Saturday Morning Matinee: In Tune with Time - Watchmaker Masahiro Kikuno

Masahiro Kikuno is a master craftsman who belongs to an exclusive international group of independent watchmakers. These consummate artists create timepieces that reflect their deepest ideals, with no connection to commercial watch manufacturers. Kikuno's creations are deeply influenced by traditional Japanese culture. He's fascinated by a masterpiece called the Myriad Year Clock, which was built by a

19th-century Japanese mechanical genius. Containing over a thousand hand-made parts, the clock is a marvel of complex and precise engineering. Kikuno seeks to transcend that old master's achievement by giving the clock a modern rebirth in the form of an elegant wristwatch. This program documents Kikuno's exacting methods of designing and hand-machining all of the delicate parts needed to create a modern masterpiece.
Reply to
Spalted Walt
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Absolutely amazing.

I did notice the careful use of the words "try" to level the playing field and the limitations of how much can be done purely by hand. While he did in fact "hand-machine" the tiny pinion gear, there's a distinct line between hand-made and hand-machine.

It would be interesting to see if the original Myriad Year clock maker had some type of "machine" with which the smallest of the parts were made or if they were truly 100% hand fashioned.

Obviously the machine would have been no where as sophisticated as what Kikuno used and may have in fact even been invented and built by Tanaka himself. That would something interesting to investigate a bit.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

The Myriad Year Clock is an interesting device:

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The watch Masahiro Kikuno makes is a marvel, to be sure, but I found it striking that this multimonth project of a watch apparently uses no jewels. The reason for jewels in a watch is for longevity, they get used in important areas as low friction bearings.

The other thing I found noteworthy was this production, and it could be because it is from a Japanese company, neglects to mention that temporal hours have a long tradition outside of Asia, too. The temporal hour system has day and night always being the same number of hours, but varies how long an hour is. Temporal hours had some favor before cheap artificial light but astronomical measurements pushed the development of fixed length divisions of time.

(For those who have not watched the video, the watch made has an elaborate mechanism to move the hour markers depending on time of year, thus allowing for measuring variable length divisions of time.)

Babylonian and Egyptian clocks, for example had variable length hours, and the Greeks and Romans continued the tradition:

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Elijah

------ contrary to subject, watched the video Sunday evening

Reply to
Eli the Bearded

While I found the video compelling, and way beyond my paygrade, I do wonder how much computer modeling/design simplifies (nothing about this task was simple, btw) and shortens the project. Can you imagine how perfect each pie ce must be both in design and fabrication, so that they interact properly a nd keep time? Amazing...

Reply to
bnwelch

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...snip... Do jigs count? Master artists of the Renaissance loved the camera obscura and sight grids. Were they less worthy painters? I suggest that there is a long and productive gradient between hand-hand and hand-machine. The master clockmaker can do more with his hand and any jigs than the rest of us could do, short of cad-cam and a 3-d printer.

Bougereau was a master painter who was outclassed by photographs. (He built a short railroad in his backyard to follow running horses as he sketched. Some wag with a fast camera upstaged him.)

There is a region along the hand-hand to machine-machine dimension where artistry dwells. When you are in that place you know it and that's why you love making curlies. The corded folk just have to try harder to get past the noise.

Hi, guys and gals, I'm back.

Reply to
Australopithecus Scobis

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