Taking Care of Automatic Watches #Wristwatches #Shorts

This article is a transcript of a video that you can watch by clicking the thumbnail below. Hence, certain statements may not make sense in this text form, and watching the video instead is recommended.

Transcript

Let’s talk about taking care of automatic wristwatches. I’m not talking about how not to drop them or break them on purpose. Neither am I talking about being careful when you’re working on them, or protecting them from shock or strong magnetic fields.

There are a few more ways one may unintentionally damage automatic watches, and most of them involve the one element that you can interact with: the crown. Some of these have multiple of those, but you get the idea.

1. As these are usually screw-down crowns, keeping them unscrewed may reduce their water resistance, thereby increasing the chances of getting the internals wet, which is never desirable.
2. The other bad thing you can potentially do is to overwind it beyond the maximum winding capacity, thereby putting stress on the movement. Thankfully, this is mostly limited to mechanical watches, whereas automatic watches are known to have over-winding protection, as you need to be able to wear them for longer and not unknowingly over-wind them.
3. You should also avoid quickly winding them manually, as it would put unnecessary stress on the movement. Manual winding must be slow and gentle, feeling those subtle clicks.
4. Finally, as the date or the day of the week in these watches doesn’t change instantaneously at midnight, unlike their digital friends, but it happens gradually over a period of a couple of hours, one should also avoid adjusting the date and day of the week while it is around that time, and as most people say, between 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock.

These are the only things I know of. Let me know in the comments if you have other ways to protect these timepieces.