Today is the day

After almost a year of development, today, I am pleased to introduce a new Curl Curl watch. Actually, not one – but four. What is the big deal? We have four new titanium guilloche dials in four new colours.    I am not going to bore you with the details: sleepless nights, significant investments, the challenges titanium machining presents. And certainly, I am not going to talk about high precision manufacturing in a country where high precision manufacturing barely exists. You already know all of that.   Instead, allow me to point out just two important details related to this project.    The first is obvious: we make watches to prove a point - that we are serious about watchmaking. While our time is yet to come, our watches are practical proof of our manufacturing capabilities. For those who understand and appreciate precision, the Curl Curl is a powerful statement. It is our business card: when customers from medical, space and science knock on our door, looking for help turning drawings into real, physical objects, they get the message fast - those who can make a watch can make anything.    Second reason: the Curl Curl is an object of art. That is how we feel about it, and that is how we want you to feel about it. It is a combination of our desire to offer you a unique piece of mechanical art, and your appreciation for mechanical art. A partnership between a passionate watchmaker and a passionate ambassador. A relationship that will continue to flourish in years to come.    Based on these two premises, the Curl Curl will be available as a special order only. We have no intention to ‘flood the market’ nor to rush sales, nor spend a great deal of time and money chasing buyers. Those who like what we do, and what we offer will find us anyway.   The new dials are impossible to present in photographs or words, so the images below are purely reference points. We invite you to visit the shop, inspect the watch in person, strap it on the wrist and only then, to place your order.   The range consists of the deep blue Curl Curl we already have in stock, plus the four new colours: the ‘platinum’, ‘black’, ‘orange’ and ‘ice blue’. Each dial and hand set is unique, made one at a time, a process which takes a week. It takes a further two months before the watch is assembled and ready for collection. Again, we will only produce as many watches as you want us to make, there will be no ‘stock on hand’. If art could be mass-produced, it wouldn’t be art.   Price: $7,900.    Thank you for your support and your enthusiasm. To start a conversation about your Curl Curl, simply reply to this email.   Nick Hacko, Master Watchmaker   With the support of Josh and Andrew.

The Classic Platinum  Black Orange Ice Blue

Dial printing notes

 

If I had these notes 3 years ago, we could have saved time, money and quite a few sleepless nights. Since I strongly believe that one day, there will be another Australian watchmaking business in need of 'inside knowledge', I am publishing this quick version here, in order to save them time and money. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut for sleepless nights. Dial printing (transfer method) is as old as watch dials themselves. The revolution started in the early 1900s when porcelain pocket watch dials were replaced with mass-produced metal sheet dials. With the popularity of wrist watches, printed dials completely replaced all other traditionally manufactured dials. While the printed dials were used by all watch brands, due to the way watches are manufactured in Switzerland, only a handful of companies specialised in dial making. This is still the case, and to this day, only a select few are in the dial making business, specialising mainly in high value dials. The journey into dial making starts with a dial printing machine manufacturer. One industry leading company is Teca Print, located in Thayngen, literally on the Swiss / German border. Teca Print dial printing machines are used to make dials for all the top Swiss brands. They also provide all the accessories and paint, as well as the 'know how' training (AUD $1500 per day).

Good luck trying to import Swiss paint into Australia. Luckily, a suitable dial pad printing paint is already available in Australia. Look for COATES PAD PRINTING INK TP 300. You will also need thinners and hardeners. All supplied by Milford Astor.

WARNING: safety first. Understanding the hazard of dealing with paint and related chemicals is essential.  A cliché is a metal plate that 'contains' your artwork.  The production of pad printing clichés is highly complex and they are typically manufactured only by pad printing equipment suppliers. We've ordered our first cliché from Switzerland. However, we now have clichés made in Sydney. Eventually, we will have them made 'in house'.

In theory, the pad printing process is straight forward: the ink is applied to the cliché, picked up by a silicone pad, and then transferred to the watch dial. In reality, getting the process to work and then to fine tune it to perfection is an art form. Everything from temperature, humidity, cleanliness, to the exact paint formula, to timing and number of transfers is purely a matter of experimentation until a satisfying result is achieved.

To summarize: the machine, accessories and training come from Switzerland, but all the supplies including local support is available in Australia.

Top Swiss quality dial printing is within reach of an independent watchmaker. However, mastering the technique is challenging and time consuming. Except for a handful of Japanese independents, most other watchmakers are more than happy to outsource dial making to specialists. We are very proud of the fact that our MK2 Curl Curl dial is pad printed in-house and we are already looking into expanding our capabilities in this field in 2023. It goes without saying that our facility remains open to fellow Australian watchmakers. We have nothing to hide! On the contrary, it would be our pleasure to assist you in your horological project.

