Hi Guys! In this post, I'm going to talk about problems surrounding automatic watch. While I absolutely adore these little timepieces, unfortunately like other mechanical things, automatic watch is not free from problems. It turns out, there are about 8 common problems with automatic watch (as can be seen in this article here). But I will only talk about the problems that I've personally had with my watches. Let's start! 1- Automatic watch stopped working after taking it off The first problem that I encountered when using automatic watch years ago. This problem taught me that even though the manual says the power reserve of a particular watch is XX hours, most likely than not your watch don't have that power reserve all the time. It turns out that using automatic watch is NOT enough to fill in its power reserve to full due to sedentary lifestyle of working at a desk. Just sitting on a desk and doing work won't move our hands a lot, which in turn means our automatic watch's rotor is not moving as frequently as it should. So when you put your watch down at the end of the day, it actually don't have enough power reserve to last through the night, and causes it to drop dead the next morning. What can we do then? For a start, a few turns of the crown will do the trick of filling it with some much needed power reserve. You can do this when storing the watch at the end of the day so that it can last throughout the night. 2 - Automatic watch not accurate Accuracy is a delicate matter with automatic watches and can be very hard to predict. As it's a mechanical device, lots of factors contribute to its accuracy such as quality of assembly (even same factory can produce different levels of product quality!), usage pattern, temperature of the skin of owner, climate of the use, etc. All of these affects the mechanical device. For example, someone that is very rough with his watch and frequently uses it to do outdoor activities will cause more stress on the watch, and the fine details on it might be out of place. This won't necessarily cause it to break down but its accuracy can be affected. Likewise, two owners of the same watch but at different climate - say hot Egypt vs cold Canada - will see their watches perform at different accuracy. It's well known that most materials will expand when heated and shrink when chilled. The same will happen with the numerous stainless steel inside an automatic watch. This expansion or shrinkage WILL affect accuracy of your automatic watch. The only thing that we can do is to regulate it by bringing it to a watchmaker and let him adjust the speed of the watch. 3 - Watch inside watch One thing that I will never forget is to ensure only a watch with sufficient water resistance rating to be brought underwater. I've had one great looking watch by Timex before. It's a mix of dressy and casual, but features a low 30 or 50 m water resistance rating. Thinking that it can be brought underwater with that, I foolishly used it for swimming. And that's the last time it went underwater because as soon as I finished and get off the pool, water vapor cloud began to form inside the watch. It's one of my biggest regret since I like that watch a lot and it's also a present from my dad. But it did taught me an invaluable lesson: water resistance rating is not dependable! Yes, some watches might be able to be used underwater but not ALL watches. Nowadays, I only bring my diver watches with screw down crowns for swimming. As the crown is the only ingress point for water, the screw down mechanism will help to avoid any water from coming into it. In addition the lume on the dive watch looks stunning underwater =) So what types of problems have you had with your watches? Let's share it here for everyone to know. Till next time then. Cheers!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |