He is the moderator of the PuristSPro's AHCI and The Independent Haute Horlogerie forum. Besides his full time profession, part time moderating the forum, providing us with up-to-date information about the AHCI world and detailed posting of great field-reports, he’s made time to entrench himself deeper into the horological realm.
 
Last September, this sweet guy did something absolutely memorable.  He posted a watch.  Fully conceptualised and made by himself, taking about nine months to complete.  All this just to make his wife smile!
 
Today I've the pleasure to interview this interesting character who resides in Switzerland – Mr. Don Corson.

PPro: Hi Don, I must ask this question first.  How did you start making watches?
   
Don: I started getting interested in watchmaking about 6 or 7 years ago. I am a person who likes to really make things and was doing too much paperwork at work. Living here in western Switzerland, watchmaking is all around and I started reading about it.  After reading the book by George Daniels, it looked to me like making a watch is really do-able. So my first watch started out as a sort of challenge to myself. Could I take some pieces of brass, remove the brass chips necessary to make it look like a watch and have that watch really work?
 
I started taking the BHI correspondence course which was a great help in learning to utilize all the tools, but didn't continue after the first year because the course is very directed toward watch repair, that which in this day and age is called watchmaking. But I want to make my own and not repair those of others, so I decided, with my incomplete knowledge, to simply start and find the people who had answers to my questions when they came up.

Of course the first watch didn't work, nor did the second. But in both cases, I could figure out why and use that knowledge to better my techniques.


PPro: You mentioned the initial 2 projects did not work but you learn something about 'better your technique'.  Could you elaborate?

Don: The problems were mostly in the making of the parts.

For example one of my problems was in maintaining the precise positioning of holes drilled in the plates when reaming them. Jewel holes are drilled slightly smaller than necessary and then reamed out to the exact diameter needed. With friction fit jewels, a drills diameter alone is not precise enough. This is not really difficult, but one needs to do it right or else the center position of the hole wanders.

In the beginning I had not given it enough thought; and when I tried placing the wheels after the jewels were inserted, they didn't fit because the holes had wandered slightly.

The advantage of learning by doing is that after being stopped abruptly once, one doesn't forget to do it right in the future.



About Don Corson

PPro: Wow!  Don, I will start the session proper now. Could you let us know a bit more about yourself?     

Don: I was born in 1955 and grew up in the New York metropolitan area, am married and have two children in college.  My parents are both engineers, my Father a chemical engineer, my Mother an electrical engineer, and they are also both very musical so I was brought up playing instruments and singing.

After graduating with my Bachelors in Music History, my goal was to become a pipe-organ builder. For that reason I went to Germany, which is the only country in the world with a professional school for pipe-organ building (that I never attended!). After working 2 years as an organ tuner and builder, I realized that the really interesting work was done by the owner of the company. The rest of the work was that of a cabinetmaker with some special knowledge. So I looked into what I would have to do to become a master organ-builder.

In Germany that takes 13 years; and since I was already 23 at that point in time, it was out of the question. Then I discovered that I could study electrical engineering in Germany and make my hobby to my work, as I had always played around with electronics stuff.  And that only took 5 years. 

After graduated with a Dipl.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering, I have been working at first in computer peripherals and recently in the domain of alternative fuels and drive trains for passenger vehicles.
But I haven't completely forgotten music; I play the viola in a local orchestra.



PPro: And anyone in particular has great influence on you?

Don: My maternal Grandfather was a big influence on me. He owned a machine shop specialized in making miniature screws for the optical industry. His hobby was repairing radios and TVs, and I spent most of our family visits to my Grandparents with him at his workbench trying to understand what he was doing.

At home I was always at the workbench making something. In school, I was very interested in jewellery and made many pieces.

During my last year in high school, I made my first harpsichord, which was the first of 4 instruments I have ever made.



PPro: A harpsichord! A very old string instrument played by means of a keyboard, which I only read about, having a history since 1400. Seems to be the predecessor of the piano?   

Don: Yes, that is right.  During the late '60s and early '70s was the height of the renaissance music revival and the quest to re-discover the sounds of music from earlier ages as it was originally played, and the same for baroque music too.



PPro: To make a musical instrument, I think it requires a combination of various disciplines... music, material, physics and machining.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.    

Don: Of course!   And that is the fascination of making something from start to finish.  You will be practicing many different professions as the project evolves. 

To make a harpsichord you start out by choosing the lumber, there are those that even start by choosing the trees, and do a lot of woodworking.  On another level there is the knowledge of how to make the instrument sound as one wants, intonation and tuning.  And of course the instrument must look good as well as feel good to the touch.  The finishing is important; the performer should want to play it more each day.

