Most watchmakers say the best advice is to let your watch wind down and not to keep it highly stressed. Just be aware of the potential damage you risk and the dramatic shortening of service intervals as the wheels and lubricants are all put through their paces. In closing if you really want one, get one. The chances are if you have the funds for such a beast you will equally have the knowledge about how they function and also the financial backing to support repair and accelerated servicing too. An automatic watch winder was the best solution in this case with the potential pitfalls explained at the time to the customer.Īnother reason you would want to use a winder would be if you had a complicated calendar function on your watch that was a pain to reset. She brought it back the following week as it would constantly require manual winding and with both her and her husband being frail they had difficulty unscrewing the crown and winding the watch up. ![]() So are there times when a winder is a good idea or even a necessity? Yes!Ī story I once heard in a dealership was of an elderly lady who bought an automatic watch for her husband who was wheelchair bound. Dr Strange in the movie of the same name using an automatic winding … drawer! Can you spot a flaw in his cunning plan?Īnother associated risk with some movements, especially the ETA variety, is that once fully charged the hairspring decouples from the winding system and the heavy rotor can climb to its apex before falling and shooting off at speed, sometimes breaking the ratchet drive wheel and taking out other components of the movement too. ![]() Not necessarily something that will cause bother right away but it will put far more strain on components and bring that 5 or 10 years service interval way, way down and similar to the difference in gaps between times of servicing a road car vs one you take on track. Running on a winder means that the mainspring is always at its maximum load, producing the maximum torque and trying its best to unleash all its captive energy. Maybe if you’ve not worn it for a while, pick it up and wind it until its at capacity, but then over the course of the day it will naturally run down and relax. You see an automatic watch is never usually sitting at its full power reserve. Running a watch 24/7 does not really hinder its operation and that’s pretty much how they are designed to work, it’s the winding process running all the time and the large, heavyweight rotor at the back of the movement spinning around that causes the accelerated wear and tear. So then putting the watch on a winder means the automatic winding system is effectively running, not getting any down time, and rotating for more than double its intended daily use. Manufacturers have taken this into consideration when upgrading the automatic system gearing in watches over the decades. Most of us drive to work then sit at a computer for a large part of the day, so your wrist doesn’t have as much motion to effectively wind the mainspring as in years gone by. We’re far more sedentary these days than say 50 years ago. They are generally designed to be worn for 8-10 hours then put on a table overnight to be picked up and worn again in the morning. The reason are as follows.Ī modern automatic watch is built with modern usage in mind. ![]() But the more I learned the most hesitant I was about continuing use, eventually relegating it to the back of the cupboard. When I first started in the hobby I bought a cheap winder from Amazon and used it. With more than 100 microscopic pieces, plus different types of lubrication for pivots, wheels and other components it’s basically a very small engine running at over 20,000 vibrations per hour, and these parts wear out and become less precise with use, not age. The problem is that watches are by nature a mechanical device with a finite lifetime for each part inside. So in theory, putting them on a winder is a great idea. If you have a number of different watches in rotation or don’t move around a lot during the day then you can find that these watches don’t have enough rotational movement to stay wound by themselves. They are a device created to simulate the daily wear and use of an automatic, mechanical watch.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |