@Arutha wrote:
Hi Tmac,
I polish all of my pivots by hand, in a pin vice using the lignum as a bed held in a vice, the pin chuck is twisted back and forth whilst moving the metal burnisher in the opposite direction. It does take a little practice but the beauty of this method is it is very quick, you don’t have to keep changing the collets in your lathe to accommodate the different arbor sizes or the tailstock runners for different pivot sizes. Just use a little clock oil as lubrication. I do however polish the winding arbors in my lathe with buff sticks I have made from flat aluminium bar and then varying grades of wet and dry stuck to the bars with double sided carpet tape( I put a different grade on each side, so I have 3 bars with 6 grades of paper). They last much longer than cheap buff sticks and it doesn’t take long to replace the paper when it becomes worn. As winding arbors turn so slowly it is not so important for them to be burnished like a pivot, a good polish on them helps to stop them wearing through the barrel holes.You said you were thinking about using the lignum as a burnisher? Although it is hard I still don’t think it would work as well as a steel burnisher, remember some of these pivots are almost glass hard and no matter how hard the wood, I don’t think it would touch the surface. Embedding the wood with some form of media is also not the best way to go when finishing pivots as if any of the media ends up embedded in the pivot it will accelerate the wear of the pivot hole.
Hope that helps?
Paul.
Yes it does. And would I be correct in stating that the bed depth for the pivot should be a little less than the radius of the average watch pivot?
Thanks!
tmac