First Automatic Watch? Here’s a useful tip!
If you’ve just purchased your first automatic wristwatch or are planning on purchasing your first automatic piece, we’d like to remind you of a few basic instructions and tips. If you purchased your watch through a reliable and trustworthy source then there’s a good chance you’ve probably been explained how automatic watches work. It has been our experience, however, that many people who own automatic watches have never really been shown how to operate them properly. Picciones’ will post blogs from time to time with tips to help you with your automatic watch!
There are three basic types of watches: automatic, manual wind, and quartz (of course, there are specialty quartz pieces like atomic and solar powered) where the first two kinds are mechanical in nature and the quartz is electronic in nature. The first thing you need to know about automatic watches is that the term “automatic” is a little misleading. Automatic watches aren’t automatic in the sense that they operate without any real effort by the person who is wearing it - in fact, quartz watches are a better example of that. Automatics - the industry term used to descibe automatic watches - are pieces that have the mechanical capability of holding a wind for as long as the watch has sufficient power to the mainspring.
Sure that may sound like it’s complicated but it’s really not. Basically, an automatic watch features an oscillating weight - called a rotor - and by wearing the watch, the rotor simply maintains the energy that the watches power source (called the mainspring) has available at any particular moment. So as you wear your automatic watch throughout the day, and as you move your arm, the rotor will spin, providing enough energy to the mainspring to maintain it’s current level of power. When you wear your watch you don’t actually wind the watch, you just maintain the level of power that is currently one the watch! With this rule in mind, if a watch has no power and you put it on your wrist, it might wind enough to start running and last throughout the day but when you take it off, it will stop again.
So if your automatic watch is completely stopped, before you put it on you should wind the crown (clockwise) thirty to forty turns to give it full power. If you wear the watch everyday, you can literally wear the watch months and months on end without needing to wind it again. For those individuals who don’t wear their watches everyday, we suggest getting a watch winder that you store your piece on to keep it wound. (Note: watch winder isn’t they best the best term either, it’s more of a watch-power-maintainer box!”)
So tip one: Wind your watch! If you have experienced problems with a new watch and it’s consistently stopping, before you send it off to service, be sure you’re winding it properly and getting enough juice on it! This tip should save you a BIG headache in the long run.
