I was curious how he did those visualizations so I looked at the source code. Turns out he codes everything by hand in WebGL [1]. Absolutely impressive stuff. Source code is non-minified so you can have a look and understand everything as well.
A warning though, if you consider to get into that hobby. I tried, it's really hard, expensive (I spend close to €1k and that is with b-quality stuff. Good stuff is 5-10x more expensive.) and can be rather frustrating. Finding parts to buy can be complicated depending on your locale, loosing parts is very easy and destroying parts, even when gentle and careful is par for the course.
I hat to put my repair hobby on halt after running out of practice pieces. All now have broken or missing parts. your milage may vary ofcourse :)
> A warning though, if you consider to get into that hobby. I tried, it's really hard, expensive
Wrist watches are pretty hard and expensive. Pocket watches are less so. When I was interested in getting more intimate with watch repair, I went to eBay and bought up a whole bunch of old pocket watch movements. I've got about 150 of them in various condition, most of them Waltham (easy to get, inexpensive, and I happen to have spent the first 25 years of my life spending a lot of time in the old Waltham Watch Co factory building because my father's company leased out space in it).
Basic tools aren't too bad, just a nice set of tweezers, screwdrivers, and a good magnifier is enough to do a lot of repairs. But you can fall down the rabbit hole pretty quickly with the desire for increased quality tools and things like a staking set so you can replace balance wheel arbors.
I tried to move from the pocket watches into wrist watches, and while the technology is largely the same, the reduced size and increased complexity made it less enjoyable for me. Instead I ended up moving the other direction and now have a nice collection of 18th and 19th century 30-hour and 8-day clocks (more commonly known as "grandfather clocks").
Huh, I recently got into it and, as is my way, I did things on the cheap. All told, including tools and practice movements (and a couple inexpensive whole watches I restored) I'm in for maybe $100.
Here's a tip on buying watches to repair or restore - avoid the big brands at first. Many watches use the same or similar movements (ETA is a big one, but you'll find Seiko movements hiding in watches from the 60s and 70s, too).
eBay is your friend (don't fall for too-good-to-be-true items from India or Pakistan)
Hang out on watchrepairtalk.com and/or watchcrunch.com and ask lots of questions. It's a very friendly community.
When I saw this, the first thing I did was Ctrl + F to see if anyone else dropped Marshall's link. I have no desire to do it myself, but it's so satisfying to watch him repair them. His videos are great.
If you wouldn’t mind answering a question, how difficult is it to swap a dial/handset/movement set into a different case?
I saw a custom mod watch that paired the face/movement of a Marathon navigator with an O&W diver case*. Is a combination I find desirable (as the Marathon bezel is too chunky for my use), but the maker won’t respond to emails.
Is it possible that the combination could be “ drop in” or is it likely to require significant modification?
This may not be the most valuable comment, but my goodness, the quality of this writeup and it's interactive descriptions of complex mechanical components AND their interactions is radically impressive. The treatment of complex topics in deeply visual and partially interactive ways, for me at least, is a remarkably helpful way to learn.
True multimedia is a lost art. We had it back in the 90s when software came on discs and it was a high-density, polished product that combined text, audio, video, and interactive elements on the same page. The internet taking over turned everything back into text, and then as bandwidth grew the only thing we thought to use it on was higher and higher bitrate video.
When I was a kid I thought the future was going to be fully-integrated data. Like I would be able to pause a movie and click on anything I was seeing to get more information. Click an actor, get his bio and interviews about the movie and bloopers. Click a vehicle and get its model. Click a special effect and see how it was done or an animal and learn about that animal. Imagine watching Lord of the Rings and being able to instantly read the original lore of any object, location, or character just by clicking/tapping it. Hell, even the smallest things can radically change your experience. Imagine if Wikipedia articles had appropriate background music. I guess there's just no market.
I almost couldn't believe the quality of this while reading it. Not just animations, but simulations? That perfectly illustrate the concept being discussed? Incredible. Not to mention the incredibly clear and articulate prose.
Sent this to my dad, and can't wait to talk this weekend. When I was a kid we would tinker around with watches in the basement but, alas, I had different interests and never really got around to truly understanding these mechanisms. I don't really know web development beyond setting up basic pages, but how the CAD was integrated into this is wonderful and I'd love to see more posts going through things like human joints or ICE, or maybe weapons ... other things where we kind of intuitively grasp how they work, but don't know the details. This entire blog seems to do a lot of that. So cool.