In watchmaking, there are even more professions needed, and the finishing is at least as important too. It’s fascinating!



PPro: That explains somehow you are a very hands-on person. During the process of making the 5 watches, did you seek any assistance from anyone?   

Don: I am very indebted to the many watchmakers whom I have pestered to help me get the knowledge I needed. I simply showed them my work, asked questions and always received answers that often went way beyond my expectations. It seems that watchmakers, independent or not, are very willing to share their knowledge.



PPro: Could you disclose who these watchmakers were?   

Don: The watchmakers in the prototype lab at ASULAB helped me very often. I also had the pleasure of spending time in 2 independent ateliers to learn some high end finishing techniques.  I will not divulge their names, but what they primarily taught me was take time and has the patience and necessity to have a good eye.  If you can see the imperfection, you can make it perfect. If you can't, it’ll remain.



About the watches

 

PPro: Total you have designed and made 3 working pieces.  Could you explain a little about the inspiration behind each of them?

Don: The first watch was to have the form of the windows in the old buildings in Neuchâtel.  At the time, I was changing trains there every morning and evening, and I got to really like the town.  As it turned out, there is little resemblance to a window as I couldn't decide to make the watch non-symmetrical, top and bottom, like a window is in reality. A future model may well be such a non-symmetrical watch, really like a window; it would be somewhat larger too.

The second watch for my wife was to have female curves using essentially the same movement as the first. I think its "figure 8" shape is very satisfying, and the mother-of-pearl dial with gold hands is very successful.  But I didn't realize all the problems the figure 8 shape would bring with it.  I’ll just mention cutting the glasses as one of the problems, but sometimes it is good just to dive in.

The third watch, the Dresdener Regulateur, was inspired by a pocketwatch made by Seyffert from Dresden in 1807. A triangular regulator, with the seconds above and the minutes and hours to the right and left, seemed to me to be the natural next step after my first watches had the seconds above and the minute and hours below on one axle.



PPro: How do you start the conceptualization of your watches?

Don: I do start to bring my ideas first to paper with pencil sketches. This is the fastest way to get proportions correct. But then I go to CAD very quickly as with the computer's help it is possible to visualize pretty well what the final piece will look like. 

For example, I knew from the beginning that I would make hands that are very thick and rounded so the depth is seen. One of my pet peeves is hands that look like they were just stamped out of sheet metal. My initial idea was the heart and the sword with a plain thin seconds hand.

After I modeled that in the CAD, it was obvious that the visual weight of the hours and minutes hands was just too great in comparison to the seconds.  Because I wanted to keep that weight for the minutes and hours, I had to come up with a way to increase the impact of the seconds hand. That was the reason for the serpentine seconds hand, to add presence to that hand. In the mean time, I had reduced the weight of the hours hand a bit by making it a spade instead of a heart, and I think arrived at a good solution.

 

PPro: What are the 'signatures' of your latest watch - the Dresdener Regulateur?

Don: The entire watch is an exercise in different colours of gray. The movement and dial frame are both plated with ruthenium-anthracite which exhibits a warm gray. The dial itself is slate with phyrite speckles, and the hands are rhodium plated which makes the hands look very white.
The movement wheels and barrel are gold plated. The movement decoration is very traditional, polished beveling and côtes de Genève, but the impression that decoration gives with the gray ruthenium-anthracite plating is very different than the standard very shiny and white rhodium plating. The final case will be gray gold.

 

PPro: Any reasons for the crown design?

Don: The crown decor with the ring of crescent moons comes from a watch complication idea that I’ve had for some years with a daily rising and setting moon phase indication. I like the pattern the crescent moons give, but the complication will have to wait until I have the equipment necessary to make it.

 

PPro: Could you discuss a bit about the movement?   

Don: At the moment the wheels and pinions, balance wheel, hairspring, and the jewels that I use are from the ETA 2824-2. The rest I make myself. I have measured the ETA parts and made CAD models so that I can use them as I wish, in non-standard arrangements. Some of the ETA parts I also decorate to make them more aesthetically pleasing.

The bill of material (BOM) for watch Nr.3 is:

For the Movement, 105 pieces of components:
•    46 handmade, such as the plate and the bridges
•    20 purchased and modified, such as the bridge screws and the seconds wheel
•    39 purchased including the 21 jewels

For the Case & Dial,  26 pieces:
•    11 handmade, such as the case, buckle and dial
•    7 purchased and modified, such as the case screws
•    8 purchased, such as the sapphire glasses



PPro: Any pros & cons using ETA parts?   

