Dear Collin:

I wanted to say a huge thank you for taking the time to reply to me! I really appreciate your help. This post was the start of my journey, and I’m feeling hopeful about reaching my goal thanks to your advices. I’ll definitely be checking out the lathe you recommended!

Thanks!!

Hi Toshinori

For a lower budget lathe, most people will buy a second-hand one. However, buying from places such as eBay is difficult, as you will really need to see the lathe working in person to see if it is worth buying, as many old lathes are badly worn and you won’t be able to do accurate work on them. But, you can get lucky and find a lathe that has been really well looked after and has all the extra parts for within your budget.

Another alternative is to buy from a brand-new lathe from China. A lathe such as this: is only $620 and although I have no experience of it, it certainly looks like it would be suitable to most work. There are a lot of choices on Alibaba, just search for “micro lathe” or “mini lathe”. Most seem to use a 3 jaw chuck rather than collets, and so if you need to use collets in your work, then make sure to check with them that they fit.

Thanks

Colin

Thank you for your answer. I apologize for the late reply. I didn’t receive an email notification about your response in my inbox, so I might have missed something on my end.

The book you recommended is fantastic (I’m still in the process of reading it). I purchased a Fusion 360 course on Udemy to learn how to use the software.

£5,000 is currently outside of my budget, but thanks for the recommendetation, Do you have some recommendations for lathe between £500 and £800?

I truly appreciate you taking the time to answer my previous question and write your blog posts. They have been incredibly helpful!

Regards.

Hi Toshinori,

For a lathe, you can try and find a second hand watchmaker’s lathe if price is a factor. Currently the best new lathes for the price are Michael Chung’s CZ50 (), they’re around £5,000 and are fantastically stable and precise. The only real noise from a lathe comes from its electric motor, which would be 50-60db – about as loud as a person speaking.

Fusion360 is the easiest CAD software to learn and use, and is the least expensive. Solidworks is the most powerful but I found it really unintuitive and the yearly license is very costly. AutoCAD is somewhere in between.

Thank you Toshinori, I’m glad you found it useful – best of luck with your watch! Colin

After reading your post, I bought the book “George Daniels’ Watchmaking” and started searching for more information about watchmaking.

I noticed in your post that you use a Chinese-made lathe, this has a tolerance of 0.0004 inches (0.01mm). Could you recommend an affordable lathe with similar precision? Additionally, in terms of design, do you use software like Fusion 360, SolidWorks, or AutoCAD?

Noise is a concern for me as I live in an apartment building. Do you have any recommendations for a quieter lathe that wouldn’t disturb my neighbors?

Hi Nicholas

I am not taking on any extra work at the moment, but any watchmaker will be able to assemble a watch for you if you supply the parts to them.

Colin

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your message.

These were the first wheels that I had ever cut and so I probably didn’t follow the correct process. It certainly wasn’t a commercially viable process as they took me far too long to make, but I am happy with the result.

They were also made more than 5 years ago and so I’ll try and remember how I made them as best as I can.

It was horological blued steel that I used, purchased as a rod. I annealed the steel and then cut the teeth roughly into part of the bar. I think it was along 50mm or so. I afterwards then used my cross slide to cut out the rough thickness of the wheels. This is the wrong way round to how most people make wheels, but it was a bit of trial and error for me.

I was fortunate in that I was able to borrow some teeth cutters from another watchmaker. They were able to provide the correct ones, I’m not sure who they were produced by.

Most of the tooth profile was created on a lathe and then finished off by hand. I didn’t have a wheel topper, and had spent some time while a watchmaking student practising finishing off teeth by hand and so I stuck with this method.

The lathe had a dividing head with it, it’s one of the optional extras, and so I used that as the indexer. It had an electric motor, but I fed the cutters in by hand.

The lathe and milling attachment were good, but you did need to allow for some extra shake. I just ran the motor slowly and fed it very slowly into the bar. I didn’t lap them at all, but the milling attachment certainly felt a lot less sturdy than the main lathe.

I sadly didn’t take any photos while I made the wheels, or while I finished them.

I hope that helps.

Colin