I tend to say that I'm the least objective judge of anything about myself. People often misconstrue this as me saying that I think I suck (I've been, historically, a pretty negative person) but it isn't that. It's just really rare that I ever think about myself, I don't think about how I act, I don't think about how other people perceive me and I don't think about myself in comparison to others. The result of this is that while I don't put much thought to it, in some abstract sense I think of myself as normal. That, it seems, is a word that rarely describes me. The corollary to this is that I rarely create something that stands out to me. Often I never give these things a second thought and just move on. A good example of this is a poem I once wrote. I had typed it up and had a printed copy for some reason and years after writing it I stumbled across it somehow. At first I completely forgot that I had even written it, I just thought it was a poem that I had printed out for some reason (I do that sort of thing). I read it and thought, huh, this is pretty good.
This isn't always the case. Sometimes I'm just forced to say "Mike, you done good." SG2 is an example of that. This poem is an example of that. Aaaaaand that might be the whole list. Well, until I made this anyway:
I like to quantify things, which is often a really annoying habit for people that are around me when I fixate on trying to find the right number for the right thing. This is one of the reasons I like listening to music on the computer. Looking over the play counts in my itunes library is fascinating to me. It's one thing to say "like, I totally listened to that song a hundred times, for reals." It's another to be able to look at this and say there are 789 songs I've listened to 10 times or more and 33 songs I've listened to 100 times or more. The play counts rack up most when I fixate on some song for some reason and it paints an interesting picture to look at those top songs and remember what got them there. It's also interesting to see things such as, I've listened to 1 to 31 by J-Live 27 times in the past week.
Why is any of this relevant? Well 1 to 31 is stuck in my head and since I'm sure you've never heard it, I'll tell you that in the song he's using a fake interview to tell a story, which is what I'm going to do today!
What makes this the best thing you've ever made ever?
Well two things go into that. The first is the degree of difficulty. This watch is entirely handmade and not in the sense that you might say putting together a kit is handmade. It's hand cut brass, hand cut hand sewn leather, but that's getting a little ahead of myself. The other thing is, while it might be impressive to make something that complex even if it looked like shit, I like the look of this quite a bit. Beyond that though, even if you hate how it looks, it's true to my vision. Almost a year ago I started this project with a very specific look in mind and only strayed from that in some very minor ways. Thus, if you don't like the look of it, that's due to me being a shitty designer and not any shortcomings as an artisan on my part. I feel like that's impressive.
Hold on, you don't really mean every part of that is handmade do you?
That, I suppose, is a semantics debate. There are three parts that aren't a base item (base item being the building blocks used to construct, sheets of brass etc.). The watch movement, the hands and the winding stem. Of course there compelling reasons why I didn't/couldn't make those. For those unfamiliar with the terminology, the watch movement is the assembly inside the case that makes the watch go. It is the gears and shit that move the hands and let you know what time it is. If we say hypothetically that I could teach myself how to make a movement from scratch, it would take a long time for me to get to that point and once I had, having a hand made movement would add nothing to the watch. The hands I was actually pretty upset that I couldn't hand make. Here's another quick lesson on watches for ya. The movement has a pole sticking up in the middle of it. The pole consists of a couple concentric circles. The hands have a specially sized hole that fits tightly on one of those circles. To hand make the watch hands I would need to be able to drill holes to the very precise size of those circles. My workshop doesn't have the capabilities to adhere to tolerances that tight. The winding stem I suppose should really be counted as part of the movement. It's the little rod that sticks out that you can turn to to set the time. It would be more accurate to say that I made a watch case, in which case I did hand make every part, but saying that is needlessly confusing.
Agreed. You mentioned before that you started with a very specific vision, what was that?
In the post for HJ0 I talk say that two of my ten most prized possessions are watches. I don't actually have a list. Saying something is in my top ten whatever is just a thing I say to indicate I feel strongly about it. The idea is that, while I don't have a list, if I sat down and tried to write one out, those watches would without a doubt be on it. Specifically this watch is almost certainly my single most prized possession.
When I think about watches, it always comes back to this. If you go back and look at the gallery for HJ0 you can see that the strap was very much modeled after this one. After I finished HJ0 and started thinking about the next watch I would make, I almost immediately decided I wanted to do a tribute to the above watch. I didn't want to re-create it at all, but something that was stylistically inspired. Alright so hmm. There were going to be three major changes. First I was going to up the size a bit. It was meant to be designed specifically to my wrist size, which is important to remember that I have giant hands, so as big as it looks in that picture above, it's probably bigger than you think. Second, partly because I was upping the size and partly because I didn't have a great idea of how to do a round case, I was going to go to a rectangular shape. Last I wanted to go to a leather strap. I thought leather would look good with the vision I had and since I was upping the size I would need to widen the band too and a nylon band would probably look silly that wide. Most other things were to stay the same. I wanted the watch face to be painted pretty much the same way and I wanted hands that looked pretty much the same as that.
