Hey guys this day welcome back to just to watch today I wan na do kind of a video for people here a little bit newer into the Hobby kind of like I am I’ve only been watched collecting for about two years now, so I’m still very much A novice at all this, but I’m learning a lot and really been enjoying it. But I want to talk about five things that everybody should know before they buy their first automatic timepiece. So if you have not bought a mechanical watch or an automatic watch before and you’re thinking about it, this is a video that will probably help you. So let’s go ahead and jump into what those five things are: [, Music, ] all right. First thing that I think that you need to keep in mind and understand is that mechanical watches are automatic, watches they do require maintenance and that that maintenance does cost money.
I think when I was first thinking of getting a mechanical watch, I had this idea that it was gon na, be this thing that would just last forever that I can pass on to my grandchildren. It’S like you know when I thought about getting a quartz watch. I kind of thought of it, like you know, a nice piece of clothing or something and the kind of thing that would wear out and you’d, replace it and get something new. But when I started thinking about mechanical timepieces, I had all these dreams. It’S like.
Oh, this is gon na, be an heirloom. That’S gon na be passed down from generation to generation, and I had a budget of you know, maybe like $ 200, and I was gon na get this mechanical watch. But it’s gon na be mechanical in that course, and it would last forever, but you know the more I started doing research and realizing you know. Mechanical watches will last for a while, but maybe every five to ten years, depending on a lot of different factors. They do require some servicing and that’s because the internals of a mechanical watch there’s no batteries, there’s no electrical components.
So you have to worry about changing batteries, but inside there’s all of these gears and springs and things that wear down. There’S lubrication and oils that need to be replenished and all these things, and if you ignore that the watch is going to not function very well after a while, I won’t be keeping good time and eventually it will just stop working altogether. So you do need to have that kind of in mind that there is going to be some maintenance and there is a cost involved with that, and one of the problems with that is that a lot of times the maintenance on a mechanical watch can cost more Than the watch itself it’s like here, I have this Seiko five, which I really love. It’S a cool watch. I picked it up for like a hundred bucks and you can find these sago fives for a lot less than that, and this is a mechanical watch.
It’S um, it’s a really fun little mechanical watch. I really enjoy it, but at a hundred dollars. If I were to get this service, it’s probably gon na cost you more than $ 100 to get this service. So after five 10 years of owning this watch, it’s probably not going to be working too well and I’m either gon na have to face the choice of getting it serviced and spending more than I spent on the actual watch or just replacing it or possibly replacing The whole movement, the mechanical internals inside a lot of times, it’s cheaper, just to employ, replace everything inside rather than actually have it serviced Fix. So, that’s something that I think you need to consider and that’s you know the first thing that you know it sort of really shocked me when I started researching more because again I had this idea that I buy it and it would last forever – and you know It’S one of the great things about is that it doesn’t require battery changes, and so there would be less things involved, but actually, in the long run, it’s probably gon na cost.
You more to you know for upkeep in you know having the service services done, then it is going to cost you in batteries in a course watch yeah. So that’s the first. One second thing to keep in mind is that mechanical watches are not very accurate, especially compared to you know what most people are using. I was like your cell phone. Your cell phone connects to a server.
It gets the exact atomic time. You know to an incredible degree of accuracy and it refreshes that and automatically resets it. It’S yeah just incredibly accurate, but even compared to you know, like a quartz watch, a battery-powered watch. You know like this one here over the swatch from citizen. This is a battery-powered one.
This one’s super accurate. You know it might lose a couple of seconds a month, maybe in like a month, it’ll lose a few seconds and you’ll be fine, but a typical mechanical watch is gon na lose. You know anywhere from you know. Three or four seconds, if it’s really good to you, know sometimes even as much as 20 20 seconds everyday, it’s gon na be off and so they’re not terribly accurate, especially compared to modern electronic watches, and that is going to cause some some issues. It’S kind of thing that you know you’re gon na have to be resetting it from time to time to keep it up-to-date and there’s a little bit more work.
There involved it’s not like, even just a typical battery power to quartz watch where you put it on, and you never really have to think about it too much because it’s you know pretty much going to keep the same time. Mechanical watches, they’re gon na be requiring you to reset the time fairly frequently. The third thing that you need to keep in mind is that mechanical watches, even though they don’t have batteries, they do need to be powered by something, and that’s typically in a mechanical watches. Typically, a spring, that’s wound up and it’s well tightly and that spring can be wound in a number of ways you can. You know it can be a hand wound where you just wind, the crown you turn the the crown and spin it, and that will wind the watch or it will be.
You know an automatic movement where you just the movement of your wrist, you know, keeps it bowed and there’s a little rotor in there that you know wait the kind of spins and that will keep the watch loud. But if you take it off of your wrist and set it aside, if you switch to a different watch fairly common, you know mechanical watches, especially the entry-level range, the lasts for about 40 hours, if they’re 40, if they’re fully wound and after 40 hours, they’re just Gon na stop, it’s not gon na work anymore and the next time you pick it up. You’Re gon na have to wind it and reset it. So, moving on to the fourth thing, kind of keeping that in mind in which you’ve probably guessed by now is the actual ownership of a mechanical watch, means that you are going to be resetting the time and the date fairly frequently. Unless you invest in a watch.
