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Synodicten past ten

Synodic · The whole watch, on your time. The moon is counted, not observed.

Watchmaker · Adelaide Hills

Synodic

Mechanical wristwatches, engraved, enamelled and put together by hand at one bench in the Adelaide Hills.

“Ten past ten, the hour watchmakers set for photographs; your browser hasn’t let the watch run.”

Your own clock, read just now

Nine words a watchmaker uses every day, each set down twice: once as the bench says it, once in plain words. They run front to back, not A to Z, which is the only order a watch allows.

Read it front to backWrite to the bench

Hand

hand · noun

[Old English hand; the one at the end of your arm lent its name to these]

  1. Each of the pointers that turn over a dial.
  2. The two that tell you the hour and the minute, and the fine one that proves the watch is awake.

“They’re only as honest as what’s underneath them.”

Ours are moon-tipped: a slim blade with a hollow ring near its tip, so the dial shows through where a solid hand would cover it. The short one is the hour. The moon sits in the window at twelve and the date at three. There are no numerals, because the hands already know where they’re going.

moon-tipped: a hand with a small hollow ring near its tip

The seconds hand steps rather than glides, a few small steps every second, because the balance lets the watch go one tooth at a time. From across the room it looks like a sweep. The dial beside you is keeping your own time. Nobody set it. It asked your device, and has kept agreeing with it.

See also Movement · Balance

Guilloche

guil·loche · gee-YOSH · noun

[French; said to be named for a man called Guillot, a story older than any proof of it]

  1. Fine repeating lines cut into metal on a hand-guided lathe called a rose engine.
  2. The reason the dial holds light the way cloth holds a crease.

rose engine: the lathe that does it, older than the building it stands in

“Pass after pass, until the metal starts catching the light on purpose.”

The silver blank turns while a shaped brass cam, the rosette, rocks it gently in and out. The cutter follows a wave no freehand line could keep, then steps a hair and cuts again. It goes on before the enamel, because enamel is glass and the pattern has to be underneath it to show through.

rosette: the shaped brass cam that rocks the work as it turns

Choose one and the dial beside you is cut again.

See also Enamel · Line

Hands in navy sleeves guiding a rose-engine cutter across a silver dial blank, half of it already engraved.
Guilloche · Half cut: the lathe steps a hair and cuts again.

Enamel

en·am·el · noun

[through Old French esmail, from a Germanic word kin to smelt]

  1. Glass fused to metal.
  2. Coloured glass ground wet, laid over the cut silver with a quill and fired until it runs, again and again, until the blue is deep enough to fall into and the cut still shows through.

“Some dials crack in the kiln. We don’t mention it in front of the ones that made it.”

Grand feu is French for “great fire”, and that is the whole method. Clear enamel over a cut dial goes on silver, so the lines glint up through the glass. The test discs are copper, which is kinder to be wrong on.

grand feu: enamel fired hot, in coats, rather than painted

A coat of counter-enamel on the back keeps the dial from curling as it cools.

counter-enamel: enamel on the back as well, so the two sides pull evenly

  1. GroundGlass washed and ground to a wet paste.
  2. LaidSpread over the cut silver with a quill.
  3. FiredInto the kiln until it runs and becomes glass.
  4. AgainAnother thin coat, and another, until the blue is deep and the cut still shows.
  5. StonedGround flat and brought back to a gloss.

See also Guilloche · Order

A gloved hand lifting a blue enamel dial on a long fork into the salmon glow of a small kiln.
Enamel · Into the fire on a fork, and out again blue.

Moon

moon · noun · on a watch

[Old English mona; kin to month, and to an old root for measuring]

  1. A thin disc under the dial, painted with two moons and stepped on a little each day, so that one of them shows through a window the way the sky does.
  2. The one in the sky, which the disc is doing its best to keep up with.

“The only part of the watch that looks at the sky, and it does that by counting.”

A moon-phase watch can’t look up, so it counts. The disc steps on a little each day, and after enough days it has come round to new again. This page counts too, with arithmetic instead of brass, from a new moon we know: early one Friday afternoon in September, not long ago.

lunation: one whole round of the moon’s phases, dark to dark

The stretch from one new moon to the next is the synodic month: a little short of a calendar month, and never quite the same length twice. We count with its average, so the moon in the window can run ahead of the sky or fall behind it by about a day. That is closer than most of us look.

synodic: from new moon to new moon, about twenty-nine and a half days; from the Greek synodos, a meeting. Also the name on the door.

From the Hills, a young moon is lit on its left and an old one on its right. The northern almanacs, and most moon-phase watches, draw it the other way round. The one on this page is the right way up for down here; if you are reading in the north, we apologise, a little.

See also Movement

  1. New
  2. Waxing crescent
  3. First quarter
  4. Waxing gibbous
  5. Full
  6. Waning gibbous
  7. Last quarter
  8. Waning crescent

As the Hills see it

As the northern almanacs draw it

The first quarter, both ways up.

Moon · This lunation, counted day by day from the last new moon. Worked out in your browser, so it is only as right as your clock, and we have learned not to argue with a clock we can’t open.

Movement

move·ment · noun [French mouvement, from Latin movere, to move]

  1. Everything inside the case that makes a watch go.
  2. What this page does next.

“Here is the watch with its manners removed.”

Scroll to take it apart. Hover, tap or use the arrow keys to lift a part.

  1. Hand

    The three pointers. They’re only as honest as what’s underneath them.

  2. Guilloche

    Enamel on silver, cut and then fired. The part you look at, and the part we worry over most.

  3. Moon

    A thin disc under the dial, stepped on a little each day. It never looks at the sky; it counts.

  4. A small set of wheels under the dial that turns the hour hand once for every twelve turns of the minute hand.

  5. The levers and wheels behind the crown: pull it out and it sets the hands, push it in and it winds.

  6. The floor of the movement. Everything else is screwed to it or sits in it.

  7. The barrel, where the spring keeps the winding you give it, and the wheels that pass that force along, a little at a time.

  8. Balance

    A small wheel that swings to and fro, and a lever that lets the train go one tooth at a time.

  9. Bridge

    Plates held up on feet over the wheels, like their namesakes over a river.

  10. Order

    The lid. Ours is cut in the pattern you choose, and it takes a few words if you give it some.

A Hands The three pointers. They’re only as honest as what’s underneath them.

Plate · The movement, taken apart, front to back

Cut by hand · in the Adelaide Hills
Balance · The balance, swinging in the window.

Balance

bal·ance · noun

[Latin bilanx, having two scale pans]

  1. The wheel that swings to and fro and lets the train go one tooth at a time.
  2. The part everything else in the watch is counting.

“People call it the heart. It would rather be called the regulator.”

At the bench. The balance is adjusted until the watch agrees with the bench clock, through the escapement that lets its force out. Then it is left overnight dial up, then crown down, to see whether it still agrees with us tomorrow. It usually has opinions.

escapement: the lever and wheel that let the force out a tooth at a time

At home. Three notes we give with every watch.

  • Wind it in the morning, at about the time you put the kettle on. Turn the crown until it resists, then stop: it is telling you something.
  • Set the date well away from midnight; the watch is busy then.
  • When it starts to lose its temper, bring it back. It comes apart in the order it went together, every part is laid out and looked at, and it goes back the other way.

crown: the knurled button at the side, for winding and setting

See also Movement · Bridge

The parts of a watch laid out in a row in the order they came out, from the dial and hands to the case back, on a blue-grey mat.
Balance · A service, laid out in the order it came apart. It goes back the other way.

Bridge

bridge · noun

[Old English brycg; the river kind came first]

  1. A plate held up on feet over the wheels, carrying their pivots.
  2. The side a watchmaker looks at all day, so the side finished hardest.

“It holds the wheels up, and the watchmaker to account.”

Bevelling (in French, anglage)
Each edge, or chamfer, filed to a slope and polished bright, so that when the light finds it, it has somewhere to go.
Graining
A soft, even matte on the flats, so the bevels have something to shine against.
Black polishing
Steel rubbed so flat it looks black, until the light finds the one angle where it turns white.
Blued screws
Steel heated until it turns the colour of the enamel, then stopped, quickly, before it has second thoughts.

chamfer: a sloped edge where two faces meet

See also Balance · Line

No one will see most of this. The watch will know.

Hands filing a bright bevel along the edge of a small steel movement bridge held in a wooden holder.
Bridge · Anglage: somewhere for the light to go.

Line

line · noun

[Latin linea, a linen thread]

  1. A single cut of the graver.
  2. A few designs a workshop makes again, a little differently each time.

“Named for what they are. The watch doesn’t need to be called anything.”

Barleycorn, with the moon

Dial
Blue grand feu over barleycorn.
Hands
Moon-tipped, silver.
Window
The moon at twelve, the date at three.
Back
Cut in wave, with a window onto the bridges.

Sunburst, with the date

Dial
White enamel over sunburst.
Hands
Leaf hands in blued steel.
Window
The date at three.
Back
Sunburst, closed.

Clous de Paris, time only

Dial
Slate enamel over clous de Paris.
Hands
Sword hands, silver.
Window
None, for people who already know what day it is.
Back
Plain and polished, waiting for the words you give it.

Point at one, or tab to it, and the case back beside you turns to that design.

See also Guilloche · Order

Order

or·der · noun

[Latin ordo, a row; from the word for laying the first threads on a loom]

  1. The sequence a watch goes together in, and comes apart in.
  2. A watch made for one person.

“You choose what the watch looks like. The watch chooses how long it takes, and we’ll tell you honestly at the first drawing.”

  1. A letterYou write, and we ask questions, mostly about what the watch is for.
  2. A drawingPencil, full size, hands and all. This is where it’s easiest to change your mind.
  3. A sampleYour blue, fired on a small copper disc, and a test cut of the pattern.
  4. At the benchYou collect it here, and we set it to your time while you watch.
A tray of small enamel test discs in shades of blue, grey and white, beside a wave-cut test plate and a pencil drawing of a dial.
Order · Your blue, fired small, before it is fired large.

Write to the bench

An email address or a phone number, whichever you’d rather. We only use it to write back.

What you have in mind
A · Hands
B · Dial, cut
B · Dial, enamel
C · Window

Initials, a date, a line. We engrave it by hand; the page only shows you how it sits.

Narrow, broad, always in a buttoned cuff: whatever helps.

Your watch, front and back

Order · Drawn from your choices, at your minute.

Alex’s watch noun

  1. Moon-tipped hands over barleycorn, cut, then fired under blue enamel, with the moon at twelve.
  2. On the back, in the maker’s hand: “For R., who is always late.”

A sample entry, set the way yours would be.

The workshop at first light: a timber bench and a covered lathe under a window full of misty gum trees.
Order · The bench, first thing. The lathe keeps its cloth on until it’s needed.

A bench under a window, a lathe with a cloth over it, and gum trees doing nothing much outside. That is the whole company, and it likes it that way.

The bench keeps Adelaide time.

Set in Castoro and Castoro Titling. The guilloche on this page was cut by your browser, in the pattern you chose. The time was your own; the moon was counted, not observed.