Pardon me, but do you have the time?

[JHDK]

As you may remember, my first nice watch was a Seiko quartz chronograph that my dad bought me.

Haha. I do remember that. I think it may take 2 or 3 guesses for me to name the correct instrument you play, even though you got mad at me about that once. But I'm a selfish person. As I assume you remember, I credit you with giving me the advice to get my first real, automatic watch. So since you are responsible for my favorite hobby, I remember most of your watch posts.....since in my mind they have something to do with me. Hahahah.

my dad bought me. Someone at the watch store

I may be reading this wrong but your Dad took you to the store to get it? That's part of the story I didn't remember and if I'm right it's really sweet and I'm sure a good memory. Very cool.

there's no special process that goes into making a super-accurate quartz crystal. Basically, Seiko gets a thousand quartz crystals from a supplier, and they are tested for accuracy. Most are within +/- 15 per month. A few are much closer to perfect, but it's just a random probability distribution.

So the process for rendering a super-accurate quartz crystal is no different than that of a regular one.

This is interesting. I heard something different but idk where and it def may be incorrect. I thought it was how they cut them, like diamonds. The better the cut the better (and more expensive) the diamond. I am not at all standing by that. Just like you were talking about a High School convo, I'm talking about something I don't even know where it came from to land in my head. My guess is when I looked into that crazy accurate Citizen a year or 2 ago but I really don't know.

We should look it up now to see.

 

[scotchandcigar]

I think it may take 2 or 3 guesses for me to name the correct instrument you play, even though you got mad at me about that once.

It had nothing to do with the instrument. It was the fact that I spoke often about playing in a band for like 10 years with zero reaction from you. And then one day, you just got super surprised and mocking. It's like if I ignored all those years of your travels to Disney, and then just woke up one day and acted all shocked and jokey.

I may be reading this wrong but your Dad took you to the store to get it?

I think actually I was looking and talked to the salespeople about the different grades. And then some time later, I got the watch as a gift. I don't remember if he bought it with me or without.

 

[JHDK]

It had nothing to do with the instrument. It was the fact that I spoke often about playing in a band for like 10 years with zero reaction from you. And then one day, you just got super surprised and mocking. It's like if I ignored all those years of your travels to Disney, and then just woke up one day and acted all shocked and jokey.

Again, my bad dude.

I think actually I was looking and talked to the salespeople about the different grades. And then some time later, I got the watch as a gift. I don't remember if he bought it with me or without.

You were talking to watch salesmen solo when you were like 17? Or whatever age in HS? So you were starting to get into watches pretty young.

 

[scotchandcigar]

When I was younger than 10, I was reading all the car mags. And aside from Bose speakers and Weather-Tech floor mats, every car mag had an ad for this Orfina/Le Jour chrono watch, often sold under the Porsche Design brand.



I always thought it was the coolest thing.

 

[HecticArt]

I like it.

 

[JHDK]

Someone at the watch store explained that there's no special process that goes into making a super-accurate quartz crystal.

Ok bro. you have me going down a rabbit hole of quartz crystals here.

All I know 100% so far is that every single quartz crystal that goes in a watch is synthetic.

It seems like you're right about about the good ones being sorted from the bunch but also they are machine cut so whatever.

• The Setup: Raw, low-grade quartz chips (called lascas) are placed in the bottom of a heavy-duty steel pressure vessel called an autoclave. Pure, ultra-thin quartz seed crystals are hung on a rack in the top half. [1]

• The Solution: The autoclave is filled with an alkaline water solution (such as sodium hydroxide) and sealed. [1]

• Heat and Pressure: The bottom of the vessel is heated to around 380°C–400°C, while the top is kept slightly cooler at 300°C–320°C. Pressures skyrocket to over 1,000 to 1,400 atmospheres (15,000–20,000+ psi). [1, 2, 3]

• The Growth: The hot alkaline solution dissolves the raw quartz at the bottom. This silica-rich solution rises by natural convection to the cooler top, where it becomes supersaturated and deposits layer-by-layer onto the seed crystals. This slow process takes 40 to 90 days to grow a large, flawless block of quartz.

Fucking alkaline water solutions and autoclaves? I bet my Dad had that shit somewhere in his Smith Kline lab.

• Precision Cutting: Diamond saws slice the large crystal bar into ultra-thin plates or wafers at exact angles. The precise angle of the cut dictates how stable the crystal's frequency will remain when the temperature changes. [1]

• Lapping and Polishing: The slices are mechanically ground (lapped) and polished down to precise dimensions and thicknesses

This seems to talk about what I thought was happening with the cutting. Fuck. Either dumb this down for me with your engineer brain Scotch or I need to make figuring this shit out a weekend project.

Also I did read the big players like Grand Seiko and Citizen grow their own quartz crystals in some special way to make them way better than my ETA movement.