 |
Massachusetts
Watchmakers/Clockmakers
Association, Inc.
Inquiries to:
John F. Kurdzionak, President
at The Watchmaker
379 Main Street
Stoneham, MA, 02180
Phone: 781-438-1037
e-mail: jfk@jfkclock.com
|
Meetings Past
Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2003 -
Guest Speaker: Douglas Smith
F.W. Derbyshire Lathe Company
China Moon Restaurant
The question Douglas raised and discussed at our meeting was, Manufacturing...will there continue to be ANY, in America? It was a very thoughtful and stimulating presentation.
In January, 1983, Douglas Smith became President of F.W. Derbyshire Inc. (precision lathe makers, at www.fwderbyshire.com), and was promptly sentenced to at least 20 years hard labor when he did so :) .
Under Douglas' direction in the early 1980s, manufacturing method changes at the company resulted in tolerances on the Derbyshire product being cut in half, and then cut in half again, with consistent spindle accuracies on Derbyshire lathes of between 50 and 30 millionths of an inch, and extremely accurate spindle and tailstock centerline alignment and height, becoming standard on the product as well. He is the designer of the Derbyshire "Speed" Lathe, of the "Type 460" Instrument lathe version of the Derbyshire lathe, and of the Derbyshire Models 800 , 900, and 1000 CNC lathes.
* * *
Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2003
Program: Digital Photography in the Watch and Clock Business
Presenter Ron Price
China Moon Restaurant
Ron's talk focused on digital photography for web sites, amateur publications and record keeping (i.e., not for fine arts and photo albums). Topics included camera basics, how to email pictures & put them on eBay, and "tricks of the trade" for photographing watches and clocks. Handout notes were provided.
|
Picture of John Kurdzionak's clock taken during meeting following Ron's notes,
white vinyl window shade used as background.
|
 |
 |
| Picture taken with household incandescent bulbs in portable lamps, then corrected with image editor. Camera was mounted on tripod and set for low light conditions. Should have taken picture at more of an angle to avoid reflection off dial (and to see details on side of clock). If had more time would have tried bouncing light from white flood bulbs off ceiling. |
|
| Picture taken with camera's internal flash, then corrected with image editor. First shots were overexposed in automatic mode because of the white background, so had to correct camera's exposure time. This shot was underexposed (over corrected) with loss of blue color; would have gotten better results if had taken several shots with bracketed camera settings. |
|
* * *
 |
|
American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute
Annual Meeting
July 31 - Aug. 3, 2003
Greater Cincinnati Airport Hilton
Click here for pictures.
Entrance to Gruen Building at Friday's
ELM Trust tour.
|
* * *
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Program: Video of the Howard Clock Co. Building
China Moon Restaurant
|
Money talks. We voted in three new members this meeting; at least those who paid their dues. President John Kurdzionak reading the names, recording secretary John Rogers doing what he is paid to do - record.
We also voted in new (and old) slate of officers. (L-R) VP Larry Chelmow, 1Yr. Dir. Frank Menez, Pres JFK, Fin. Sec. Bob Richards (who can't stop talking long enough to get his picture taken), Treasurer L (mystery initial) Wayne Lannon, Sec. John Rogers, and Dir. Joe Bonafine.
 Speaker: Leslie Nesky
Leslie Nesky is one of Bill Kilbourne's daughters. You may recognize the name Kilbourne as being on lots of banjo clock movements that were stamped "Kilbourne and Proctor". Leslie's father was the Kilbourne half of "Kilbourne and Proctor". As you may guess, banjo clocks are Leslie's favorite type of clock. She is a collector, but not of watches and clocks, as her pocketbook would not be able to keep up with her wish list. Instead she collects information. To put it in more formal terms, she does research. Any of the watch related industries of Waltham, MA are of interest to her. She has an extensive Waltham Watch Company database of course, but to a lesser extent she has information on Howard and United States Watch as well.
 Program: Leslie began her presentation with an interesting insight into the Watham Watch Company.
She took videotape of the Howard Clock Building in Waltham, MA, inside and out, shortly before the Howard Co. vacated the premises permanently in 1999 (because the building was being gutted out for renovations into condominiums.) Leslie, with the help of her son, copied the videotape into a DVD format, and produced a very nice 33-minute program on the Howard Building in Waltham. The Video is a tour of the building narrated by Steve Abrams, President Howard Clock Products. It was shown on wide-screen format with a Power Point projection system.
|
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
China Moon Restaurant
Speaker: Gerrit Nijssen
Program: Waltham's Crystal-Plate Watches
Gerrit Nijssen presented a program, illustrated by slides, about the history and development of the Waltham Crystal Plate watches. William R. Wills the head of the jewel department at Waltham initially produced one of these watches more as an experiment. The Waltham management liked them and used some of these movements to demonstrate the technical capabilities of Waltham Watch Co. at exhibitions. Less than 100 of these watches were ever made.
About the speaker: Gerrit Nijssen was born and raised in Indonesia and completed his higher education in Holland. In the late sixties he needed a diversion from his engineering management duties and became interested in clocks and high grade and complicated pocket watches, cameras, and photography. Over the years he has written various articles for the NAWCC and in 1978 he published a book on F.A. Lange and Glashutte.
* * *
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
China Moon Restaurant
President John Kurdzionak (left) with speaker David Lindow of Lake Ariel, PA.
 David Lindow is a clockmaker who was born in 1970 in the farmlands of Illinois. He moved to Pennsylvania in the fall of 1988 to study theology at a small college in Clarks Summit. It was while he was in school that he met master clockmaker Gerhard Hartwigs, who in 1990 asked him to work in the shop during summer vacation. Mr. Hartwigs restored clocks and manufactured 18th and early 19th century tall clock reproductions on a modest scale. David apprenticed with Gerhard for 5 years before moving to Salt Lake City, UT for about 1-1/2 years, where he worked in a low-volume manual machine shop, making and repairing parts for the salt and copper industries, as well as for others. After this, he came back under the employ of Mr. Hartwigs in the winter of 1996. Gerhard died in December 1997, after which David took over the shop completely. In the summer of 1998 the shop was moved from Paupack, PA, to its present location in Lake Ariel, PA (about 20 miles east of Scranton) where it resides in David's barn. The shop consists of a wide range of machine tools that the computer age seems to have passed by. There are three employees working full-time at this point. The shop produces tall clocks, banjo clocks, regulators, and now skeleton clocks on a small scale.
Using an overhead projector, David described how to calculate and design a replacement for a missing wheel from a typical clock train. And then in a live demonstration, he manufactured a replacement wheel on site, using portable wheel cutting equipment of his own design.
|
|
host of Mass Watchmakers-Clockmakers Association website