Practical Benchwork for Horologists
by Louis Levin, Samuel Levin · first published 1988
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…and started mass-production of. The book I used in school was "Theorie de l'horologie" [1], which is a fairly modern book. I supplemented this with "The Bulova Watch Repair Training Manual" [2] and "Practical Benchwork for Horologists" [3]. I would argue that the most useful book for practice was "Practical Benchwork", which was originally released in 1938, it's latest edition being from 1988. [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Theory-Horology-Charles-Andre-Reym...…
on “Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements” ↗For anybody really interested in this, I recommend that you go find a copy/PDF of "Practical Benchwork for Horologists" by Louis Levin. It's an awesome look into the watchmaking craft of the 20th century. Its explanation of bearings finally made me understand why "sapphire" was such a thing.
on “Open source mechanical Swiss watch movement” ↗…asked at a fairly big machinist's meetup how to do that on a jeweler's lathe. Nobody knew how. The answer, it turns out, is that they would build a custom power feed. This is documented on p62-76 of "Practical Benchwork for Horologists." This is such an important concept that the book devotes more than 10% of the "Tools and their Uses" section to it and it's the only thing in the book with actual plans. Yet nobody now knows. And…
on “Publishers worry as ebooks fly off libraries' virtual shelves” ↗…have access to much more? I'm not convinced. As a better recent example, I was trying to figure out how jeweler's used to historically do threads on screws for watches. I had to run down a copy of "Practical Benchwork for Horologists" and eventually had to buy it, sight unseen since the libraries I had access to couldn't cough it up. For people in the future, apparently there has been a paperback reprint of it. Answering my question…
on “Carefully Educated to Be Idiots” ↗