Here's like $160 worth of oil.

The idea is to get it inside these things. I've got a double heaping handful of ladies' watch movements, some of which are passable, some of which are junk. The plan is to take 'em apart, clean 'em, put 'em back together again, and see if I can make 'em run better (or at all). The plan is to work from "most crap" to "least crap" because I've got a JLC ladies' watch that I somehow bought for $7 that I haven't seen for less than $900 since. I've also got three different highly-finished 7750 chronos in various states of tweakitude (an Omega, a Chopard and a legit Gerald Genta) and I bloody well better know what I'm doing before I start taking apart chronographs.

My little friend Sanford is missing a minutes hand and her balance is broken so best case scenario is I can Frankenstein in another balance staff. The watch is totally worthless; it's an FHF which, thanks to wasoxygen and veen we know is ETA before ETA. I'll say this: having taken apart a Tongji the other day it was nice working on something that was made with a modicum of care and respect.

Little movement is little.

Here's an idler wheel from the keyless works.

I mostly took this because it was impossibly small and I wanted to see how well my metrology works on impossibly small objects. I also wanted to see what the manufacturing process was on steel parts back in the 1940s or 50s. I kinda feel like it's sintered but I can't be sure; the grain sizes on it, which you can see, are about right for decent austenite grain and they kinda look concentrated towards the edges so it might be a casting.

You could see the broken pivot if you could see it. Refractory weirdness off of a badly chromatic macro lens has hidden it, however. Keep in mind that every screw on that balance was turned by someone. There are washers under them. They're often so thin you can see through them, which I didn't know you could do with brass.

A view of the wheel train, which I took to remind myself how it goes back together. The second and third wheel often look interchangeable and rarely are.

Mainsprings that look like this are done. It would need to be replaced anyway. Which it shall not be. Those tweezers, by the way, will make you bleed if you accidentally poke yourself with them. The whole coil is about the size of a quarter.

The balance staff with the balance removed...

...and the balance with the balance staff removed. Now to find another likely victim! Not shown was the nerve-wracking adventure of removing the roller table after removing the balance 'cuz I'm a moron and I know better.

At some point I accepted a giant bag of watch parts. Turns out it was a giant bag of tiny mainsprings and other peculiar parts. I have a lot of Gruen parts, for some reason, some Eterna, some Rolex and some other random weirdnesses. Let's just say there's about a thousand tiny boxes. These are the not-obviously-wrong ones.

Surprisingly it only took about half an hour to discover I had a balance staff out of a Marvin something-or-other that turned out to be spitting-distance of the balance staff of an FHF 60. I asked the Internet if they thought this was worked and most people said "don't fucking bother", some people said "worth a try" and one old codger took me to task for being such a hack if I were a real watchmaker I'd turn one on my watchmaker's lathe, apparently completely in denial of the "this is an educational project" and "I don't have a lathe" and "why the fuck do you people use lathes at the same benches you work at".

It was pointed out that the balance mount on the two staffs are different and that therefore I would never successfully get the balance on the staff. What was not mentioned that tapping with roughly half the force you would use on a 16s pocket watch staff will utterly obliterate the balance staff of a ladies' movement the size of your thumbnail so the whole project became moot.

I haven't had time to take on the next victim.

Do you have any projects you're working on right now?

No! And that feels like a problem. I haven't made something unrelated to work in months, and I'd like to rediscover my passion for creativity. I didn't leave myself enough room for it in college, and I'm hoping to find a new hobby from this series.

Do you have any projects that've fallen by the wayside?

What a silly question: Of course! Everyone does. I have the skeleton of a webapp buried deep, deep within my closet. It was a freelancing project I was doing as a favor to a family member, and it's the type of thing I think about once a week with a tinge of guilt. I'm going to work on this for the next month, and hopefully have a finished work by the start of the new year! Getting this out of my headspace will free up some worry for other things.

Is there any new type of crafting that you'd like to explore?

Tons! The selection process has been difficult, though. I took a glassblowing class a few months ago, and I've been thinking about it since then. Same for pottery. I've always been fascinated by calligraphy, but I've always been bad at calligraphy.

Like I said earlier, I'm hoping this series will help me refine my interests. The plan for now is to make this decision as I work on the old webapp project. Ideally, I'll have something to sample when I finish the old project!

Would you like your username to be tagged in the weekly thread?

No, fuck off.

I made this the other day!

It's a polar space-time diagram, visualizing a train route's timetable throughout 24 hours of a weekday. The inside of the donut is one end station at s = 0km, and the train moves from station to station (the grey rings at 10, 21,... km) towards the other end station (at 50km), where it turns around and goes the other way. Outbound trains in red, inbound in blue. There's one train that goes end to end each half hour, and another train that goes halfway and back again every twenty minutes, creating this braided inner donut look.

Made it by mangling a timetable in Excel, loading it into Python with Pandas and visualizing it with Matplotlib which can do weirdass plots like this because ofc it can. cc kleinbl00 can I order this as a GMT clock kthxbaii

Other creative project of mine is that I'm learning Reaper and making electronic music with fortnightly private lessons. My track so far is still unquestioningly in the ass-sucking phase, but I feel like I'm really quick at picking up the ropes.

