24930/

[2]	https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/riotminds/trudvang-adventures-for-5e/description

[3]	https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unfamiliar/unfamiliar-0/description

[4]	https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/midnight-tower/rise-of-the-ice-dragons-trilogy-a-book-of-adventures-for-5e/description

[5]	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_Quest

Oppigård Amarillo, third batch

This recipe is also from the book [1] and the third batch of this beer and it is one of my favorite hopier beer. I think it is fun to brew single hop beers since you learn to recognize the taste and aroma of a single hop at a time. The aroma of Amarillo is described as flowery, spicy and citrus-like with a distinct orange bouquet.

Result

The beer was a success even this time. It has been two weeks since brewday and the beer is already really good, but I think a week of storage will make it even better.

Recipe

Brewer:	Marcus Folkesson and Kent Gustavsson
Batch size:	23.00l
Boil time:	70.00min

Measurements

DESCRIPTION	MEASURED	ESTIMATED
Original Gravity	1.060	1.060 SG
Final Gravity	1.0150000	1.011 SG
Alcohol By Volume	5.9 %	6.4 %

Ingredients

Hops

HOP	ALPHA	AMOUNT	USE	TIME	NOTES
Amarillo	9.20 percent	9.55 grams	Mash	60.00min	Discovered and introduced by Vigil Gamache Farms Inc. in Washington State. Character similar to Cascade. Often used as a late kettle or dry hop addition to American style Pale Ales and IPA’s due to its signature aroma characteristics. Used for both bitterness and aroma. Used for: IPAs, Ales Aroma: Intensely fruity (citrus, melon, and stone friuts), floral, tropical notes. Substitutes: Cascade, Centennial, Simcoe Storage: Good 8-11% AA / 6-7% Beta
Herkules	14.50 percent	4.30 grams	Boil	60.00min	A German high alpha cross variety, bred in Huell and released in 2005. Imparts robust, hoppy tang flavors. Used for: hoppy German-style ales or lagers Aroma: Spicy floral and hop notes, with hints of pine, lemon and black pepper. Substitutions: Unknown Storage: Good 13-17% AA / 4-5.5% Beta
Amarillo	9.20 percent	13.38 grams	Boil	30.00min	Discovered and introduced by Vigil Gamache Farms Inc. in Washington State. Character similar to Cascade. Often used as a late kettle or dry hop addition to American style Pale Ales and IPA’s due to its signature aroma characteristics. Used for both bitterness and aroma. Used for: IPAs, Ales Aroma: Intensely fruity (citrus, melon, and stone friuts), floral, tropical notes. Substitutes: Cascade, Centennial, Simcoe Storage: Good 8-11% AA / 6-7% Beta
Amarillo	9.20 percent	13.38 grams	Boil	25.00min	Discovered and introduced by Vigil Gamache Farms Inc. in Washington State. Character similar to Cascade. Often used as a late kettle or dry hop addition to American style Pale Ales and IPA’s due to its signature aroma characteristics. Used for both bitterness and aroma. Used for: IPAs, Ales Aroma: Intensely fruity (citrus, melon, and stone friuts), floral, tropical notes. Substitutes: Cascade, Centennial, Simcoe Storage: Good 8-11% AA / 6-7% Beta
Amarillo	9.20 percent	11.46 grams	Boil	20.00min	Discovered and introduced by Vigil Gamache Farms Inc. in Washington State. Character similar to Cascade. Often used as a late kettle or dry hop addition to American style Pale Ales and IPA’s due to its signature aroma characteristics. Used for both bitterness and aroma. Used for: IPAs, Ales Aroma: Intensely fruity (citrus, melon, and stone friuts), floral, tropical notes. Substitutes: Cascade, Centennial, Simcoe Storage: Good 8-11% AA / 6-7% Beta
Amarillo	9.20 percent	11.46 grams	Boil	15.00min	Discovered and introduced by Vigil Gamache Farms Inc. in Washington State. Character similar to Cascade. Often used as a late kettle or dry hop addition to American style Pale Ales and IPA’s due to its signature aroma characteristics. Used for both bitterness and aroma. Used for: IPAs, Ales Aroma: Intensely fruity (citrus, melon, and stone friuts), floral, tropical notes. Substitutes: Cascade, Centennial, Simcoe Storage: Good 8-11% AA / 6-7% Beta
Amarillo	9.20 percent	5.73 grams	Boil	5.00min	Discovered and introduced by Vigil Gamache Farms Inc. in Washington State. Character similar to Cascade. Often used as a late kettle or dry hop addition to American style Pale Ales and IPA’s due to its signature aroma characteristics. Used for both bitterness and aroma. Used for: IPAs, Ales Aroma: Intensely fruity (citrus, melon, and stone friuts), floral, tropical notes. Substitutes: Cascade, Centennial, Simcoe Storage: Good 8-11% AA / 6-7% Beta
Amarillo	9.20 percent	36.00 grams	Boil	0.00min	Discovered and introduced by Vigil Gamache Farms Inc. in Washington State. Character similar to Cascade. Often used as a late kettle or dry hop addition to American style Pale Ales and IPA’s due to its signature aroma characteristics. Used for both bitterness and aroma. Used for: IPAs, Ales Aroma: Intensely fruity (citrus, melon, and stone friuts), floral, tropical notes. Substitutes: Cascade, Centennial, Simcoe Storage: Good 8-11% AA / 6-7% Beta

