roundel
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Have you noticed your watch speed up?
My understanding of what happens when a mechanical watch becomes magnetized is that the balance spring coils become attractive to each other. If they get to the point of touching, you will get a big spike in rate, but even some attraction can make the spring behave as though it has a shorter effective length.
Many ADs or watchmakers can perform degaussing while you wait and without opening the watch. Mine does this at no charge. So while magnetizing a watch is easy to do with the technology in our lives, the fix can also be easy. One can also perform degaussing with a length of string and a rare earth magnet…
Another option is a watch resistant to becoming magnetized. IWC goes old school with an iron cage on some of their watches to divert magnetic fields around the movement. Omega and many others use escapement springs of silicon which are not affected by magnetism. As I type this, I am wearing a Big Pilot with the soft iron cage, so all set here!
Am I paranoid with magnetic fields ?
Have you noticed your watch speed up?