Came here to say the same thing. This incredibly well done, well written, well executed, well... everything. How does one find, not only the talent, but the patience to do such incredible work... Mind boggling.
I think that the person(s) that created the interactive visuals would find this to be a helpful comment. Radically impressive is a fitting description. I don’t think I’ve ever seen and interacted with anything like it, although I imagine people working with CAD software get to see and mess around with this kind of stuff pretty frequently.
To be 100% honest I found it very intimidating to even begin reading it. It's such a time sink (no pun intended) and a huge wall of text (with figures and interactivity nonetheless).
This man is marvelous. Even though I know how top-notch he is at writing interactive blog posts, he surprises me with his quality every time I open his new blog posts. Bartosz is a huge inspiration for me.
There's something magical about mechanical watches. Maybe it's just knowing that you have this perpetually winding machine on your hand (in the case of "automatic" mechanical watches).
Also knowing that the thing will last forever, take care of it and it will probably outlive you. Can't say that about an Apple Watch.
If you want a good mechanical watch that won't break the bank I suggest picking up a Seiko SKX (though prices have been going up), a Vostok Amphibia (might be hard with the ukraine conflict) or a Timex Marlin.
Normally I would crap (pretty hard) on web tech, because normally, it's only ever used to make websites harder to follow in the name of design, or to create new ways for ads to be served to me.
This site, and the most recent blog entries on this site, are excellent examples of why web technologies are not all bad. People seeking new ways to make money make everything bad, eventually, and thankfully there are bastions of utility without sales still to be found, sprinkled around.
Mechanical watch nerd here. This describe an ETA (swiss) movement, I really prefer the Japanese movement (I know mostly seikos). The mechanism are more simple and more robust.
For instance, on ETA the crown mechanism is really sensitive, a lot of tiny fragile parts with a lot of tension in them, it go wrong easily.
Also, seeing this web page I got frustrated by the fact it doesn't tackle what got me the hardest time: how can the crown move the hands without any clutch mechanism (some have) ?
It's a matter of friction and torque, so it's hard to get while reasoning on a "perfect" mechanism.
It doesn't go into a lot of detail but the article does say:
> Notice that when we turn the minute wheel only the cannon pinion turns. That pinion fits tightly inside its driving gear – it usually turns with that gear. However, when the driving gear can’t rotate because it’s blocked by the rest of the gear train, the cannon pinion can overpower the friction of that tight fit and rotate on its own. This lets us set time without interfering with the gear train, which could break the delicate parts.
Personally, I was wondering how one can wind the watch from the crown without engaging the weight of the autowinding mechanism. I'm guessing that winding with the crown causes the ratchet to slip on both pairs of blue/yellow gears.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is how the parts were modeled. I asked @BCiechanowski on Twitter and the response was "Modeled in Shapr3D [0], animated manually in JS". Another person asked about the gears, and he said "Gears are just generated programmatically, it made it very easy to tweak their shape as needed".
I'd gladly pay for content like this. It's so informative. I've watched yt channels of people who disassemble and fix automatic watches, but never understood all the intricacies in such detail. This is what journalism, or writing in general, should be about. Explain things and go into details.
My brother is a watch maker and fixer. It's an art that's becoming rarer and rarer with the advent of smart watches. Although his job is surprisingly secure because very wealthy people tend to pay a lot for their very fancy watches to be fixed or made. It's kind of sad how far we're moving from watches which last hundreds of years as heirlooms with minimal maintenance, to electronic waste generating items with components made as cheaply as possible and at most last several years before their irreplaceable battery dies and you purchase another.
Watches are robust technologies that work without internet connectivity, are crafted/maintained by people paying attention to mechanical parts that are sometimes about as thin as human hairs. Humans have used them for hundreds of years and they are really freaking cool.
If you think the animation is awesome(it is), consider owning the real thing. Not just for my brother's sake, but maybe for your families.
> when we pull the crown all the way out to enter the time setting mode, that stop lever blocks the balance wheel, which stops the watch in an action known as hacking
whoa, is this the origin of the word "hacking" in the "throw something into the wheels to make it work" sense? very interesting.
