Does a Rolex continue to wind as you screw down the crown?

[PeterT]

As in the title, I’ve been discussing the effect of manual winding and screwing in the crown on a Submariner 16610. I understand there are slip gears that prevent over winding, when do these gears engage?

Cheers!

[walkerwek1958]

You understand wrong!

Google is you friend, have a read and find out the truth about the over- winding myth.

The mainspring slips inside the barrel when the watch is fully wound, nothing to do with gears. Very simple principle, the last couple of centimetres of the mainspring are attached to a bridle that effectively doubles the thickness of the spring. When the spring is fully wound and the last portion is being wound onto the barrel arbour the force holding the spring against the barrel wall us insufficient to prevent the whole spring rotating and slipping. Think of it like the clutch in a car.

[PeterT]

Thank you very much for your explanation.

[M4tt]

Of course, the Rolex crown itself contains a clutch which disengages when the crown is pushed in. As such none of the other mechanics actually come into play when the crown is pushed in because the stem is not turned as the crown is turned.

So no, to answer your original question, it doesn't.

[Papa Hotel]

I had a hand-wind watch once, can't remember what it was but it had a very upsetting feature. When fully wound there was little to no slippage in the mainspring and no clutch to prevent over-winding. Screwing the crown down in the event of fully-winding the watch required waiting an hour or so, very inconvenient.

Oh, I remember what it was, one of those Chinese Panerai rip-offs, so probably just an issue there rather than something to worry about with proper watches.

[JasonM]

I had a hand-wind watch once, can't remember what it was but it had a very upsetting feature. When fully wound there was little to no slippage in the mainspring and no clutch to prevent over-winding. Screwing the crown down in the event of fully-winding the watch required waiting an hour or so, very inconvenient.

Oh, I remember what it was, one of those Chinese Panerai rip-offs, so probably just an issue there rather than something to worry about with proper watches.

I hate hand wind screw down crown watches, asking for trouble if you ask me, the wear on the threads must be huge.

[walkerwek1958]

I dislike screw- down crowns on anything except dive watches where there is an argument for having one. In many designs they do not improve water resistance, which seems daft to me because its easy to engineer. A screw down crown is always prone to wear in the threads, replacing a crown isn’t difficult but replacing a pendant tube isn’t so easy. Again, if its designed correctly its not hard, ideally it should be screw- threaded into the case and relatively easy to remove. The original Omega SMP Bond watches were good for this, although a special 8 sided allen key was required to unscrew the tube plus sufficient heat to soften the threadlock.

Hand- wound watch and a screw- down crowns is a bad combination, wear and tear on the threads us bound to happen no matter how careful the owner is when screwing the crown in. Hadn’t considered the problem of trying to screw the crown when the watch us fully wound, clearly the crown needs to have a design that disengages the stem from the crown as it starts to screw down. This isn’t a problem with an automatic.

On a similar theme, I’m reminded of a hand- wound ETA 2801 watch sent to me a couple of years back, the crown could be turned forever and it never achieved full wind. Broken mainspring was my initial diagnosis, but the watch gave 290 degrees amplitude and ran well so that was impossible. I stripped it down, took the barrel apart and removed the spring which was fine.......apart from it being an automatic spring! Sure enough, the barrel was the same, the mainspring and barrel from an ETA 2824 had been fitted in error. That was a strange one.