Where does one begin?
It really *has* to start with the case. I was confident that I would have no trouble with the strap and kind of wanted to start on it right away, but I couldn't be sure how long it would need to be until the case was done. Sometimes I just walk around Hobby Lobby hoping to be inspired. On one such trip I stumbled across all these bits of metal that they sell for making architectural models. Well I had the raw materials, but how do I turn these sheets of brass into a box? This is as good a place as any to point out that this project was started back in January. Back then I was even worse than I am now at documenting steps, you can check out the making of shots at the end and they might tell some of the story (but, really, not very well). All I remember is that it took a lot of tinkering to get it to work. The problem was that brass transfers heat really well, so when I would heat up one part to solder it together, it would often melt other parts and the whole thing would fall apart. I ended up getting a pop rivet gun, then making 90 degree angle pieces, riveting the four walls together, then going back with solder to fill in the cracks.
There was really only one specific constraint in the construction of this, which is that there needed to be a way to access the battery. The tragic flaw of HJ0 is that, while it's possible to change the battery, the procedure to do so consists of first being me and then using my magic powers to precisely disassemble it. A big part of that is, as I mentioned in the original post, I had no room for error, which meant no experimenting to figure something out. This time I had a blank canvas though, which meant I could just build something in from the jump. I ended up riveting together 8 pieces of brass in such a way that a ninth piece could be slid through them and subsequently removed should a battery change be necessary. I wish I had some construction shots to give a better idea of this, but here's the final product.
The lighting isn't great (it never is) but that recessed piece of metal in the middle there can be pulled out. The original design actually had just that very middle square exposed, but during assembly solder got into the channel and made it impossible to slid the battery cover in. To clean that out I ended up cutting out that smaller rectangle on the top there. This was actually a fortuitous mistake as that extra opening makes it so much easier to remove the cover.
At this point, I ran head first into a wall.
Literally?
Naw, see I had been working on this for about two months and I got to a point where it was time to move past the case. I cut a piece for the watch face and started making the hands, when I realized I couldn't make the hands. That stuff I said above about why I couldn't make the watch hands? Definitely did not know those things going into this. It was heartbreaking because as near as I could tell, if I couldn't make my own hands, it would ruin the whole look of the project and at that point, the fuck was the point? Between that and some other things, I ended up putting the project on hold indefinitely. It would be another five months before I picked it back up at all.
I guess life sucks for everybody huh? What took the project off hold?
Well at the time that I started this as well as the subsequent holding pattern, I was living in an apartment that I hated (for a number of reasons, none of them relevant here). I often say that I like to be surrounded by things that inspire me. All that apartment inspired me to do was be depressed. My creative output ground to a halt. This was a big problem, because so long as I'm creating, I will be figuring shit out. Since I wasn't making anything, my brain was never in the right mindset to figure out how to get past that problem. Then I moved. Then I started making shit again. Then one day out of the blue it occurred to me that there *had* to be pre made watch hands out there that either matched my vision, or I could modify so that they would match my vision. In the story about the table I mentioned how I rarely stop to think about the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing. It's good that I didn't think about that here, because I probably would have never gone through with this plan.
I ended up going on ebay and ordering a thousand or so vintage watch hands. At the time I didn't possess the knowledge that watch hands aren't a generic interchangeable thing. Out of those thousand, I bet only 5 or so actually would fit. After an incredible amount of trial and error I just ended up using the first two hands I found that worked. They're not exactly what I wanted, but they work.
My only real complaint as that I wish they were longer, but they definitely work.
Wait wait, I thought the dial was supposed to resemble that original watch.
/sigh yea, it was. The magic of computers hides this fact, but I have abysmal handwriting. This meant when it came time to paint numbers on the dial, I just couldn't do it. I made probably a dozen attempts at doing it freehand. Then I tried to find a stencil, then I tried a metal stamp. They all looked terrible. I thought about putting an ad on the craigslist for a calligraphist, but I really didn't want to bring in outside help. In the end I painted it matte black, then did some precision dremeling to give it some character. I was pretty happy with how it looked and while it would be nice to have numbers, I would contend that you don't wear a watch like this because you want to be able to tell the time at the drop of a hat (not that it's really that hard to read once you're used to not having numbers). The last part of the watch movement/dial assembly was the winding stem. For reference, this is what a generic winding stem looks like.
