Maintaining wind...

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Maybe an elementary question here but is it safe to allow your automatics and manual winds to completely unwind for long periods?

Difficult for me to see how you could keep them all wound for all time but want to ensure I’m doing the best for the piece. I recently acquired a Calculator and, although I’ve worn it a couple of times, I want to protect it for posterity and won’t have nonstop room in my four space winder for it.

I couldn’t find any specific strings here on this subject but a little research online finds that ‘There is no harm in allowing your watch to unwind but it may be beneficial to wind it periodically to keep gears oiled and fresh.’

May I trouble you for some insight and expertise?

Best, M.

I would say that you need to keep them unwound for a loooong time to make any major harm to them. If you wound it every now and then like once a month there should not be any issues.

Based on my experience after only several years of having watches, i rather 'automatically' activate a automatic watch and leave the manual wind to manual watch. But that just me. I'll take it as "warming up your car engine, after long period of inactivity". Beware though, some automatic watch even the power are stored, will not move until you set the time.

Also, you should run your chronographs once a month to move the lubrication about.

There are so many theories from so many reputable watch makers on this subject. I think the real answer is do whatever you think is best. There will always be someone to tell you it is the wrong way.

HUGE thanks. Very much value the insight and expertise of all here and will follow it.

APPRECIATE the lessons and the advice!

Best to all!
M.

Lubrication maintenance is an old wives' tale, at least with the advent of modern ester-based lubricants. In the olden days, it was felt that the lubricant on the escapement would pool in the wrong places if a watch wasn't run occasionally.

Todays thixotropic escapement lubricants (Moebius 9415, 941 for low beat watches) are greases that liquify under pressure so they're only thin enough to move much between the pallet stones and escape wheel teeth, where they contact. Once the pressure's off, they re-thicken to stay in place.

I have a ten-watch stable of modern automatics (four of them TAGs) and I typically rotate once a month, so it might be close to a year in the box for the rest. I also keep track of their lubrication with a timegrapher and my CAJ2180, which was made in the early teens is in need of a service (DU/DD amplitude of about 245). The rest are fine.

Of course your watch may be old enough to have an older grease or wose yet (gasp) Seiko A-03 so YMMV.

Are you a watchmaker dear knowledgable sir? 😀 Thanks for sharing your input on this forum

Just an amateur that's done a lot of research (and bought a lot of tools & supplies). But yes, I do my own watches (that I'm comfortable doing). I currently have a WAF2010 on the bench, where my son stripped the crown tube. Got all the parts including a replacement crystal with single-side AR but haven't found much time to work on it. It's that damn work stuff and honeydoos that keep getting in the way. 😡

You're welcome. I jumped over here from Omegaforums through the time-warp. Turns out your account works on both sites.

I have only my recent anecdotal experience to add - the science behind modern lubricants not withstanding. I recently purchased a nearly ten year old, new-old stock Link that has, to my knowledge, spent most of its life sitting on a shelf unwound. When I first received it a month ago, it was running 2.96 to 3.06 sec/day fast. Then, after 8 days, it started running 1.90 sec/day fast for about a week. Then, 1.10 sec/day fast for another 5 days. And, finally, for the past 9 days, it has been running 0.25 sec/day slow.

It will be interesting to see how this trend continues. But if it stabilizes, it would make me question if the lubricant lost some of its intended properties, or pooled in certain places during the watch's slumber. And, now 10 years later, it has bounced back and/or been redistributed to the correct locations.

It’s just running in?

^^This.

Since I rotate slowly, maybe once every three or four weeks and I've seen the same thing, at least on my ETA/Sellita movement watches, though they usually stabilize within a week. They usually go from fast to slow.

I'm currently wearing my WAK2180 (sorry, no pictures) and it's been slowing slightly since I started it up Sunday night. For the first day or more it was spot on but this morning (Wed) I had to hack forward about four seconds. Funny thing, I haven't worn it in almost a year and I remember it being four s/d slow.

There are a couple of other variables to consider when judging rate: positional variation and isochronism. Positional variation is the difference in rate in different positions which is affected by your activities and wear patterns, particularly the position you store it in when not wearing it. My WAN2110 is fast on the timegrapher in every position but PU but runs zero or -1spd because I place it in PU on the dresser for about 12 hours/day.

Isochronism is the fact that the mainspring weakens as it unwinds and the balance amplitude goes down. This typically speeds up a watch until it gets very low and then the watch slows down considerably. I've found that when a watch surprises me, it's because it sat too long or I was just not very active.

I'm not saying there's no movement, just that it doesn't run off to little corners where it won't do any good and risk damaging the watch. The thing I would worry about in a ten-year old watch that's been sitting is the lubrication in the balance jewels drying out. While Rolex recommends ten years most learned opinions say seven is a safer number. And yes, the oil evaporates whether it's running or not.

The best way to diagnose this is to open the watch and examine the jewel with a microscope, you can see the oil (or not). Otherwise look for low amplitude on a timegrapher. On Swiss movements, 250 degrees DU/DD is my limit, below that, it's time for a service.

I can't seem to stop learning since joining Calibre 11.

Greatly appreciate the insight ExpiredWatchdog, very interesting to a hobbyist. I appreciate the larger movement theory but understanding specific dynamics makes it 100% more interesting and useful.

Great thanks to all in this thread...

M.

Hi ExpiredWatchdog, what do you mean when you say PU when mentioning the position of the watch? thanks, Martin

Yeah, sorry. P is for pendant which is old-school for crown. There's also some french terms/abbreviations as well:

DU = Dial Up = CH = Cadran en Haut
DD = Dial Down = CF = Fond en Haut
PU = Pendant Up = 3H = Three heures en Haut
PL = Pendant Left = 6H = Six heures en Haut
PD = Pendant Down = 9H = Nine heures en Haut

Traditionally, Pendant Right is not a tested position as the watch rarely spends any time there (hence "Adjusted in Five Positions"). Think about it, how often do you place the watch there to read it?

Regarding the WAK2180, when I left work after eleven hours, it was about -0.5. I just returned and it was -3. So it clearly runs slow in PU where I store it. I'll have to timegraph it before I'm done with its rotation.

Interesting story: I bought it from an AD about six years ago, maybe three or four years after its manufacture, at GM prices. They had purchased too many TAGs to get a volume break and were blowing them out at a show; it was my second luxury watch purchase and the beginning of the rabbit hole...

So, about nine months after I bought it, I was reaching to the counter to pick it up and (you guessed it), hooked the rubber band and flung it off the counter, landing on a hardwood floor. The bezel even took a chunk of hardwood. Dead as a doornail.

Three months later, I made my first watchmaker's purchases, a set of Bergeon screwdrivers, some Dumont tweezers and a Jaxa case opener. I had expected that I had either broken a balance pivot or balance jewel; in either case the rim of the balance should move axially. So I opened it and tried to wiggle the balance in that direction. It didn't move, but I noticed that it was sprung against a stop (rebanking, where it goes around enough that the impulse jewel hits the outside of the pallet fork). I could rotate it but it would spring back to the stop. I also noticed that the hairspring was bunched up to one side as if someone was pushing it from the other side.

I continued to rotate it away from the stop and suddenly it just took off and started. Later I described all this to a professional and he said that sometimes in a shock it's possible for a larger coil to get stuck inside a smaller coil. I wish I had looked at it with a microscope prior to freeing it but at the time I didn't even own a loupe.

Prior to all this, it was around +10 s/d. After the repair, it was about -10 s/d. I moved the regulator cam two notches fast and it runs as described above. At the time I didn't own a timegrapher so it was all guesswork that I got pretty right. Since, it's been on the timegrapher and while I can't remember the numbers, I do remember that the beat error is close to 1.0 msec so there's definitely been some hairspring mischief. Once it gets up on the bench, I plan on removing the hairspring and tweaking it back into shape.

Good times!

Edit: Changed heuers to heures 3x. In my defense, I'm dyslexic, terribly with numbers. A great skill for a software engineer. Also, heuer types from muscle memory without even thinking about it.

Amusing typo 'heuers' instead of 'heures'. Very relevant to this forum!

OK, it's not real until the pictures:


Oozing titanium glory within a black PVD citadel. Indestructible Ceramic bezel that only breaks when you try to remove it. 500m of WR AND a HEV wart. What's not to like? On the inside, its a Top grade ETA 2824-2.

Yeah, the band's a bit funky (for a bracelet fan) but infinitely adjustable so if it crowds, relief is an adjustment away. And, it's deployant. Did I mention it's deployant?

Down side? This current rotation is probably the final deployment before the bench as it's likely ten years old. My last timegrapher reading didn't indicate any problem besides the beat error mischief, but it's getting on time to do something that I can do without additional expense (at least I hope so). I'll take pictures and post a blow-by-blow; I've always enjoyed those on other, less mainstream watches.

Hope you like.

OBTW, re-reading my previous (lengthy) post, it occurred to me that it actually wasn't the second luxury watch. Earlier in the day, I was perusing the display at the place I bought my WAN2110 the previous year (BTW, when I bought mine, a couple with a jewelry store had bought at least a dozen). I spotted a Tissot Seastar Powermatic 80 diver for less than $500. Snapped it up in a heartbeat.

So, when I show up to the AD's booth, I'm already wearing my WAN2110 on the left wrist and my Seastar on the right.

He's trying to sell me a TAG, any TAG and I'm all "Sorry, I'm outta wrists".

I got more serious and took a good look at what he had for sale, and remember this is just like one foot in the hole and the other just starting down the slope, but I realized this deal wasn't going to happen twice and jumped.

That Aquaracer is so cool! Look forward to following the progress when you get to that

Is this guy full of shit or what? Sometimes I outdo myself.



It doesn't look like I'm going to have to do anything to this watch anytime soon. An enigma to the standard shtick about needing to service a watch on a regular schedule.

While I wasn't around when this watch was manufactured, I bought it in 2014 and based on the seller's position, It was on his shelves for a few years. I'm amazed that the amplitude is so well; I have a CAJ2180 (also dripping with titanium and PVD) and it's at 245 in the PU/PD positions, in need of a service.