Home › Forums › General Discussion Forum › Burnishing Versus Polishing
- This topic is empty.
-
AuthorPosts
-
February 26, 2014 at 6:38 am #48882
A question from William started me thinking about this famous topic, yet again. Personal preference has a lot to do with ones decision, as does time, patience and available equipment, combined with knowledge.
My “personal” preference is mirror finish, shiny, so at times I bypass burnishing in favor of polishing to achieve a super high lustre.
Anyway, there are many threads about this topic but here are a couple of links to one I’d saved from NAWCC
http://mb.nawcc.org/showthread.php?36995-Polishing-VS-Burnishing
Here is the link to the little study mentioned in the above topic….
http://abc.eznettools.net/D304430/X353088/Pivots.pdf
Enjoy :ugeek:
February 26, 2014 at 10:44 am #55861Chris,
I think Bob Whiteman nailed it. Aparently he just happened to have an electron microscope laying around the house along with some spare time, and I am sure glad he did. It looks like burnishing is the way to go. By the way, the father of the famous folksinger, Joan Biaz, was a renowned physicist and the inventor of the electron microscope.
davidFebruary 26, 2014 at 12:11 pm #55862Generally I make sure the pivots are round and straight. I make sure they are not pointed like a needle or barrel shaped or have any other irregularities. I generally burnish with a piece of mainspring and oil. If they do have some irregularities I use a pivot file then will burnish. We had a guy about 60 miles from me a couple of towns over. He had did clocks for almost 40 yrs. He has since quit because of alzheimer’s. He told me he burnished his pivots and then polished them with a felt wheel charged with yellow jewelers rouge. He said he never had a clock come back because of pivots. He then said he cleaned them in his ultrasonic. He showed me a couple he had did. I ran my finger nail over them and they were as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Not sure if it is right or wrong but they sure were shiney and looked good.
February 26, 2014 at 3:10 pm #55863Taking a rough guess about the pivot bearing surface areas for a clock and a watch I came up with 168/1000 sq. inches for a watch pivot and jewel and 24375/1000 sq. inches for a clock pivot and bushing. This means that the clock has roughly (very roughly) 145 times the pivot bearing surface area that a watch has. If the size of a polishing particle is the same for both pivot surface areas, the watch pivot will receive far more relative damage than the clock pivot. A particle of polishing powder is going to grind out a certain amount of metal on each pivot, but the watch pivot has less total metal to give up.
davidFebruary 26, 2014 at 11:14 pm #55864@david pierce wrote:
Chris,
I think Bob Whiteman nailed it. Aparently he just happened to have an electron microscope laying around the house along with some spare time, and I am sure glad he did. It looks like burnishing is the way to go. By the way, the father of the famous folksinger, Joan Biaz, was a renowned physicist and the inventor of the electron microscope.
davidNot one of the items that are currently cluttering up my space, but I definitely think it would be something that I’d use once only, although pretty kewl to have when you have company over… Hey, what’s that? Oh, that old thing, just my electron microscope 😆
I’m surprised that he didn’t do a burnish followed by a polish? I would have liked to see the results of that combination.
I would have also liked to see what a jewel hole looked liked under extreme mag, poor jewels get forgotten while we all focus on the pivots, it’s just not fair 😆David, I was dragged to a Joan Baez show in Vancouver by my mother when I was a mere lad back in the 70s sometime, which I think has still left me traumatized today, because at that time I was into T-Rex, Slade and Iggy pop.
February 26, 2014 at 11:38 pm #55865Chris,
That obviously explains the morning cigarette and coffee habit. A couple of years ago I saw a used electron microscope for sale on Ebay for around $10,000.00. I don’t think the damn thing would have fit in my house. It probably would have blown the transformer off of the power pole anyway and possibly made everyone within a 3 mile radius glow in the dark.
davidFebruary 26, 2014 at 11:44 pm #55866Ok David here’s the big question, IF you had the option of choosing one of the following items, which one would it be..
1. The electron microscope
2. The rose lathe currently for sale on eBay.
Although I think I already know the answer 😆
February 27, 2014 at 12:03 am #55867Chris,
When I look at all of the independent watchmakers that I consider to be great; Roland Murphy, George Daniels, Roger Smith, and others, I can’t help notice that they put a tremendous amount of their time and thought into dial making. Roland Murphy farms a lot of his mechanism components out to local machine shops but all of his dialmaking is done in house. To me, that stresses the importance that these people saw in that aspect of the watch manufacturing process. The dial is the part of a watch that these people feel requires their total control. This is, after all, the first thing that anybody notices in a watch. The second thing is the case. Who ever bought a watch and said “holy cow, that watch really has a shiny pivot”. I mean really!
davidFebruary 28, 2014 at 7:07 pm #55868That could very well be me admiring anything shiny, did someone tell you that I’ve done that, on occasion 😆
February 28, 2014 at 7:27 pm #55869Chris,
If someone offered me either the electron microscope or a rose engine for free, I would take the rose engine.
david -
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.