A Guide To Winding Your Manual Watch

One of the essential aspects of properly maintaining watches and timepieces is winding them. Malfunctions and time-telling errors can abound should a watch or timepiece be left unwound for some time, leading to costly repairs. Moreover, the proper winding of watches and timepieces, whether manual-winding or automatic, is important for care and maintenance purposes. Should you wish to seek a guide for such matters, feel free to read on. However, the guide below only covers the proper winding procedure for manual or manual-winding watches.

The Manual Watch Winding Guide

One should wind manual-winding or manual watches at the same time every day. Doing so will allow your watch to keep a more consistent time-telling rate. Remember to remove your watch before winding it unless you want to mess up its movement or internal parts and end up checking Seiko 5 prices online.

1. Place your watch on a clean, uncluttered surface.
2. Hold your watch with its face toward you with your dominant hand.
3. Find the watch crown with your other hand. It is a small dial or knob usually found on the right side of a watch.
4. While still holding the watch with your dominant hand, gently pull the crown out – exposing the watch stem – with your other hand’s thumb and index finger.
5. If your watch stem or crown is also responsible for different settings (e.g., calendar, time zone, and others), experiment with winding the stem or crown to determine the winding setting.
6. Once you’re ready to wind it up, start winding the crown clockwise around twenty to forty times until you feel a certain resistance. Don’t wind past forty clockwise turns if you can’t feel resistance. It’s alright not to feel the resistance on your first try; you’ll eventually develop a feel for it. To avoid damage, don’t press down too much on the crown while winding.
7. You’re done! You can put your watch back to its original state. Carefully press the crown and stem back down to their usual position. Always be delicate when handling watches and their parts.

Have a mind to wind your manual-winding watch daily or at least weekly, even if you don’t regularly use it. You can set a winding routine for yourself either in the morning before eating breakfast or at night before going to bed. A wound watch will run accurately from 18 to 36 hours, depending on the mechanism. Bigger watches have bigger mechanisms; smaller watches have smaller mechanisms. If you don’t wish to have a winding routine, you can look into getting a watch winder. It will help keep your watch functioning properly even when not on your wrist.

The steps detailed in the guide above are essential to caring for and maintaining your manual-winding watch. However, you should always consult your watch manual before doing anything to your watch. If you don’t have the original manual, plenty of online resources are available. Visit a certified horologist or watch technician if you need professional help with your watches and timepieces.

Author’s Bio:

William Ross is often described as a jack of all trades. He loves to explore new things and cultivate his knowledge everywhere he goes. These days, he spends most of his free time writing about watches and watch accessories, as he is a collector himself.