Paint the tubes, I paint them black so it looks like the watch parts are floating. The gears I use are small and applied with thich CA glue. This gives enough friction that the parts don't slide around on the tube. Allow the parts to dry overnight as the CA is off gasing while it dries.
The gears are hardened steel and fragile, so if you try to bend them they will break. Use the smaller gears so bending is not required.
Prepare the resin in what ever fashion you prefer and pour over your blanks when you have them setup in the form of choice. I've tried various forms and decided putting corks in the ends, a weight in the tubes to keep them from floating up and small scraps of wood glued to the corks for "feet" to keep the tubes off the form bottom. Work the bubbles out with the best method for you, vibratation, pressure pot, etc...
When you're resin is set, cut the corks and feet off, remove the weight and square the ends as you would with any other blank.
A point to be careful with on gluing the gears on, don't get them to high. This means you may have to remove the post and very tinny gear from the larger gear. Otherwise the points will break through the surface. If this happens, sand the blank to form and polish. It's kind of cool sometimes to let the parts be felt through the surface.
The resin will magnify the gears and make them look much bigger on the blank when you are done.
I hope this helps. Good luck. Sorry for the bad photo, still working on taking better shots.