Reply With QuoteIf you've got a moonphase or perpetual calendar, it's worthwhile. If you don't, don't bother.
Hi, first sorry if this has been asked a million times before..!
What's the norm with a watch winder do people use them or do you reset your watch when the power reserve runs out??
I've got a few automatic watches and always reset them when I wear..
Cheers guys, hope your weekend is a good one👍
If you've got a moonphase or perpetual calendar, it's worthwhile. If you don't, don't bother.
Thanks, as I thought tbh👍
I have one which I never use. I wouldn’t bother unless it’s an absolute pain setting your watch.
My dad has MS and, as a result of he illness, very poor digital dexterity. He finds his watch winder invaluable.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Absolutely agree with this. I'm tempted to try Barrington which almost appear good value compared to Wolf etc.Originally Posted by sandman
Sent from my iPad using TZ-UK mobile app
Also been looking for a watch winder and agree, the Barrington looks very good value.
In my limited experience, the Barrington units are a good entry point.
They offer both mains and battery operation, the ability to “daisy chain’ as many single units together as you wish, user-defined settings on turns-per-day (tpd), as well as options for watch turning.
Price-wise they are very competitive.
May be worth speaking to Barrington direct, as I understand they were shortly to launch an updated model.
Very nice company to deal with.
I have no affiliation with the company.
..or a watch without a quickset date.
I got fed up with setting the date on my 1655 - if the date showing on the watch is past the correct date and I have to go all the way round again it can take a good 15-20 blister-inducing minutes. Plus there's a lot made of the unneccessary wear caused by a winder, but I had worries about potential damage from all this winding of the crown every time I want to wear the watch.
I finally succumbed and bought a Wolf double winder from the US flash-sale site Massdrop - they seem to come up on there on a fairly regular basis. Even with the import duty it was cheaper than buying from the UK. Still massively over-priced for what it is of course. The materials are faux-luxury and I'm sure it only cost 2% of rrp to make, but I have to say I've been pretty impressed with the fact I literally cannot hear it running - as good as silent.
Only in exceptional circumstances would I ever use a watch-winder. Keeping watches on a winder seems to be a relatively recent fad, and the watch winder is becoming a 'must have' for some folks.
The argument about the potentially detrimental effect of keeping watches running 24/7 when they don`t need to be, has been covered many times, I can`t be bothered going over that ground again. Increased wear to the spring barrel is another issue that's been explained previously.
How about the timekeeping? Think about it, the watch winder alternates between turning the watch and holding it stationary in a hanging position. If the watch is kept on a winder for several days it's highly likely that the time will need correcting. This is a totally different scenario from the traditional wear pattern of 16hrs on the wrist followed by 8hrs dial up whilst the owner's asleep (assuming it isn`t worn in bed!). A watch can be regulated to take account of this and usually the results are very good. If anyone struggles to grasp this I suggest they do some reading up on positional variations applied to mechanical watches.
If a watch has been stored on a winder fo0r several days, then it still needs adjusting to time, doesn`t this defeat the object?
Apart from the cases where the owner isn`t very mobile, or the watch has a perpetual calendar, I`m not sure what the use of a watch winder achieves. I see it as pointless. Owing to the wear and tear issues I would never advocate using a winder with a vintage watch, it's crazy but I`m sure some folks will do it without giving it any thought!
Paul
Paul,
Is there less risk of damage to a vintage non-quickset date watch in being regularly 'wound on' to set the correct date in your experience?
This is a good question.
Winding my 1680 on makes me cringe.
My "tuppenceworth" is:
For autos without a date complication, they are completely pointless -- but for moon-phase and greater complications, very useful.
I currently have eight automatics, including one moon-phase. I bought two winders (Wolf modular -- perhaps not the cheapest, but very good) on the assumption that I would one day buy a calendar watch. The moon-phase lives permanently on one -- as I regard the potential for damage associated with frequent resets (without a winder) as at least as great as the risk of extra wear (with). I use the other for one of my "date" autos -- but that's basically just because it's sitting there.
Being the sort of person who adjusts his watch daily even if it has just been on the night stand, the idea of adjusting slightly a watch that has been on the winder for a week does not seem a hardship.
