What Is a Watch Winder?
In the world of automatic watches, a watch winder plays a crucial role in maintaining the functionality and accuracy of your timepiece. When you're not wearing your automatic watch, the rotor that keeps it running comes to a halt, leading to the watch eventually stopping. Typically, an automatic watch can run for about 35-42 hours before running out of energy. This is where a watch winder steps in by mimicking the movement of your wrist, it ensures that your watch remains powered and ready to wear at any time.
How Does it Work?
A watch winder functions by rotating your watch periodically to simulate wear. This rotation turns the rotor in your automatic watch and keeps your watch wound. The watch winder does this using either a power adapter or battery and will turn at set intervals.
At its most basic form, it’ll rotate in one direction for a certain amount of time, stop for a certain amount of time, then rotate again, with no available input from you. As you move up in price range, you’ll be able to configure and program your watch winder to do exactly what you want it to do (direction of rotation, frequency of rotations, amount of rotations, speed of rotations, and even where to stop).
Do I Need One?
A watch winder is first and foremost a convenience item. If you’ve ever gotten dressed for the day and went to put on your watch only to find it dead and require winding, then you may want to consider a watch winder. A reliable watch winder allows you to pick up any automatic watch for the day and go.
A watch winder can also be considered a necessity if you happen to own watches with more complicated movements. If your watch has a perpetual calendar, an annual calendar, a moon-phase, it can be a complicated and time consuming task to correctly set it once the watch has stopped for any period of time. Not to mention you run the risk of damaging the watch each time you set it (the crown of a watch is where most of the damage to the watch occurs, especially if your watch has a screw-down crown). By storing them in a reliable watch winder, you can be sure that the date is always correct and the moon is tracking perfectly.
Additionally, many vintage watches do not have quick-set date functionality. This means that you need to advance your watch 24 hours to move the date display by 1. This can be very tedious (e.g. if it’s the 30th and your watch has stopped on the 1st, you’ll be advancing time by 24 hours 29 times). By using a watch winder, you can avoid this task entirely.