I believe that for every Bartosz Ciechanowski (huge kudos and thanks to him!) there are 100 similarly abled people, who can't create essays like this, because they need to do something else to keep the lights on. A collective loss.
Wow. I had no idea how intricate and CLEVER the mechanism of a mechanical watch is. Being no engineer, I cannot imagine how someone could think of all these clever designs. (Yes, of course the mechanism evolved over time. Even so.)
I have been wanting to buy an old mechanical watch. When I do, I will never again complain about how much a watch repair shop charges.
Also, the explanation, presentation, and animations are top-notch. Amazing work by the author!!
This was fantastic, for the first time in my life I actually understood what jewel means and what njewels refers to when it comes to a mechanical watch.
If Bartosz is reading this, I'm genuinely curious how much time did it take him to create this post. It looks like an insane amount of work with all the knowledge acquisition, write up, animation and so on..
[+] [-] ThePhysicist|3 years ago|reply
[1]: https://ciechanow.ski/js/watch.js
[+] [-] boesboes|3 years ago|reply
If mechanical watches tickle your fancy, there is a ton of watch repair video on YT. I particularly enjoy wristwatch revival (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD80T1s2Za4K682CQDGwEKQ).
A warning though, if you consider to get into that hobby. I tried, it's really hard, expensive (I spend close to €1k and that is with b-quality stuff. Good stuff is 5-10x more expensive.) and can be rather frustrating. Finding parts to buy can be complicated depending on your locale, loosing parts is very easy and destroying parts, even when gentle and careful is par for the course.
I hat to put my repair hobby on halt after running out of practice pieces. All now have broken or missing parts. your milage may vary ofcourse :)
[+] [-] technothrasher|3 years ago|reply
Wrist watches are pretty hard and expensive. Pocket watches are less so. When I was interested in getting more intimate with watch repair, I went to eBay and bought up a whole bunch of old pocket watch movements. I've got about 150 of them in various condition, most of them Waltham (easy to get, inexpensive, and I happen to have spent the first 25 years of my life spending a lot of time in the old Waltham Watch Co factory building because my father's company leased out space in it).
Basic tools aren't too bad, just a nice set of tweezers, screwdrivers, and a good magnifier is enough to do a lot of repairs. But you can fall down the rabbit hole pretty quickly with the desire for increased quality tools and things like a staking set so you can replace balance wheel arbors.
I tried to move from the pocket watches into wrist watches, and while the technology is largely the same, the reduced size and increased complexity made it less enjoyable for me. Instead I ended up moving the other direction and now have a nice collection of 18th and 19th century 30-hour and 8-day clocks (more commonly known as "grandfather clocks").
[+] [-] kQq9oHeAz6wLLS|3 years ago|reply
Here's a tip on buying watches to repair or restore - avoid the big brands at first. Many watches use the same or similar movements (ETA is a big one, but you'll find Seiko movements hiding in watches from the 60s and 70s, too).
eBay is your friend (don't fall for too-good-to-be-true items from India or Pakistan)
Hang out on watchrepairtalk.com and/or watchcrunch.com and ask lots of questions. It's a very friendly community.
[+] [-] tgmatt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glogla|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0...
[+] [-] germinalphrase|3 years ago|reply
I saw a custom mod watch that paired the face/movement of a Marathon navigator with an O&W diver case*. Is a combination I find desirable (as the Marathon bezel is too chunky for my use), but the maker won’t respond to emails.
Is it possible that the combination could be “ drop in” or is it likely to require significant modification?
*https://westcoastime.com/m16typidivbe.html
[+] [-] gganley|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shruggedatlas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnBooty|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aliljet|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] causi|3 years ago|reply
When I was a kid I thought the future was going to be fully-integrated data. Like I would be able to pause a movie and click on anything I was seeing to get more information. Click an actor, get his bio and interviews about the movie and bloopers. Click a vehicle and get its model. Click a special effect and see how it was done or an animal and learn about that animal. Imagine watching Lord of the Rings and being able to instantly read the original lore of any object, location, or character just by clicking/tapping it. Hell, even the smallest things can radically change your experience. Imagine if Wikipedia articles had appropriate background music. I guess there's just no market.