HTH
.
Pretty much, unless like me you're massively massively lazy.
A nice to have, but not necessary
Not really, but you would have reduced wear if not running 24/7.
My experience of using winders doesn't really reflect the above. I keep 6 watches on winders and very rarely adjust the time before wearing them (mostly I do it when the date is incorrect due to month-ends). I have found the majority of my watches to be very accurate when a winder is used - although if a watch is inaccurate, it's obvious a winder won't fix it.
A very high grade watch in good condition will have fairly low positional variation, so it stands to reason that its rate won’t alter by a lot if it spends all its time in the hanging positions. However, for lesser watches, or older watches that show higher variation, the disparity between timekeeping on a winder versus normal wear pattern is more likely to be significant.
I think some folks just get a kick out of using these things, they enjoy having all their watches running all of the time. Pointless IMO, why maximise the rate of wear on the components needlessly? Can’t see the advantage, it takes a minute to reset a watch when it’s stopped.
Trust me, it’s a bad idea for vintage watches where parts are NLA.
That’s a dilemma.
Most older watches without a genuine ‘quickset’ can have the date adjusted by turning the hr hand between 10 and 2 repeatedly. Sometimes it has to be 9 and 2, trial and error will establish how to do it. In such cases there’s no problem, running the hands through 10 and 2 isn’t too bad.
In some cases the date is a genuine non quickset, and the hands have to be turned through 24hrs. I don’t like these at all, turning the hands excessively on a regular basis will increase wear to the cannon pinion which acts like a clutch when the hands are being set. This can usually be tightened and reset when the watch is serviced but eventually it can’t and it has to be replaced. I own one watch like this and I never set the date unless it’s within a day or two, It’s a 65 year old watch and it pays to treat it carefully. Having said this, I wouldn’t keep such a watch on a winder to keep the date correct, particularly if the watch only gets used occassionally. If it’s a watch that’s used for a couple of days each week maybe there’s a case for a winder, but perhaps it’s better to just accept the date being wrong!
Puting it bluntly, I think watch winders are marketed as ‘gentlemens accessories’ these days. There’s also the security aspect; watch winders and safe storage locations to foil a thief are usually mutually exclusive. In an ideal world I’d keep my watches in a display cabinet here I can see them, but security takes priority so they’re all stashed away which is a shame.
After servicing a watch I usually run it dial-up initially for a while and determine the rate. Ideally I`ll wear it on the wrist for a few hrs if possible; the relationship between 'on the wrist' and dial-up is needed in order to adjust the rate correctly. It can be done based on positional rates but I prefer my own method. Sometimes I`ll run a watch on the winder to check the auto-winding or to see how much variation from dial-up it's giving, the winder almost invariably differs from both the 'on the wrist' and the dial-up rates it's of limited value for adjustment. If it agrees well with the dial-up rate that's a good sign, but it rarely happens.
Most of my experience is with old watches or ETA-based modern ones where some positional variation is almost always present. Broadly speaking, the greater the positional variation the higher the likelihood that the rate on a winder will vary significantly from that seen during normal wear.
Investing in a cheap Timegrapher makes more sense than a watch winder in my view.....I see things from a different perspective to many on the forum thesedays.
I dont have a watch on my wolf winder all the time.
There is one watch on occasionally if i want to use it in my daily rotation and have 3 mechanicals or so on the go and running.
I don't use winders. I even sometimes wear an automatic watch without setting its date :)
Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk
Thanks, some really good points and views regarding unnecessary wear, that was my initial thought and the reason I never bought one.. I will be sticking to setting the watches as and when I wear them 👍
They do look rather good though . . . . . . . . . .
'Good' isn`t the word that springs to mind when I see something like this.They do look rather good though . . . . . . . . . .
I have a quiet and cheap double ww.
It is is constant use as I swap my auto collection around quite a bit and love the grab and go accessibility. Having said that, I wouldn't keep the same watch on the winder for too long, as I subscribe to the theory that occasional use stops gears gunking up, but constant use causes wear on the gears. However many would disagree as this topic is oft the subject of much debate!
Posting Permissions