I like the idea! I have some leatherworking stuff I've let fall to the wayside. Perhaps I'll have to pick that back up. Periodically I get just enough materials to make a new wallet or two. I had various extras this last cycle, so I started making a larger kind of wallet that I have not finished. Time to hit it again!

Update: I built the PC in two sittings over the weekend. She purred to life on Sunday and so far is working very nicely! Photos to come.

1. A) My garden, need to pull the weeds again. We've just moved in to the place and I planted things a month before we moved in but it's hard tending to two gardens so it fell by the wayside.

-

1. B) Building a PC. Was about to replace my laptop for 1k but realize another 600 bucks and I could keep building as I want. Parts have started to arrive and I'm already fucking lost, but that's kind of the fun of it.

-

2. I'm likely inheriting my grandfathers piano, so I'll get back into practicing with it. I did my grading as a youngster but haven't played properly in well over a decade.

-

3. I really want to try that macrame stuff. Just looks cool and hopefully the construction side of it is therapeutic.

Man, what timing. I was just sitting down to start working, and all of the sudden this thread pops up. I mean, I’ve procrastinated the last two days, what’s another half hour or so, right? I’ve been pretty busy with sewing lately, which coincidentially, is part of the reason I haven’t done a Rambling Kaiju Review in a while. It’s kind of hard to read subtitles on a television screen and sew at the same time. So what have I been working on? Quite a bit.

Let me get this out of the way. This was part of a practice piece I was doing as also a gift for someone. Overall, the piece did not turn out too well, but I think it was still appreciated overall. The only really good thing that came of it was, I got to experiment a bit with using multiple threads of different colors to sew with. For the first time, it came out alright, but I think kind of muddy. If and when I do this again, I’m gonna use two colors instead of three and make sure they contrast with each other a bit more. If I’m gonna use this technique, I want the colors to pop instead of blend in.

These are the two big projects I worked on in November. They’re gonna be gifts for some friends of the family this Christmas, underneath the pieces of paper I’ve embroidered their initials, to kind of look like how lovers carve their initials in trees. There’s a few variations between the two, namely the one on the left has cotton underneath the fabric that’s used for the leaves and the hill, to kind of give it a 3d effect, which turned out alright. Because I didn’t want it to get too plush and bulky, I only used one layer of batting, which I ended up not liking because the whole thing feels a bit flimsy. The one on the right is completely flat, but feels a bit thicker because I used two layers of batting in it. The extra weight feels pretty nice actually. The little knots for the apples? Those are colonial knots, which play the same role as french knots in embroidery, but let me tell you, I can’t make a french knot to save my life. Overall, I like both pieces, but each one took over fifty hours to do. I feel for the amount of time I put in, I would have like better results.

So that brings me to this guy. Here’s a sketch of what I have planned. When I drew it and asked Dala what she thought, she said she’s concerned it’s gonna look like a chocolate bunny. Which, maybe it will? I dunno. Is it really my fault that my artistic approximations of nature look like other people’s artistic approximations of nature? Either way, I have more hopes for this piece, even though overall, it might be more complex. For one, I’ve learned a few lessons with the two trees to save me some time. Two, this is gonna be about half the size when all is said and done, so even with more pieces involved, and more embroidery involved (for the eyes, ears, legs, etc. and maybe I’ll throw in some flowers), I think if this takes as much or even more time than the trees, I’ll be happier with the final results. We’ll see, I guess.

This is as far as I’ve gotten before I saw this post. The image on the left was the picture drawn to scale, so I can trace over it and cut out the pieces I need to get the cloth ready. Pieces are on the right.

If you’ll look at my idea sketch, you’ll see the bushes are labeled “Napkin Fabric.” I bought these with the sole intent of using them for projects like this. Something tells me that I’m gonna get frustrated as heck working with these fabrics as they’re gonna wanna fray like crazy. But you know, they’re so cool looking, they’re worth the shot.

Edit: These napkins smell bad and need to be washed. So there's a bit of delay there.

To answer kingmudsy's questions . . .

Do you have any projects you're working on right now? How's that going? Can you share any pictures?

Not that I can think of. I'm pretty unproductive, not really creative, and never really inspired to make anything. ;)

Do you have any projects that've fallen by the wayside which you intend to get back to? What happened? When are you going to pick it back up?

Unfortunately, yes. My bookbinding is kind of on hold, because certain things I wanna try, from double fan binding to making my own book cloth, I lack the proper resources and space to do. So I'm a bit uninspired at the moment. The other week, I wanted to try and do some book binding before it got cold, only to discover my glue has gone bad and is no longer sticky. Know what doesn't last forever? Glue. Who knew?

Is there any new type of crafting that you'd like to explore? What's interesting about it to you? What do you hope to create?

More stuff with fabrics? Just cause they're lovely. The other week, in a Pubski, I said I wish I had room to have a loom. I wasn't joking.

Would you like your username to be tagged in the weekly thread?

Frankly, I'm insulted that you assumed I don't want to be tagged for these threads.

Well, I’m done procrastinating. Time to get started. Wish me luck.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/08/aws-sagemakers-new-machine-learning-ide-isnt-ready-to-win-over-data-scientists/amp/

That's all I will drop as a hint for now.