The stem is just the straight part. The knob on the right is called the crown. Given how precisely the stem is machined, you can see how I couldn't recreate that, but even if I had wanted to use the crown that came with the movement, the stem wasn't long enough to reach the outside of the case I had made. I removed the crown and stuck the stem inside a piece of brass tubing. Then, once that was through the side of the case, I took a piece of square brass stock I had, drilled a hole in it, put it over the tube and soldered in place.
I'm sorry, as near as I can tell you've assembled the whole case at this point, but you never addressed how you were attaching the case to the strap.
Ah yes, I am getting a little ahead of myself. The original vision called for a leather strap the exact width of the watch. The problem was that to attach the band, I would need some posts or something attached to the outside of the case, which I couldn't figure out a way to do that didn't just look awkward. I ended up taking another design cue from the inspiration watch (as I'm apparently now calling it). I drilled holes in each of the four corners, then bent some brass tube and soldered it in place.
Wow, that's a much better shot of the battery cover, I'm not really sure how I missed that when I was looking for a picture before.
And then you made the strap?
The problem I often have when telling these stories is that a lot of these processes happened at the same time. I would work on the strap for a bit, then get tired of sewing leather and go back to the case. It probably just makes more sense to finish the story of the case first.
The ending of that is?
During the story of SG1 I mentioned how I got the idea of cutting glass in my head when I cut a piece for a watch I was making. This is that watch. It's kind of funny, the stained glass was definitely birthed from this and then in turn I took a skill I got from the stained glass to finish this watch. I attached the glass to the watch case the same way that I make stained glass. First I put a strip of copper foil on the top and bottom edges, then flux and solder to attach. Worked perfectly.
Revisionist history time: Case in hand you decided to start on the strap?
Sure, why not. As I mentioned before I knew I wanted a leather strap. I was at Michael's (hobby lobby is closed on sundays) and saw they sold little bags of "leather remnants." These are apparently made by a company that does all kinds of leather work and so when they have scraps from making whatthefuckever they just bag em up and sell em. There was a bag with some nice looking black leather in it, so I went with that. For HJ0 I took the buckle and loops off a watch band I had lying around. That wasn't going to be acceptable this time. I got out some pliers and bent some brass rod to make the buckle and the loops.
The downside here is that they aren't the sturdiest things. You do have to be actively trying to bend them, but they can be bent by hand. Quick aside here, sewing leather sucks. I mean really. The eyelets were the next thing. For HJ0 I had gotten some eyelets that are used in scrapbooking somehow. In addition I bought this cheap tool for setting them. As a result of the cheap tool, they looked like shit. Now, they worked fine and honestly anyone but me might not ever notice the perceived shittiness, but real or not it wasn't going to be ok for HJ1. The problem is the top o' the line tool that hobby lobby sells is 29 bucks, even with a 40% off coupon, that was more than I wanted to spend. I was at menards looking for something and saw a tool they sold for setting eyelets. It was designed for bigger eyelets than I'd been using, but it was also two dollars, which seemed like a winner to me. I was initially hesitant to up the eyelet size because I was worried it wouldn't make as tight a connection with the buckle. Some preliminary tests indicated that it wouldn't be a problem though and the more I thought about it, it probably made sense to up the size of the eyelets given how much bigger the strap was.
See, I think that's a good size. The last thing to be worked out was how the watch would actually attach to the strap. It was obvious there would need to be a second strap that went through the loops on the case, but how would that attach to the main strap? If I sewed it on at both ends, then you wouldn't be able to get that the bottom to change the battery and all the work I put into that design would be for naught. I ended up sewing one end to the strap and then putting a snap on the other end, which I feel adds a bit of flavor.
And that's that?
And that's the whole show, pushing that snap together was the last act in completing the watch. I often say success is all in how you define your goals, but even beyond that, success is contingent on having goals. If you don't know what your goals are, how will you ever know if you succeeded? So what were the goals. Well, the primary goal was just to make a good looking watch and do it from scratch. I think that was a success, as I explained at the start that's what makes this the best thing I've ever made ever. The other main goal was to pay tribute to the inspiration watch. There's some room for debate on whether or not that was a success.
I mean, I suppose just the fact that I say I'm paying tribute to it makes that true, but I had wanted them to be immediately recognizable as kindred spirits. I'm inclined to say if I'd been able to replicate the dial it would have been like that. Beyond that I'm happy with the connection. The main difference (to me) is that while the inspiration watch is subtle in it's way, HJ1 beats you over the head with what it is, but I'm ok with that.
Any future plans?
HJ2 has been designed and should come together pretty easily. Hopefully it doesn't take a year. See you later space cowboys.
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