Restoration
of a Miniature Patek Philippe
Page
3
Personally, I think the Swiss style stop-work mechanism, if used in a watch this small, would be likely to fail. The force placed on the tiny parts during manual winding could be overwhelming causing deformation of the parts or sheering of the boss on the thin barrel lid. You can see from this photo of the movement placed on a dime that the mechanism is very small. This is the smallest cylinder watch I have ever seen. Making and fitting a cylinder is a demanding job and one this small is more so.
Making
the Cylinder
A
cylinder must be the right size inside and outside in order to interact
properly with the escape wheel teeth. The dimensions
are determined by the space between the teeth and the width of the
tooth. The outside diameter of this cylinder is close to 0.50mm. The inside is very near 0.35mm. That leaves the wall
thickness at about 0.075mm. It must also be hardened
and polished in order to reduce wear and friction or the watch will
not run for long if at all. Temper must be drawn
from the ends to allow the plugs to enter without fracturing the
cylinder.
The cut out of the cylinder was done very carefully with a custom made lap, charged with oil stone powder, while it was on the mandrel. Removed from mandrel, the piece was placed on a strait, close fitting wire and hardened. It was then tempered to a straw color. The result is shown next to the point of a sewing pin. Hardening and tempering is a process, described in many references for Watchmaking, involving the use of heat to “heat treat” the carbon steel part.