Mastering Time: The Essential Guide to Watch Winders and Their Importance
The rotors inside an automatic timepiece – unlike those of a battery-powered quartz watch – rely on the rotating motion your wrist naturally makes throughout the day, to oscillate and move.
Watch winders are designed to mimic this movement, ensuring that the watch continues to move and rest as if worn by a person, whilst continuing to display accurate time and date, when not worn regularly.
What is a watch winder?
Invented by English watchmaker, John Harwood, in 1922, the watch winder is a mechanical unit that was developed to tackle the inconvenience faced by automatic watch owners of having to manually wind up their watches if they had not worn them for a few days.
More than just being an inconvenience to the watch’s owner, leaving the watch to stop while not being worn and then having to manually change the time, date and other settings, such as a moon phase could add to the wear and tear of the watch and potentially decrease its value.
Watch winders not only wind your watch they offer the perfect display for the dedicated watch enthusiast; the range of different designs to fit with the interior of its owner, lends the watch winder even more value beyond its innovative functionality.
How does a watch winder work?
A watch winder turns your watch to the recommended number of rotations as prescribed by the watch manufacturer. It will also move the rotations in different directions, clockwise, anti-clockwise or bi-directional as specified by the brand.
Most modern watch winders are battery or mains power operated and include a range of settings to accommodate your requirements.
The best watch winders will allow the watch to sleep as if mimicking the movements of a human wearer as well as offering a delayed start to allow the mainspring to wind down after use, before starting the recommended turns per day, to avoid overwinding the watch.
Watch winders also serve a secondary purpose, as luxury storage units for your timepieces that add a bit of extra flair and a sense of style to your collection.
Why do you need a watch winder?
A watch winder is an invaluable item for a watch collector, not only because it helps to look after your watches, keeping your collection safe and secure and on time, it allows for a greater choice of ready-to-go timepieces for whenever you need them.
As intricately designed pieces, there’s an argument to be made that watch winders themselves are worth collecting, due to the history and heritage they carry along with them.
As watch collectors will never just have one watch, their winder collection will no doubt grow with the number of watches they own.
