Ulysse Nardin

Marcus Hanke
[PuristSPro Moderator]
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The winding efficiency of an autoamtic watch is an often-discussed issue ...

... and to sum it up briefly, it depends from the conditions. Generally, the ETA 2892A2 base movement in the Marine series is very efficiently doing its job, and is well winding the mainspring. BUT:

The wearer has to move enough.

This is not meant to offend (some people really do feel offended by that, assuming I suspect them to be lazy couch-potatoes!), but it is a fact: An automatic watch needs a certain category of movements with your arm - like swinging the arm when walking fast, using screwdrivers or other tools, to just name an example. Especially office work on a computer keyboard, or driving a car prevents the rotor from revolving freely enough to reliably wound the mainspring.

If in addition to this, the wearer takes off the watch at night, and uses a multi-function pulse-check digital watch for his sports actiivities, it is clear that the automatic watch will not develop enough energy to supply the movement over a long time. The power reserve display reveals the problem much earlier. The movement's power reserve is good enough to maintain a reasonably accurate time display for a long while, if the mainspring does not get just a tad too less energy to compensate the tension loss caused by the movement. For example: I had stored a watch on a watch winder, which was revolving just a few circles too few to wind the watch completely. Several months passed, before the balance's amplitude collapsed and I realized something is not alright, with the watch being off by several hours. A power reserve hand would have revealed this a lot earlier.

So the first way to achieve a constantly high power reserve would be to make the watch a true companion, also during sportive activities after the office work. In my case, the work necessary to change the car's tires is enough to get my Marine Diver's power reserve from nearly "Down" to "Full" within about forty minutes.

If all this fails, there is the chance of a mechanical problem in the watch's winding system. While this is known to happen, the chance that this is the reason, versus the lack of wearing activity, is about 1:100.

Best regards,
Marcus