The right winding for self winding watches: how to start them correctly being sure of winding them enough!

Calibro Sky-Dweller
Calibro 9001 Rolex, montato sullo Sky-Dweller

 

Talking about self winding watches, the crucial question is: how long is should I wear a self winding watch to keep it working? The duration does not depend only on time, but also on the kind of physical activity your wrist is doing. Of course, design choices of the various watchmaker companies can lead to different results.

Apart from extreme and clear cases (sick people or people doing extremely sedentary jobs), the trap of the not working watch can be sudden and insidious, even for the most active person. It is possible that very efficient self winding watch stops working even after you did the following activities: normal working day – night – seven hours driving on motorways – relaxing at the beach until the sunset – night.

In that case, the solution is winding manually the self winding watch. You can always do that, even though it is a bit demoralizing!

Pay attention: manual winding is necessary when wearing a not working self winding watch, in order to supply it enough energy to go through the first hours without unpleasant surprises. A few gentle turns of the crown are enough, and then leave the rotor working for the rest of the day to complete the winding.

We talked about gentle turns because the self winding mechanism, unlike the manual one, does not always accept the action of the crown, though it is sometimes necessary. Sometimes the little toothed wheels of the winding mechanism (well sized in the manual ones, due to the need of activating them every 24 hours) are more fragile in the self winding watches, especially in the extra flat watches: a strong turn of the crown can easily damage them!

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