Grain

GRAIN	ORIGIN	AMOUNT	NOTES
Pale Malt, Maris Otter	United Kingdom	5.74 kg	Premium base malt from the UK. Popular for many English styles of beer including ales, pale ales and bitters.
Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L	US	0.26 kg	Adds body, color and improves head retention. Also called "Crystal" malt. Very Dark

Miscellaneous

NAME	USE IN STEP	AMOUNT	USED FOR	NOTES
PH 5.2 Stabilizer	Mash	17.97 grams	Water Agent	PH 5.2 Stabilizer by Five Star is a prioprietary mix of phosphate buffers used to lower the PH of your Mash to 5.2 for brewing.
Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate)	Boil	7.60 grams	Water Agent	Reduces PH of water for mashing and sparging. Alters water profile -- used to harden soft water. Use the BeerSmith Water Profile tool to determine amount to add.
Epsom Salt (MgSO4)	Boil	4.00 grams	Water Agent	Water agent used to modify water profile. Use the BeerSmith Water Profile tool to determine amount to add.
Chalk	Boil	0.40 grams	Water Agent	Chalk (CaCO3) can be used as a water addition to adjust mineral content for mashing.
Irish Moss	Boil	1.50 grams	Clarity	Fining agent that aids in the post-boil protein break. Reduces protein chill haze and improves beer clarity.
Yeast Nutrient	Boil	5.99 grams	Fermentation	Gives yeast nutrients for healthy fermentation. Not needed for most beers, but good for those with a high percentage of adjuncts. Add before yeast.

Yeast

NAME	TYPE	FLOCCULATION
American Ale Yeast Blend	Ale	Medium

Mash

STEP	TYPE	TEMPERATURE	TIME
Mash Step	Infusion	60.00 C	65.00 min
Mash Out	Temperature	10.00 C	75.56 min

Fermentation

STAGE	TEMPERATURE	DAYS
Primary	22	14
Secondary	18	10

References

[1]	https://www.bokus.com/bok/9789188397041/klona-ol-brygg-ol-efter-recept-fran-svenska-bryggerier/

Green fingers

This year I have engaged more than usual in growing vegetables. I grow quite common things like cucumbers, tomatoes, dill, beans, peas, squash, salad, carrots and potatoes. We live in a moss that cools the environment quite a bit, so it's hard to grow without a greenhouse - which we happily have.

In the past years it has become a mediocre harvest of vegetables, but this year it has really exploded. If it depends on our extra actions or the unusually hot summer is hard to say, but the result is that we now have more vegetables than we can eat, a pleasing problem.

I will summarize what we did this summer so I can look back in the next year and compare.

This year

Here is a (not complete) list of what we grow this year:

Type	Name
Beetroot	Chiggia
Cucumber	Saturn
Peas	Norli
Potato	Montreal
Potato	Taisiya
Potato	Bergerac
Squash	Green Tiger
Tomato	Great White
Tomato	Spencer
Tomato	Brandywhine Black

Precultivation

I bought a plant lamp to be able to give the precultivation a good start and it really made a difference. It only took a little more than a day before it started to grow up.

Different wavelengths of light have different uses because it stimulates different phases that the plant passes through. My plant lamp has a composition of 660nm(red), 560nm(blue) and 5000k (sunlight).

The blue wavelengths (560nm) increase the biomass and stimulate chlorophyll formation, and the red (660nm) stimulates root initiation, flowering and stretch growth. LED lamps is by design very specific in their wavelengths so you can buy a LED to stimulate a specific phase of your plants.

Simply all vegetables has been precultivated but carrots and dill. Even the potatoes lies under the lamp to create sprouts.

Tomatoes and cucumbers

We cultivate both tomatoes and cucumbers together, however, some prefers to cultivate them individually for maximum yield. The reason is that the cucumber wants higher humidity than the tomato. Tomatoes pollinate them self by let the pollen fall down to the ground and touch other bloom on the way down. This does not work if the humidity is too high.

One problem we have had previous years is that all cucumber plants got leaf mold. Cucumber generally likes to got water sprayed on them, and it is OK if it is hot and sunny, but I think you should never spray water cold days or late on the evening.

Seeds

Seeds may be stored up to five years if the temperature (not >25 degrees Celsius) and humidity is right. If you store them longer the germination is affected and the yield will decrease.

Replant

You plant in small pots and replant it 3-4 times as it grows. The replanting should be so that some of the stems fall underground, so that the plant can create more roots and become steadier and can pull more nutrition from the ground. This is especially important for cucumbers and tomatoes since they are growing high and tend to have a lot of heavy vegetables.

Thief tomato

I do not have a good translation for the Swedish "Tjuva tomater". Lets use "Thief tomato". What I mean is to remove the extra shots that come into the leaf wake of the plant. This has to be done for all high-growing tomatoes at least once a week. The reason is that the plant otherwise becomes an impenetrable bush that is difficult to handle and that these "thieves" steal energy from the plant. Energy that could otherwise be used for tomatoes.

Health

The leaves give a good indication of the health status of the plant. Dark green or blue-green leaves mean too much nitrogen, while light green leaves mean lack of nitrogen or to much water. Yellow spots mean that there is not sufficient with magnesium.

As soon as the plant get flowers, it need nutrition added to the water. As a general rule; never give nutrition to a thirsty plant! I water at least two times a day and add nutrition every third day.

I'm really looking forward to this BrandyWhine Black tomato to mature.

Salad

Salad could taste bad if they are dry and nutritionally poor. Salad will grow fast in nutritious and moist soil. I have not added nutrition but have been very careful to water a lot and often. A hot tip is to use good soil to plant in.

Conclusion

This year has been incredible fruitful and I hope that we are doing things right now.