Small win this week: the winding stem, yoke, and setting lever are finally starting to behave like one system instead of three separate problems 👍

The keyless works area fought me hard. Tiny geometry changes, recut parts, assemble, test, tear down, measure, repeat. A lot of “wait… why is that touching?” moments.

Loss: I had to re-work the cannon pinion. Turns out my previous design didn’t actually let it slide properly, which means setting the time would have been… impossible 😅

Win: the stem now has a clearer feel between positions, the yoke is moving the sliding pinion more predictably, and the setting lever is finally starting to make sense in the assembly.

Big win: I managed to compress the movement even more, down to 6.6mm. If the case and sapphire stack behave, I might be looking at around 8.8mm total. For me, that is monumental.

Honest version: this whole area humbled me.

A few times I thought I had it, then one pull on the stem exposed the weak spot. Sharp corner. Spring face slightly off. Part looked fine alone, wrong in assembly.

What helped was slowing down and separating the problem:

• Position feel first.
• Then engagement.
• Then release.
• Then hacking.

Less guessing. More signal.

Still not final-final, but now the setup is predictable. That feels like real progress.

Next: bridges. And yes, power reserve is still in the back of my mind 🤔 Simple idea. Not simple to build.