A. Lange & Söhne

I have had this piece sitting in my safe for about a year. It completly stopped working so I was under the impression that it needed service. I pulled the watch out last night to finally take it in for service, fully wound the watch for the heck of it, an...  

not a watchmaker, but I’ll do if free of charge 😉. J/K: that’s a beautiful gen 1 dato. If you can, have the Lange service center look at it to ensure it doesn’t need oil/grease

It’s not uncommon, and you can always give it a little rotation in a horizontal plane if it doesn’t start (before you suffer heart palpitations) Cazalea

When I wound it fully a year ago nothing moved. It was totally dead. I'm guessing as it sat in the safe the tension from the full wind lossened the gears up and made the watch move again. In all my years of owning watches though this type of scenario has ... 

Some watches are self starting, others are not. Generally Swiss Lever escapements (like the Datograph for instance) will start on its own 99% of the time - when it gets enough motivation from the mainspring, the escapement will want to move and will start... 

It has been a full 24 hours since I took it out of the safe and wound it. The watch is running perfectly, the movement must have gotten stuck. Too bad I didn't realize this early, it set unworn for about a year!

The Lange I gifted my mother hasn't been touched for years. Enjoy your Datograph! It's happy to get some wear!

Just like people : )

The chrono minute hand was not engaging correctly - sometimes missing a minute movement at the 60 second mark. I noticed that the balance wheel was banking, the watch gaining time and on checking discovered it was heavily magnetized. A few runs through my... 

Is there a way or tool to test for magnetization?

I use an app called Lepsi which runs on iOS. Not sure if it’s still available - uses the magnetometer in the iPhone. You can also use a compass - see if the needle spins when placed over the watch.

I don’t see Lepsi any longer, but there is some other app. Still, I like the idea of the compass too! Thank you very much.🙏🏽

That is not a good senario. Good you received good advice. I read some posts about many reasons why a watch do not run after a long break. Oil old, magnetism, temperature changes, wet conditions. I have also some watches that sleep a lot. After some time ... 

There is definitely nothing wrong with this watch. It's running perfectly. Thanks for all of the helpful responses! Tony

Lange makes the best serially produced timepieces in the world. IMHO.