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All, Jobs

Job 6 – Patek Philippe Ladies’ Watch

Watch Model: Patek Philippe

Year Made: ~1932

Movement Model: Patek Philippe #949478, 7-70

Case Number: Ref. 3006, #697379

Mass, case+movement: 9.7g

Mass, movement alone: __g

Dimensions, case: 18.46mm diameter x 7.10mm thick

Crystal diameter:

Dimensions, movement: 11.9mm wide x ~16mm high x __mm thick

Case Number

Movement Number

Mainspring
Photos
Cannon Pinion Removal with Horotec Watch Hand Removing Press

Click Spring Screw on Quarter

All, Jobs, Mechanical Watch Repairs Attempted

Job 5 – Traffic Engineering Stopwatch #4 – Attempted

Watch Model: Jules Racine & Co. 1018672

Movement Model: Excelsior Park No 3364R

Year Made: ____

Mass: 79.96g (without string attached)

Outer diameter: 50.3mm

Crystal diameter: 42.75mm, 0.89mm thick

Shock-Resistant:

Disassembly Photos, Pre-Cleaning

Problems List

  • Shattered crystal.
  • Mainspring.
  • Fourth gear broken shaft.

Repair Summary

Not worth repair.

At full-throw of the pallet fork, the pallet stone does not clear the ratchet wheel tooth:

After mainspring replacement, the watch ticked through two or three teeth of the ratchet wheel, then get stuck. Normally, I would look into adjusting the ratchet wheel or pallet fork, but since the case was bent and the crystal shattered, I believe the entire movement was slightly warped throughout. When resassembling, the bridge holes didn’t quite line up, further indicating the whole movement is bent.

All, Reference and Lists

Watch Batteries by Movement

This will never be a complete list, but there does not seem to be a good list of watch battery type by model online to even get an idea. Have to start somewhere! Owner’s manuals are not always available so usually you have to open the watch and take out the old battery.

Batteries In-Stock
321
344

Bulova Accutron N7

362

S.A.K. Design

364

E5402; Bring It, The Porter 17F

371
373

Job 40

377

Wenger Victorinox Swiss Army 24908;

394
395
396
397
399

Watch Batteries in a Flash has this good cross reference once you know one of the battery identifiers.

Silver oxide batteries are the high-drain type for watches with large, bright illumination.

Alkaline batteries are “normal” watch batteries.

Also, from Watch Batteries in a Flash, PRO TIP: If you are having a hard time determining your battery, measure the width of the battery and then the height. Use the dimensions against the Dimensions column to find the battery that you need. You can also use a micrometer to measure the inside of a battery cavity to find out which battery you need.

All

AstroWideImageMapper – and Related / Similar Software

AstroWideImageMapper (AWIM)

The AstroWideImageMapper (AWIM) project aims to enable users to label images of any format – particularly wide-angle – with with pixel-by-pixel directional astronomical coordinate data, i.e. directional azimuth and altitude.

FITS Images

https://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_viewer.html

FITS stands for “Flexible Image Transport System.” FITS images are indeed “images” tagged with astronomical data. There are various tools enabling the user to convert among FITS and many other image formats. While FITS images are tagged with flexible astronomical metadata, the quotes around “image” are appropriate. FITS are not strictly images, they are more like observatory data files. From the link above:

“FITS data arrays contain elements which typically represent the values of a physical quantity at some coordinate location. Consequently they need not contain any pixel rendering information in the form of transfer functions, and there is no mechanism for color look-up tables. An application should provide this functionality, either statically using a more or less sophisticated algorithm, or interactively allowing a user various degrees of choice.”

EXIF Data

https://www.cipa.jp/std/documents/e/DC-X008-Translation-2019-E.pdf

EXIF version 2.32, released in 2019, did not contain azimuth or altitude directional data. All references to altitude are location with respect to sea level, not direction. There is one reference to azimuth, but it refers to the azimuth of GPS satellites received by the camera at snapshot time.

Astro-Photography Tool

https://www.astrophotography.app/usersguide/

The primary purpose of APT is to help astro-photographers control their cameras with software and plan photo shoots of the stars.

OpenCV

https://docs.opencv.org/4.x/dc/dbb/tutorial_py_calibration.html

OpenCV is open-source python dealing with image distortion.

Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom

Adobe Photoshop has a various tools aimed at image distortion and some of the tools are included in Lightroom as well.

Google Sky

Google Sky is a phone app that enables the user to point the phone in any direction and see a labeled version of the sky in that direction. While Google Sky is impressive, it suffers from receiving its directional data entirely from the phone’s sensors, which can be particularly inaccurate because of azimuth.

Of note, I believe there is another similar app to Google Sky and there are certainly various computer programs with 3-D explorable models of the solar system, galaxy, and even universe to the extent we humans have mapped it.

TawbaWare

http://tawbaware.com/

TawbaWare is used by astro-photgraphers, but primarily focuses on image stitching rather than directional data.

All

Post-Industrial Clock

Modern technology has enabled machine timekeeping to supersede nature for more than a century.

However, for the first time since the International Meridian Conference of 1884, nature is making a comeback. Combining astronomy, photography, image processing, computer coding, and even recycling re-purposed computers, Time v3 Technology is proud to present the best consumer clock ever available, the post-industrial clock.

While it sounds complicated, to see the post-industrial clock is to understand – immediately. Schedule your post-industrial clock photo shoot today.

Price: TBD

Currently scheduling photo shoots. First available Monday, 11 Apr 2022 (Gregorian calendar, N.S.). Photo shoot lasts approximately 2 hours, begin 1.5 hours before sunset (or sunrise) until a half hour after.

All, Education

Decibels Explained in 3 Steps

1 Comment
Part 1: Decibels are just a ratio:

Decibels are a ratio, just a number to multiply by. While decibels are often shown as a negative value, the ratio is always positive. The ratio can be very tiny or huge, but always positive. For example, 3 decibels means about 2x the power, but -3 decibels means half the power. ‘Drop by 3 decibels’ means power is one-half of what it was. Drop by 90dB is -90dB and means power is one-billionth of what it was. One-billionth is tiny, but still positive.

Part 2: “to the power” from math, the logarithmic scale  part of decibel:

A decibel is 1/10th of a bel. A bel means “power times 10 to the power __” so a decibel means “power times 10 to the power __ / 10.” Therefore, every 10 decibels is a change by a factor of 10. 10dB is 10x, 20dB is 100x, 30dB is 1000x, -10dB is one-tenth = 0.1, -20dB is one-hundredth = 0.01, -30dB is one-thousandth = 0.001 and so on. Always positive, but ranges from tiny to huge quickly.

Part 3: the “power from physics” part of decibel:

Where the math ‘power’ is the second ‘power’ in the dB description, the first ‘power’ means decibels are assumed to refer to the ratio of power of whatever it is describing. Therefore, don’t try to make physical sense of what a decibel actually is, just know that it means more or less power from any of a variety of other units that describe actual physical phenomena that produce power. Negative decibels means power has diminished (but is still positive). Positive decibels means more power.

Common Examples

The most common example of decibels is to measure sound level. I don’t know what the power reference is for sound decibels, but there must be one and I know the power of 3dB of sound is half the power of 6dB of sound, which is one-tenth the power of 16dB of sound and so on.

Another common example is signal loss in a cable. Since a cable is not powered, these are always “negative decibels,” and usually written as “signal loss per length wire,” which means multiply by something less than one. 3dB per 100 meters of signal loss really means -3dB / 100m and the signal loses about half its power every 100 meters. If the signal travels through 500 meters, it has lost 15dB, which means about 1/32nd of the original power.