Jaeger-LeCoultre

time2time
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The logic behind putting a hand winding watch on an automatic watch winder.

I do not know if I am the only one guilty of what appears at first to be a most useless habit.  A habit wherein I dutifully wind my hand winds and then, lo and behold, stick the poor souls on a winder along with my few automatic watches.  I can almost hear the poor watch say, stop , stop you numbskull, I am not to be confused with a self winding, commonplace contraption that requires no attention from you for days at end; nor can I benefit from whirling on and off constantly.

But I think there is some logic in this but do correct me if I am wrong.  I understand that hand wound movements are adjusted for accuracy in various positions and that hand wound watches, just like their self winding bretheren, gain or lose a few seconds more or less per day depending on their position.  The daily wearing of a watch exposes the watch to various different positions and so during the average day an average mechanical watch is more or less quite accurate.  In the resting state, unless you know the position in which your watch is most likely to gain or lose the least time, you are most likely to see a greater variation in accuracy.  An automatic watch, if placed on a winder, instead of for example, on the bedside table, therefore benefits not only from being wound but also by being exposed to the various positions as it turns and comes to rest at a different position after the winder starts and stops every few minutes.  This movement and then the coming to rest of the winder at different positions is something that a manual wound watch can  benefit from as well.  Of course it will need to be wound every day by hand.

Do any of you good people do this, for this reason?  I am certain that some must.  For what it is worth, I have seen that my hand winds are more accurate when they are placed on the winder than when they are left in a single position when not being worn.