Old Watchmakers Drill

[clockman1509]

Good afternoon all, this may be a daft question , but I have just bought an old watchmakers drill, it can be clamped into my vice. It is 3″ long and looks like a pin vice with a pulley wheel that needs to be operated with a bow. my question is does the bow have to be of any special size and what is the best material to make it out of?
Told you it was a daft question. By the way a big thank you Paul for your visit, I learnt a lot please make it again soon and lets get in some fly fishing.
regards to all on the forum
Alan

[david pierce]

Clockman,
Boy, are you in luck. I have found that the best line to power pulley driven watch tools with is thin monofilament fishing line. Since you mentioned that you like to go fly fishing, you probably have a short piece of line in your fishing box already. Just make sure that you use the thin light (5 or 10 pound) line as the thicker line is too stiff to work well with a small pulley. The bow that I am happy with is the standard Bergeon bow that can be purchased on the internet (Ebay) for about $50.00 dollars. There is no real magic to this item as long as it turns the pulley, it is doing what it is supposed to do. If you don’t want to purchase a manufactured bow you can make your own. If it does the job and you feel comfortable with it then it is all that is needed to do the job.
david

[clockman1509]

Hi David, thanks for your reply. could you advise me on the best material to make the bow out of, and how big it should be. as I have bad arthritis in my hands It is difficult to polish pivots, a jacot tool is beyond my funding at the moment . so I thought I would use this tool to hold the gear and polish the pivots with my burnisher while turning the drill with a bow operated by my left hand and the pivot resting on a piece of hard wood with the depth filed in to accept the pivot. wood would be placed in the second vice making sure that the pivot was totally trued up.
I do appreciate the help that I get from the forum.
many thanks
Alan

[david pierce]

Alan,
As far as material for a bow goes, a piece of inexpensive springy steel will do the trick. It does not have to be round but the finished bow should be fairly light in weight. A piece of thin flexable bamboo such as the tip of a fly fishing pole should work fine. When you are making a tool to use yourself, the only requirement is that the tool must function for that particular job. It does not have to be pretty nor does it have to be hardened. It only needs to work well enough to get the job done. Look at Bob’s videos and view the section where Bob shows how to make a flag. You can modify his process a bit by soldering the two pieces together instead of riveting. The soldering will not be as strong as a rivet but it will be strong enough to work well. As far as a Jacot tool goes, most of the pivots that were made, in the entire history of pivot making, were polished with a Dorington style pivot polisher and not a Jacot tool. The major difference between the two systems is the Jacot tool uses a file guide and makes the polishing process a little more foolproof. The lathe on your workbench should be sufficient for any polishing requirement that comes along. A Jocot tool is more specialized but not absolutely necessary to polish pivots.
david

[clockman1509]

Thanks David, I will let you know how I get on.
regards
Alan

[arutha]

Hi Alan,
just to let you know I have moved this thread to general discussion.
For the bow you can use any useable material, plastic rod, brass rod, steel rod (as David rightly suggests), the old metal wire coat hangers you get from the dry cleaners will probably do the job, the broken off end of a fibreglass fishing rod, in fact anything that will keep the fishing line under a reasonable tension and give a bit of curve so you have a reasonable hold at one end. As for using it to polish pivots, what sort of chuck does it have, i.e. how big an arbor will it take or are you only using this for pocket watch pivots? You may find you are moving its position up and down in the vice to account for the different size arbors to keep the pivots straight in the wood block.
Just a thought
Paul.

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