We have uploaded a short video to Instagram showing the Teca-Print machine in action. Here is the link, check it out: https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck9PM3Ahh6J/

MK2 Dial - Part 3

As we discussed in the last installments, the MK2 dial is a complex assembly of small individual elements. All made one by one, finished one by one and assembled and fixed one by one. In this installment of the "behind the scenes" we will show you the process of how the dial elements are made and finished, and how the base dial is anodised to our "topaz blue". First: the end result:

The hour markers, or as we call them "batons" as well as all three hands are faceted. The facet is at 4 degrees, a very small angle, but the effect is massive. In person, the facets on the dial and hands not only dance in the light, but also give a strong visual line down the centre of the hand. The keen eyed of you will have noticed another interesting feature- the 2nd "grain" angle within the facet. We call this technique feathering. The grinding finish that we apply on the hands is angled at 45 degrees to mimic the shape of a feather. The inspiration comes from the coastal birds you see on the Sydney's Northern beaches- seagulls, sea eagles, even sulfur crested cockatoos and lorikeets! There is a massive technical challenge in making this decorative pattern. If the facets are off centre by more than 10 microns or so, your eye begins to pick up the lack of symmetry, so it becomes very important that all the jigs, and raw hand dimensions are checked and kept to a tight tolerance Secondly, the angle of the "feathering" creates a complex compound angle that we have to hold the part on, which calls for a very complex jig-making exercise. But without getting ahead of ourselves, we still have to make all the other parts! The numerals, batons, and hands all start in the same way. Raw material of 0.8mm titanium is glued down to a special pallet. The material itself has been stress relieved and flattened in prior operations. Here you can see the progression of the batons and numerals being milled out. The hands are done in a very similar way.  A special high strength glue is used to hold the parts to the pallet, allowing us to profile the outside and inside shapes. The tools we use to cut these parts are so small that the tip of the tool can get lost in the space between the lines of your finger print! A drop of oil on the 0.2mm drill. The batons and the numerals are not simple 2D shapes, they actually have two little "feet" on the backside. These feet fit inside the holes we drill on the base dial. The diameter of the foot is 0.19mm with a tolerance band for the diameter of +0 microns , -10 microns. The thickness of the batons and numerals is also important, If they are too thin they will distort and twist when assembled on the base dial. Quality control - Measuring the thickness of the numeral and baton. Measuring the diameter of the baton pin. Measuring the thickness of the parts we make is quite tricky. The probe tip we use had to be custom made for us in Germany! Standard probe tips available as off the shelf items are too large and would not allow us to get to the small areas between the pins of the numerals and batons. This custom probe tip is one of the many thousands of dollars of custom equipment we had to either make ourselves, or in this case commission from gauge making specialists. After all this care, time, attention and patience we are left with our raw, ready to be finished parts! The next step is feathering. There are a couple of challenges in this process. The first one is how to hold such a small part. This leads to a complex exercise in jig-making. The jigs used to hold our parts take weeks to design and make. They go through many iterations to land on the right approach.  The feathering is done on a machine called a surface grinder. Surface grinding is an extremely accurate method of removing small amounts of material in a very controlled way. It takes years of expertise to master this machine by tradespeople called "toolmakers". James, our in-house toolmaker is an expert and only after nearly 20 years of experience, is he comfortable with this type of work. The type of abrasive wheel used is a critical part of achieving the right finish. In fact we tried numerous different combinations of wheel and coolant to arrive at our own "titanium feathering recipe". Dial Anodising The base dial is now cleaned and prepared for anodising. Funnily enough your fingertips are some of the best cleaning implements available! The textured surface of your fingers allows for dirt to be trapped and taken away from the surfaces you clean. In combination with soap and detergents we manually clean each base dial. It's imperative that the dials are free from any residual oils, so 99.9% Isopropyl alcohol bath in an ultrasonic cleaner is the final cleaning step. Titanium anodisation is an extremely complex electrochemical process, but in essence a Titanium dioxide (Titania, which is a ceramic!) film is grown on the surface of the material. The thickness and the structure of this film layer is responsible for diffracting light, which gives colour. Titanium can be anodised within a well defined spectrum, but achieving bright vibrant colours that are not "dull" is a strongly guarded trade secret. This is a function of the electrical voltage and current applied during the anodisation process, the temperature of the bath, the quality of the bath, the room humidity, how the raw surfaces have been chemically prepared and the overall process cleanliness... basically chemical magic. Unfortunately this is not something we can share. The faceted and feathered parts as well as the numerals are then assembled onto the freshly anodised dial by very lightly pressing the feet of the parts into the holes in the base dial. These dial feet are then laser welded from behind to ensure that they are secured strongly onto the dial. More on that process in a future installment! Next... Pad Printing (to be continued). NOTE: We have received a number of inquires in regards to the pricing of the MK2. It is obvious that the price will depend on the number of watches produced in a batch. Based on your pre-sale interest, we expect that the production run would be 50 watches at price of $6,900 (plus box and strap). Producing fewer watches would result in a higher price; making any more will choke our manufacturing capacity.  If you wish to register your interest, please send us an email to mail@clockmaker.com.au Unfortunately we are not taking deposits or partial payments. Once your watch is ready for delivery, you will be notified with sufficient time to make a full payment. More technical details will be provided next week, but for now: the MK2 is based on a Swiss made Soprod automatic movement, 40mm stainless steel case, on a leather strap. Titanium guilloche dial, markers and hands, as well as complete assembly is done 'in house'. Manufactured in Australia. A completely assembled MK2 "Curl Curl" topaz blue is available for viewing at our Sydney showroom. To check it out and try the watch on, please make an appointment.