Thanks for the motivation Al

After seeing Al's thread on a couple of lathe projects, I got myself fired up to do something about the darn shock mount springs that are usually a PITA to install.

Off to the garage I went and looked around and found a bit of 2.7mm ø bronze rod from an old clock chime.

I put the rod in a collet, tidied up the tip of my graver and started cutting a taper on the rod.
A few minutes later I was getting there.



I found the hardest thing was getting rid of the tiny centre pimple when cutting the hole in the end of the rod.
Darn phone wouldn't focus on the tip!



After getting it down to size and cleaning up the hole, I was all done.
Viola! A new tool that cost me nothing but time. And electricity. And tooling costs.



A close up of the tip for my pass/fail test 😉.



Cheers
Jim

I’ve never found it necessary for such a procedure. This tool likely doesn’t show up in watch tool catalogs any longer. This tool has an assortment of “nibs” and a dedicated tiny pin vice for just such procedures as fitting KIF, Seiko, or those annoying ETA springs used on Tissot. This tool is at least 50 years old. Advantage to the old f..t.