Horological Meandering

When addressing the finish quality of a watch movement, emphasis is often placed on decorative features, such as guilloche, Cotes de Geneve, perllage, and other engraving.  On the other hand, I have also often heard people include Roger Smith as among the best finished movements.  However, when I look at Roger Smith's movements, most appear undecorated and rather banal.  For example:

Yesterday, I was discussing watch movement finishing with a very knowledgeable collector and he stated that the undecorated finishing employed by Roger Smith and certain others is actually much more difficult and time consuming, and in his opinion, of a higher caliber. 

I would be greatful for more information regarding the nature, difficulty and quality of undecorated finishing techniques such as that used by Roger Smith.

Thanks,

Craig 

This type of movement finishing is known as a 'gilded finish'. I am no expert so have no idea about the difficulty of this process relative to other finishing styles, however I do know that this is a traditional finishing often found in English watches. You will also find this style in pieces by the legendary George Daniels who Roger Smith was a student of.

It is a traditional polishing method from UK and close to sand-blasting.

I seem to recall Roger at the dinner talking about the plate being finely polished, then struck repeatedly in a random pattern with a tiny punch, and then another step of blasting or something to get the all-over pebbled finish.

I found this gilding process (no doubt as performed in a remote corner of the Isle of Man, not in LA with inspectors poking about):

1. Mix equal amounts of mercury and gold leaf in a mortar and pestle. Pound until you have a grey sludge.
2. Quickly dip the part to be gilded in nitric acid.
3. Rinse the item in distilled water and allow to air dry.
4. Apply the gilding paste of mercury and gold with a small brush. It easily adheres to clean brass.
5. When the part is covered, heat very gently until the mercury evaporates. If the mercury and gold is well mixed gold will coat the item.
6. Once you finish gilding, heat the part in direct flames, which will oxidise the gold and produce colour depending on how long it is left in. The colour is not from the mercury gilding, but the heating process.

and from Daniels in Watchmaking, an alternate method:

1. Polish the brass movement plate absolutely smooth.
2. Create a matt surface with a steel wire brush revolving at 3,000+ rpm. The finish that becomes brighter as you go - if overdone you have to re-polish and start all over.
3. Wash the piece in nitric acid.
4. Suspend in potassium cyanide containing dissolved gold and an anode plate.
5. Heat solution slowly to 80 degrees C.
6. A lower temperature and current will produce a paler color; or adjust color by changing chemical mix - silver in the solution produces a yellow color, etc.

and finally, from a 110-yr old textbook:

1. Gilding bath of pyrophosphate of soda or potassium hydrocyanic acid (melting ordinary crystallized phosphate of soda in a crucible)
2. Dissolve a quantity of gold in by aqua regia (nitric acid)
3. Put water in a porcelain vessel, add pyrophosphate and stirring a little while heating
4. Filter the solution and cool
5. Dip the cleaned parts into nitrates of mercury solution.
6. Put dissolved gold into the pyrophosphate and acid and heat.
7. Suspend the parts in the solution, agitating constantly until you obtain the desired finish

or

1. Ferrocyanide of potassium, yellow prussiate potash, sal ammoniac, etc.
2. Add all of the salts except the gold to the water and boil the mixture.
3. Cool and filter.
4. Dissolve chloride of gold in a little distilled water and add to the liquor
5. Gold plating from a cold solution can vary greatly in color, so adjust the electricity up to get a gold of pure yellow

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The frosted gilt finish used to be done like Roger described it, getting both the surface form and the gold plating at the same time, whereas nowadays the plate is usually frosted first (bead blasted or ground with silicon carbide or something), and then it's given a standard electro-plating treatment.

The difficulty comes largely from the fact that you really can't automate this method (unlike for example Côtes de Genève), and once applied it is very sensitive to scratches and such, the tiniest mark will scream out from a good frosted finish, so the handling of finished components is very tricky.

Such style of finishing is done by Lang & Heyne Manufacture. I really love this style, thanks for the pics.

Similar in look to Roger's but a completely different technique, one that is an 18th century method. Marco has improved upon it with excellent results!

After bridges are finely polished they are coated, by a stiff pigs hair brush, with a mixture of fine silver powder, tartar and salt. There is a chemical found in pigs hair that acts as a catalyst in order to bind the silver to the brass surface which results in a frosted finish. The piece is then gold plated to reveal the L&H stunning frosted finish.

As far as I know no-one else is doing this exact form of finishing. BTW a synthetic brush will not work, Marco tried it, as the bristles do not contain the catalyst chemical inherent in pigs hair!

From what I've seen first hand and speaking with Roger, his frosted finishing is also superb and very difficult to master.

Cheers,

Tim

Marco's version, my WG Johann:

A friends RG Johann...

Picture from Basel, the Heinrich in WG.

  A unique flying Tourbillon by Roger Smith:

Roger Smith's Series 2 movement:

Cheers,
Tim

is also used at restauration. For example Steffen Pahlow pocketwatch-maker describes the similar methode. Your pictures are amazing!

and GREAT looking examples.

Tony

. . . in watch decorating; I don't think anyone does gilding the old fashioned way anymore as the mercury fumes are extremely toxic. The most challenging part of the process as I understand it is raising a frosted surface on the plates --it's done (again Daniels describes the process) with a rotating wire mop and it has to be done quite carefully otherwise the grain raised becomes too bright and you have to polish the surface matte again and start over.

It's something of a personal taste issue of course but the quality of finish on Roger's watches really is incredible (at least from what I've seen) not only the gilt movement finishing but also the black polish on the steel parts is really incredible and there is something about the combination of gilt plates, blued steel, and black polishing that is really appealing (to me anyway.)

Interestingly the English also did not much go in for extra flat construction either, which was something of a Franco-Swiss specialty; the classic high grade English pocket watch of the late 19th century was a 3/4 plate watch with a chain and fusee (which inevitably adds height) and freesprung balance.

Cheers,

Jack

The standard disclaimers apply - hand-held camera, wine was being consumed, other WIS nerds were snatching at the timepieces, etc.

Doesn't the Breguet Tradition use the same sort of finish?

. . . on the tradition and of course Breguet used it extensively in his own work. I'm not a hundred per cent sure but I seem to remember reading someplace that Montres Breguet uses a slightly different technique to raise the frosted finish on its gilt plates --I think it was some sort of micro bead blasting, although again the same issue with having to control the creation of the surface very carefully would probably apply. I've gotten the impression from reading about it that there's a pretty small sweet spot where the effect is what you want and then it's too much of a good thing and you have to start over.

Cheers,

Jack

to read different Methods ( above) on how to make a Frosted Surface. however the Process seem so complicated.( to me).

i did simething very similar to this a few years ago , not  Watch but Dental related . and got some succesful results. and it was fairly a simpler process.

*  i first Sand Blasted the Metal Surface with 50 Microns Aluminum Oxide ,

* blasted it again with Glass Beads to give it a Satin Finish .

* Clean the surface with Acitone in an Ultrasonic Unit.

* a Small Plating Machine is required which contains a Heating element to heat up and keep the Gold Plating Solution at constant 183 F .

dip the Piece in the solution and by touching the Object with a Zinc Rod everything starts to turn Gold in 5 Seconds .

 

 Cheers

 Tony