Rock Around Le Locle

It’s Saturday… and this is testing time for me! Let’s leave the fog of the Neuchâtel lake side and get to the top of Jura hills and around. This was apparently an easy day… as you will see it became much more complex in the evening.

Beautiful day in a quiet Le Locle…
View from the bench

Testing the chronometry of each caliber internally is critical to insure that most of the movements handed to Time Lab to get their certification as “Chronometer”. We test the “marche” which is the variance between the exact time and the watch time and the amplitude. We make 3 x 2 tests. We test one hour after winding and then 24 hours later. We repeat these tests 3 times. It takes about 9 days to perform all these tests so losing a 24h test on Saturday morning isn’t an option!!

An example of test ran today in our Atelier. in Le Locle.

That’s starting well!! All measurement are in green and very close to 0.

Back home for lunch and then little hike to enjoy this amazing weather… In the end this is still Saturday…

View from Mont Racine, Neuchatel lake under a fog sea, Eiger, Jungfrau and Monsch in the back…
The sky is the limit. Marie-Alix is a key person hidden behind Czapek’s success.

3:30pm… Just got a call from Dann in his Atelier… the quantième isn’t working… :-/ need to get there and see how we can resolve this…

The date disk and the jumper

The jumper isn’t achieving its function with success, we need to find out all the possible sources of failure.

We identified 4 areas of potential improvement: friction on the main plate, friction on the disc teeths, spring strength and finally jumper shape. We decided that the latter was potentially the best option to work on, followed by the spring and the disc teeth.

And it worked!! The function is now corrected… we can assemble now, implement the improvement next Monday on all the series… And finish nicely this amazing Saturday! Now let’s be honest, most watchmaking problems do not get resolved that easy and that fast… we were bold in the decision about the modifications… and lucky!

2 comments
  1. Indeed!
    Revealed on December 8, it is called the Passage de Drake and it bears a very special pattern called “Stairway to Eternity”. Yet it is not guilloché but stamped as this exclusive pattern can’t be engraved using a guilloché technique… The good thing is to be able to create beautiful 3D effects on the Czapek signature and on the railtrack.

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