Horological Meandering

Hi everybody,

I have read two different technical opinions about full winding the mechanical watch;

One said that you can full wind your automatic watch by hand*,
the other said you can't full wind the automatic watch because: (the mainspring and thus the crown "slips" at full wind) ...

I've tried to full wind some automatic watches and couldn't reach an end in winding ! it's impossible that all the watches I've tried has a broken mainspring!

So what is the right answer?

Thanks in advance...

Best,
W.F.

----------------
*Fondation HH.

This message has been edited by walfalah89 on 2011-09-26 16:54:50

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This message has been edited by AndrewD on 2011-09-26 18:49:19

Most automatic watches can be wound by hand. There are some exceptions, such as some Seikos.

Automatic watches have slipping mechanisms so that they cannot be overwound. Once an automatic watch is fully wound its mainspring will begin slipping, so no additional tension will be developed even though the crown is turned. There is no hard stopping point such as is found on manually-wound watches.

Automatic watches are designed for automatic winding and their gear ratios are correct for that function. That tends to make their hand-winding mechanisms a bit more delicate than manually-wound winding mechanisms, so it may not be a good idea to wind them by hand regularly.

I'll admit that I haven't paid much attention to the relative sizes of the keyless works between an auto and a manual wind.

But I haven't noted bigger clutches/teeth/thicker stem on manual winds compared to autos of the same basic family. Would you really reduce the robustness of these components just because it's automatic? To what end?

Edit: I forgot about the geartrain through reversers. But are these transmitting torque during handwinding?

This message has been edited by BDLJ on 2011-09-26 18:20:24

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This message has been edited by walfalah89 on 2011-09-27 08:29:48

Thank you very much for your valueable answer.

Best regards,
W.F.

...it's not as pleasant an experience as winding a hand-wound watch. There's a curious deadness with all automatics I have tried. You also don't seem to get the finely articulated clicking noise. 

Hi steve,

The feel of the crown in the hand-wound watch is something different.

I had the same experince that you had with the crowns; many of the crowns in the autos are not suitable for frequent winding, and some of them looks like you can't wind it !!

After the difficulties with the crowns of the autos I decided to put the hand-wound feature amongst the first features in the future!

Thanks for sharing.

Best,
W.F.