Repivot a Balance Staff - Part 1

Drilling the Worlds Smallest hole to repivot a Pocket Watch Balance Staff

[fredflintstone]

Looking good. My compliments to your increased skills in watchmaking as well as the quality of your videos.

[ferguscosgrave]

Your lathe work is I use to love lathe work enjoy I would stay all day on one

[darinb]

Fascinating! The microscope makes a huge difference. You’ll have to talk about that new set-up in one of these videos.

[mercuriall]

Good work, JD! Repivoting is not easy.

A few tips when drilling, try to set things up so you can clearly see where the drill bit enters the workpiece.

Pay close attention to the material ejected from the hole. You want to see little chips or curls of metal, like when a graver is cutting properly.

The moment you stop seeing these chips, you should stop drilling and figure out why the drill isn’t cutting well any more. With metallic drill bits, it usually means you need to sharpen it.

If you keep the drill against the work when it isn’t cutting properly, it starts to burnish and work harden at the point where you’re trying to drill, and you want to avoid this as much as possible.

Take care when resharpening drill bits to preserve the tip geometry, especially the symmetry, otherwise you can end up with a drill bit that wants to wander off centre.

If you don’t have blue pivot wire in a suitable diameter, good quality music wire is available down to very small diameters and is excellent for repivoting.

Not wanting to be pedantic but for the sake of clarity and accuracy - The support you’re using in the tailstock to support the drillbit is a pivot polishing and drilling tailstock runner, it is not a dog.

A dog, or drive dog is a piece that attaches to the work so that it can be driven and turned between centres.

[andybaldman]

Why not just drill out the whole shaft and make a new replacement of the whole shaft?
Drilling those thin walled holes seems like not the best solution.