How to make a watch crown
A customer lost the crown to her ladies Omega Seamaster watch. It's an old model, and no original crown was available anymore that fitted the watch. So I decided to make her a new crown from scratch.
I start by making the basic crown shape on the watchmaker's lathe in brass.
The next step is drilling the winding stem thread hole, threading it and milling the tube/gasket space. I don't have pictures for every step, but below you can see the milling of the tube/gasket space. I use a diamond impregnated mini-mill for that, which I gradually sink deeper in the hole. Probably not the best-in-class solution, but it works. (I'm using pictures of previous attempts just to make a point; these are not for producing the actual final crown, but you'll get the idea.
The crown has ribbles along the edges. I create these with a circular saw, mounted on a vertical milling support on the lathe. Using the lathe's standard faceplate I could space the ribbles evenly along the circumference.
Click the image for a video on Instagram.
Finally, I polished the crown and had it galvanoplated/rhodinated.
