Balance Cock and Plate Project

As our first major project of the second year, I thought I would upload something of a photo diary to show the process of making the cock and plate. This was the most difficult thing I've had to do as part of this course so far, so this post will overlook the many failed attempts at various stages of completion!

The beginning!  

After creating a drawing on Solidworks and printing it out to scale, I attached it to a piece of brass bar. This allowed me to easily work out how to centre the bar on the wax chuck.



I turned out the inside of the cock first, then made a 'pip' to fit the hole I had made to centre the piece for turning the outside.

After tuning, ready to have the correct shape pierced out.  I attached another drawing to use as a guide again.

A finishing test, based on how AHCI member Mashahiro Kikuno finished his watch plates.  I decided it just didn't look right on this scale!

Cut to shape, and posing with the other components!

Unfortunately, I did a pretty poor job of riveting the steady pins, which would work with the screw to hold the cock and plate together in the correct orientation.

I decided to try and use laser welding to fill the hole, but clearly hadn't had enough practice and ended up blasting a hole straight though. Not what I wanted! I thought it would be best to stop while I was ahead, and ended up using solder. I did a few experiments to see which solder would most closely match the colour of the brass, and so notice least.

I then polished it to check it would look okay. I was pretty pleased with the result. The coin below is to show the reflection!

A first pass at polishing.

Underneath the plate I wanted to do something a bit more interesting than a mirror polish, and settled on a circular grain with the endstone at the centre. If I were doing it again, I think I'd want to do a starburst grain, which would look even more effective.

I think it looks pretty good!

I left the balance staff until last, as I knew it would take the longest to make. I had never made anything this small before and found it really challenging. I think I'm definitely going to have to practice this more!

The staff on a 1p portculis

Testing endshake before putting the wheel on.

The balance wheel didn't rivet onto the staff straight at all. Because, at this point, I had never replaced a staff before, I was too scared to attempt to fix this as I was worried I'd break the pivots on the staff. If I were to redo this now, It would be much better!

Finally, after many attempts and several weeks of long days I managed to finish it! Looking back, there are many things I could have done better, or differently, but these are all things I can carry into the next project!

Finally complete!