Gentlemen, I bought a BB in house movement last month from Gassan in Schiphol. Currently I’m nowhere near the advertised 70 hours power reserve, but prepared to concede that I’m simply not wearing it enough?
Currently wearing it Monday to Friday at the office and normally take it off when I’m home around 5.30 / 6.00.
Took it off last night about that time and it had stopped around 13.30 today!
Since given it a manual wind of around 40 turns (btw the wind is super smooth compared to my Sinn 203 - possible that it’s not actually winding?) and will see what that does.
Any other advice gratefully received.
If you do a fairly sedentary job then I think it’s perfectly possible that the watch is fine, and is simply never anywhere near fully wound. But manual winding the watch and seeing what happens is obviously the way of confirming/eliminating that possibility. But someone like Paul will no doubt be along shortly and give you an expert watchmaker’s perspective on the issue.
Thanks SimoOriginally Posted by simoscribbler
My North Flag, with a similar 70 hour movement, would go from zero to fully wound with a brisk walk of about 40 minutes.
That yours has stopped, within approximately 20 hours of taking the watch off, indicates you must have either a very sedentary lifestyle during the week, or that there is indeed something wrong with the watch.
I’ve heard anecdotal advice that wearing a watch for 8 hours or so will fully wind an ETA or similar movement. Even working at a desk, your hand is moving to open drawers, raise coffee mug, or patting secretary’s bottom. (jk)
I’d first try fully-winding it manually, note down that that date & time and leave it sitting unworn – perhaps over the weekend – and then note the time at which it later stops. That will give you an indication of whether or not there is an issue with your mainspring. If it runs 70 hours or so – and without any auto-winding on your wrist – then you’ll know your mainspring capacity is fine, and the issue probably then relates to either an auto-winding problem, or your lifestyle is not active enough. I don’t know how many turns of the crown are necessary to fully-wind a Black Bay – and it depends upon how you wind the crown, of course – but 40 is probably not enough, certainly for a watch with a 70-hour reserve. Given you cannot damage an automatic by ‘over winding’, then I’d give it 120 good turns of the crown. You won’t damage it, but you’ll be near sure to have wound the mainspring fully.
If the mainspring is fine, then you’ll know the power capacity is good, but it’s not getting enough auto-winding thereafter. Most people are not as active as they reckon. If you drive from home to work with little walking/movement thereafter, then it’s harder for the watch to auto-wind enough. I wear my watches in a similar fashion to you, and sometimes I’ll be surprised when a watch stops overnight, because I haven’t done enough to wind it, and the reserve dwindles over time. 10 hours on-wrist in a sedentary office job followed by 14 hours on a dresser often won’t cut it. Auto-winding is best used to maintain or top-off an existing power reserve. It’s for that reason I always give an automatic watch 40 or so hand winds when first wearing, to give it a chance. Accuracy is also better in the higher reaches of power reserve. Try winding it 50-75 times when first starting it, then wear as before and see how you get on.
Lastly, if your mainspring is good and you’re plenty active – a short, brisk walk each day is enough, you don’t need to be doing marathons or aerobics – but it’s still getting nowhere near full reserve, it might be an auto-winding issue. That’s a little harder to ascertain, but if you have access to anyone with a Timegrapher machine (or even one of those cheap iPhone apps that use the Apple headphone microphone), then you could test it by wearing the watch from ‘dead’ (i.e. without hand-winding it, just allowing your wrist motion to kick it into life), then checking on the Timegrapher to see what amplitude the watch has, and again a second time after a hour or two of actively pottering around. If the auto-winding is working then the amplitude should have increased markedly during the intervening period.
Are there any odd sounds from the watch, like the sound of metal scraping against the case back when you move it around, or can you feel/hear the rotor spinning around as you hand-wind it?
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