In the luxury watch world, a common question that often comes up is: “Are watch winders bad for the movement?” This concern may stem from the fear that using a winder will cause damage to a precious timepiece. In this blog post, we’ll explore the impact of watch winders on mechanical watch movements, dispel some misconceptions about their use, and answer some frequently asked questions related to watch winders.
Understanding Mechanical Watches and Their Movements
Before delving into whether watch winders are bad to watch movements, it’s essential to understand how mechanical watches operate. Mechanical watches use a complex system of gears, springs, and levers to track the time accurately. These timepieces rely on regular winding to keep their mainspring wound tight, providing energy to drive the watch’s mechanism.
Debunking Myths: Are Watch Winders Bad for Your Watch?
The short answer is no. High quality watch winders are not bad for your watch movement. In fact, they offer several benefits for luxury mechanical watches:
1. Consistent Energy: By keeping your watch wound, a winder prevents it from losing power and stopping when not in use. This maintains the regular flow of energy through the movement, ensuring accurate timekeeping.
2. Reduced wear and tear: Regular winding helps maintain consistent lubrication levels within the mechanism, preventing uneven wear on parts due to lack of use.
3. Convenience: Watch collectors with multiple automatic timepieces can conveniently keep all their watches running and ready to wear without manually winding each one.
However, it is important to note that using a cheap watch winder may do more harm than good. To prevent potential damage to your watch’s movement, invest in a high quality watch winder with options for rotation direction, turns per day, and other customizable settings that suit the specific needs of your watch.
How to Avoid the Potential Risks of Watch Winders?
While using a watch winder offers many benefits, there are some potential risks if not used properly. One potential risk is over-winding your watch, which can cause damage to the movement or even break the mainspring. To prevent this, make sure you choose a winder with adjustable settings matching your specific watch requirements.
Another risk is constant wear on the gears and other components within your timepiece. While occasional wear is expected, excessive wear caused by continuous rotation could eventually lead to decreased performance or component failures. To avoid this, consider alternating between using your winder and hand-winding or wearing your timepiece regularly.
Why should I get one?
A story I once heard was of an elderly lady who bought an automatic watch for her husband who was wheelchair bound. She brought it back the following week as it would constantly require manual winding and with both her and her husband being frail they had difficulty unscrewing the crown and winding the watch up. An automatic watch winder was the best solution in this case with the potential pitfalls explained at the time to the customer.Another reason you would want to use a winder would be if you had a complicated calendar function on your watch that was a pain to reset. The chances are if you have the funds for such a beast you will equally know how they function and also the financial backing to support repair and accelerated servicing too.FAQ
Question: How do I choose the right winder for my watch brand?
Answer: You may or may not know that many watches share movements from brand to brand. There are a few brands that produce their movements but many including Rolex,Tag Heuer, Omega,Breitling and many, many more buy in movements and ‘decorate’ them to look like their own. Furthermore, any watch winder can wind any automatic watch. Generally, get an idea of budget and style and have a quiet motor. You can look at how many TPD your watch requires per day on our database by clicking here, but remember, you can’t over wind it.
Question: How long can a watch stay in a watch winder without being worn?
Answer: A watch can sit in a watch winder indefinitely. Leave it in there until you want to wear it next. Just keep an eye on the battery life if you are not running off the main power. The autonomy of a watch winder depends on the efficiency of the motor and also how you have it set up.
Question: Do watch winders have different rotation settings for different watch brands?
Answer: The watch brand doesn’t usually dictate which way it will require rotating to charge the mainspring. If a watch movement requires CW only, that doesn’t mean you can’t rotate it CCW! It simply means that it will not charge the mainspring while rotating CCW. For this reason, all the watch winders that we stock at MOZSLY have the option of CW, CCW, and Bi-Directional rotation settings.
Question: Are watch winders suitable for all types of watches?
Answer: Another reason you would want to use a watch winder would be if you had a complicated calendar function on your watch that was a pain to reset. The chances are if you have the funds for such a beast you will equally know how they function and also the financial backing to support repair and accelerated servicing too.