[+] [-] tomtheelder|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justusthane|3 years ago|reply
[1]: https://ciechanow.ski/gps/
[+] [-] pcurve|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] remarkEon|3 years ago|reply
Sent this to my dad, and can't wait to talk this weekend. When I was a kid we would tinker around with watches in the basement but, alas, I had different interests and never really got around to truly understanding these mechanisms. I don't really know web development beyond setting up basic pages, but how the CAD was integrated into this is wonderful and I'd love to see more posts going through things like human joints or ICE, or maybe weapons ... other things where we kind of intuitively grasp how they work, but don't know the details. This entire blog seems to do a lot of that. So cool.
[+] [-] bambax|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] surement|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alimov|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hamburglar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qorrect|3 years ago|reply
So impressive.
[+] [-] soheil|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unfocused|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuddle|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixothree|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] pontus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephbu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] avestura|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _fat_santa|3 years ago|reply
Also knowing that the thing will last forever, take care of it and it will probably outlive you. Can't say that about an Apple Watch.
If you want a good mechanical watch that won't break the bank I suggest picking up a Seiko SKX (though prices have been going up), a Vostok Amphibia (might be hard with the ukraine conflict) or a Timex Marlin.
[+] [-] naikrovek|3 years ago|reply
This site, and the most recent blog entries on this site, are excellent examples of why web technologies are not all bad. People seeking new ways to make money make everything bad, eventually, and thankfully there are bastions of utility without sales still to be found, sprinkled around.
[+] [-] justAlittleCom|3 years ago|reply
Also, seeing this web page I got frustrated by the fact it doesn't tackle what got me the hardest time: how can the crown move the hands without any clutch mechanism (some have) ? It's a matter of friction and torque, so it's hard to get while reasoning on a "perfect" mechanism.
[+] [-] rssoconnor|3 years ago|reply
> Notice that when we turn the minute wheel only the cannon pinion turns. That pinion fits tightly inside its driving gear – it usually turns with that gear. However, when the driving gear can’t rotate because it’s blocked by the rest of the gear train, the cannon pinion can overpower the friction of that tight fit and rotate on its own. This lets us set time without interfering with the gear train, which could break the delicate parts.
Personally, I was wondering how one can wind the watch from the crown without engaging the weight of the autowinding mechanism. I'm guessing that winding with the crown causes the ratchet to slip on both pairs of blue/yellow gears.
[+] [-] elSidCampeador|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ngcc_hk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eggy|3 years ago|reply
https://www.amazon.com/Watchmaking-George-Daniels/dp/0856677...
[+] [-] s1mon|3 years ago|reply
Overall, a fascinating workflow.
[0] https://www.shapr3d.com
[+] [-] elorant|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ocimbote|3 years ago|reply
This is peak Internet, huge congrats to the author(s).
[+] [-] zlippslip|3 years ago|reply
Watches are robust technologies that work without internet connectivity, are crafted/maintained by people paying attention to mechanical parts that are sometimes about as thin as human hairs. Humans have used them for hundreds of years and they are really freaking cool.
If you think the animation is awesome(it is), consider owning the real thing. Not just for my brother's sake, but maybe for your families.
[+] [-] jonsen|3 years ago|reply
Gerald Sussman Teaches Mechanical Watch Ideas at MIT:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQN8Yf1g70
[+] [-] clord|3 years ago|reply
whoa, is this the origin of the word "hacking" in the "throw something into the wheels to make it work" sense? very interesting.
[+] [-] sebmellen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomaskafka|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jIyajbe|3 years ago|reply
I have been wanting to buy an old mechanical watch. When I do, I will never again complain about how much a watch repair shop charges.
Also, the explanation, presentation, and animations are top-notch. Amazing work by the author!!
[+] [-] KaiserPro|3 years ago|reply
A word of warning, diving into watches and clocks can be a time/money sink.
If you're not careful you'll end up building something like this: https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/projects/electromechanical-c...
[+] [-] yumraj|3 years ago|reply
If Bartosz is reading this, I'm genuinely curious how much time did it take him to create this post. It looks like an insane amount of work with all the knowledge acquisition, write up, animation and so on..
[+] [-] _asummers|3 years ago|reply