Don: The pros are that they can be replaced with a standard ETA part should that ever become necessary, an advantage for repairs.  Using the ETA parts does, however, limit my flexibility.

I cannot make the movement thinner, for example, or set a wheel at a different height to make space for something else. For this reason I plan to make more and more of the parts myself in time.



PPro: As you fabricate many parts for the casework and movements, where did you get the machine capacity? Do you loan the machine from vendors?   

Don: It is amazing how few tools one needs to make a watch if one does not cut any gears. I have a watchmaker’s lathe, a mini-milling machine, which I converted to CNC, a drill press, a grinder and lots of hand tools.

The next acquisition will be a more accurate milling machine with equipment to cut gears. At the moment that is too much money out of my pocket.



PPro: How many man-hours were required to fabricate all required components and fully assembled the Nr.3?   

Don: I have spent somewhere between 350 and 400 hours.



PPro: So how do you find time to do all the work - sourcing, talking to suppliers, fabrication, etc?

Don: I spend about 12 to 15 hours a week on watchmaking, evenings and weekends, and add to that the CAD work done while commuting on the train. Most of my suppliers only see me early in the morning when I visit them on the way to work.



PPro: How do you know your own design works?

Don: By long term testing. The movement Nr.3 has been working since April 2008 in a pocketwatch case.  In June, I transferred it into a wrist watch case and have worn it daily ever since.



PPro: How are the results, in terms of daily rate?

Don: For the last 24 days, I have been recording the daily rate each day - the average is +3.9 seconds a day.



PPro: Since you have created several timepieces...I would like to ask what do you think are the current problems (or next solutions) for the current watch era?   

Don: I think that right now the world of mechanical watches is busy searching for its reason for being. Every quartz watch is a better time keeper. On the other hand, the makers don't want their watches to be reduced to simply being luxury baubles. So we are seeing this explosion of watches showing their mechanical insides on the front so no one can think they are just jewelery. On the other hand, that compromises their usefulness as timepieces as they are hard to (in some cases next to impossible to) read. I am thinking of RM and such.
 
On the technical level, new high tech materials are being introduced that come from the electronics industry such as silicon. In my opinion this will force mechanical watches to become just as consumable as quartz watches. It is now in many cases impossible to replace ICs that were made just 15 or 20 years ago. The same will happen to the watch parts once the stocks run out. And it will not be a question of hiring a watchmaker to work at the bench for a week to make the missing part, but of millions of dollars of high tech equipment that is necessary to recreate the part. If we really go this way, mechanical watches will necessarily become throw away watches too.

In my way of thinking, mechanical watches must accept the fact that they are luxury objects and be as beautiful as possible (the criteria for beauty being wide open, of course), and at the same time continue to be useful as timepieces. They must give their owners satisfaction in that they own hand-crafted artifacts - timepieces made by individuals, for use by individuals.

The engineering mind helps me to find practical solutions, but the goal is to make works of art, kinetic sculpture, that keep the time well and with which you can still easily tell the time.

 

Future Plans

PPro: What are your future plans? Will there be more interesting pieces on the drawing board?

Don: I will continue making my watches by hand, both with the existing movements and with new complications.  The complications will not be added modules, but integrated into the movement.   The design of a moon phase with rise & set complication is almost completed; it will be waiting for new equipment in my shop before it can be made though. A unique Equation of Time is also on the drawing boards.



PPro: So how would you raise the required funds to purchase the new equipment?

Don: The first step is offering the watch Nr.3 for sale.  The proceeds of which will go entirely for new equipment.



PPro: I hope there are many who will come forward to support another Independent in the making.  We are proud of you.  Do you have any message to the readers and potential supporter-customers?
 
Don: Up until now, every watch has been different and has a different movement. I intend to keep on making one-of-a-kind watches, with customer input on the design, metals used, etc., both using movements that I have already designed and with new movements. I have many ideas for new watches, for interesting complications, which I will execute in time when I have the equipment necessary to make them. I hope that my desire for my own satisfaction in making these timepieces will also flow to become the satisfaction of my customers as well.



PPro: Thank you, Don.  We wish you all the best and look forward seeing your new creations.

Don:   Thank you.

********************************** 
  

Copyright September 2008 -  PuristSPro.com  - all rights reserved

PuristSPro Homepage | ThePuristS Homepage

Comments, suggestions, and corrections to this article are welcome.