Winder and spend a lot of money which I’ve never done again. You know the watch is going to lose, lose or gain seconds just because of the inaccuracy that a mechanical timepiece has so even if you are wearing it and keeping it wound all the time. You know probably once a week or once a month at the longest you’re going to be resetting it to get it back on the right time, because it might be as much as like five ten minutes off by then. If you haven’t reset it so you’re gon na get used to you know much more frequently than a quartz watch to resetting the time, and if you have multiple ones or if you don’t wear it all the time, then it’s definitely going to wind down. When you set it aside, and so the next time you pick it up, you’re gon na have to take that extra time to set the time on the date and check it, and it does just be kind of become this ritual that you kind of get used To but if you, if you’re used to having a just a phone or a quartz watch, you might not realize how often you’re gon na be wind up setting the time on a mechanical watch.
I tend to rotate through. I’Ve got a bunch of them here, and so I might wear a different one every day and it’s almost like every day, I’m picking one up and you know you get up in the morning. I set the time I wind the watch check the date and got to get it all done. It takes a few minutes to do it’s kind of a fun little thing to go through, but it is an extra step that you don’t have to worry about with quartz watches, and that brings us to the fifth and final thing, even though you are resetting the Time lot, not all mechanical watches, have certain features that make that easier. So, for instance, you know two of the most common features that you find on mechanical watches are called hacking and hand winding.
So hacking basically means that when you pull the crown all the way out, the second hand will stop which which have on basically every quartz watch any quartz watch that you get nowadays, even the absolute cheapest is going to have that feature, and what that allows you To do is it allows you to set the watch very accurately down to the second, so you know you can have like a reference time. You look at it. You wait until the second on that reference time lines up with the second on your watch, and then you push the crown back in at that. Second and then you know the the watch will be set to that time. So it’s a useful feature to have.
If you want to set your watch down to the second and again, that’s something that you’re probably going to want to do because you’re gon na be resetting the time line. Another extremely useful we feature on watches is a hand winding feature. So if you, you know the hand winding is basically you take the crown and you spin it and it will whine so this watch here. This is a lock. Oh watch that I picked up.
This one has hand winding. So if I, if it has stopped all, I need to do to get it going, is I can just spin this crown. Do that, for you know, maybe about 20 turns or so it’ll probably get fully wound. I should be good to go, but this watch does not have hacking, so this is one that has hand winding, but not hacking and that’s fairly common, a lot of entry-level ones. So this one’s a little bit difficult to set to the time.
However, there’s other watches like this orient or like the Seiko five, I showed you guys earlier. This watch Mauryan does not have hacking or hand winding. So that means I pick it up right now, it’s not working, but in order to get the second hand winning moving. If I spin the crown like this, nothing is going to happen. It doesn’t do anything so, every time I pick this watch up.
If it’s not fully wound, I’ve got to just shake it, and this this motion of shaking it will move the rotor on the back and that will get it working and do this for about thirty seconds and it’ll, give it just enough juice. So that will start keeping accurate time, and then I can put it on my wrist and then once it’s on my wrist, just the natural you know, movement on my wrist throughout the day, we’ll keep it wild it’ll, eventually bring it up to full power, usually by The end of the day without any problem, so it’s not such a big deal, but it is a minor annoyance, and that is something to keep in mind, especially if you’re looking at budget entry-level watches there are going to be something: don’t have you know hacking or Hand winding, or these certain features or some will have you know only hand winding, but not hacking, and you might get the watch and be surprised that kind of you got ta just be aware of it. So do a little bit of research into the different movements that are out there. It should be able to avoid that, but again, even something that doesn’t have hacking your hand whining. I think when I first was looking into mechanical watches.
I got a Seiko v watch and it didn’t have hacking hand whining and it really annoyed me. I eventually sold and got rid of it, but after having other mechanical watches for a while. It’S not really such a big deal to me anymore. So you know like getting this orient or getting you know, that’s a cuff. I’Ve picked up again.
They don’t have hacking your hand whining, but you know it’s fine. I I still enjoy the watches and it doesn’t really bother me that much, but that’s a lot of its gon na come down to personal preference. I think so. Those are five things I think everybody should know before picking up your first mechanical timepiece. Hopefully that helps you guys out.
Let me know if you guys are in that spot of looking at a mechanical watch. Let me know what you guys are looking at and love to hear. What’S interesting, you guys and if you have any other tips for people who are new into mechanical or automatic watches, you know drop them down below leave them in the comments. Let’S give some people some good advice, but as always, thank you guys so much for watching and we’ll see you next time. Bye, [, Music, ],
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