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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

> I realized I could never really make the watch my own creation unless I developed and manufactured the movement myself.

Exactly. But clocks are definitely doable and once you have mastered clocks who knows, you just might be able to use your experience and graduate to a watch small enough to be worn. The good news is that there isn't anything that 18th century clockmakers knew that hasn't been documented somewhere.

This guy has the right idea and has some interesting movement workarounds for tools he could not afford:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1CaZaNSrTM

It's unconventional but it is an actual watch movement. Far more impressed with that than the generic movements in some case.

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Before diving into wristwatch movements, a step by marine clocks could be interesting and fun too!

It's funny how when you start tracing clock making you end up reliving pretty much all of the industrial revolution.

Those people were really artists improving their products and their tools at every step and their heritage is still alive today.

The watchmaking/clockmaking industry trained a whole generation of precision machinists which led to a revolution in mechanics, toys, calculating machines and ultimately set the stage for worldwide navigation and the industrial revolution.

True and clocks and watches are still the most precise mechanical tool/instrument.

These are amazing too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta

I've never been able to find one that I could afford though.

What do you base that on? I thought some industrial applications actually required much finer tolerances. Things like telescope mirrors. It probably depends on what you consider to be a mechanical tool.

Sure, most watches have a tolerance of +4/-5 seconds by day (86400 seconds). It's about 58 ppm.

I don't know which precision a not electronically assisted telescope have, but it's sure it's impressive.

-That would be pretty good watches - the requirement for being labelled a chronometer by the Swiss is +6/-4/day (with some further requirements - positions and temperatures)

Seiko tune their top-of-the-line Grand Seikos a bit tighter - +5/-3/24h.

They also have some limited edition VFA (if memory serves - Very Fine Adjusted) watches capable of +/-2s/24h.

The engineer in me finds this kind of accuracy in a mechanical device just a hair short of black magic.

>The engineer in me finds this kind of accuracy in a mechanical device just a hair short of black magic.

I'm curious where you get this intuition. As an engineer with a background fully in electronics/software my intuition is that multiple-seconds per day of error is horrible. I never got into mechanical watches because of this. There are so many great quartz based watches that keep time so well that I've never seen the allure of the mechanical. I'm now curious from this discussion how big of a feat it is anyway but have no intuition for it.

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