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Astounded is the word! Astounded I was to find that a brand new, automatic winding mechanical watch with leather strap was available for purchase at a price, including postage and packing, of less than ten British Pounds.
One wonders what an item of such precision manufacturing would have cost, say,
two hundred years ago. Probably in the region of ten British Pounds.
There's one slight drawback, a curse of the modern age. Many a day is now spent merely sitting in an office in front of a computer, which for most of us, does not generate enough wrist action to keep the watch fully wound. This is however a problem which has already been solved: watch winders.
Watch winders consist of a pedestal onto which one places the timekeeper, where it is gently rotated, at an angle, continuously. This has never struck me as a particularly elegant solution.
And in this day and age, where all kinds of digital gadgetry are afforded the luxury of inductive charging, doesn't the market for inductive winding of automatic mechanical watches seem woefully underexploited?
Thus, mitxela's Inductive Automatic Watch Winder is born. The unobtrusive (possibly teak) pad generates a rotating magnetic field to drive the weight in gentle circles as if by magic.
Some questions:
How ferrous is the weight of the automatic winder? Would it need augmenting?
How ferrous is the rest of the watch? Hopefully the magnetic field wouldn't interfere with timekeeping. One possible solution would be to rotate the field at a certain harmonic of the balance wheel's motion. This may or may not work.
Would the watch remain magnetized? Not if the field is reduced gradually while still rotating. How gradually? Maybe this would warrant an 'off' switch to control it.
It would be ideal if this could work with any automatic mechanical watch, however I suspect watches would have to be specially designed with the Inductive Automatic Watch Winder in mind.
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Annotation:
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It's one of those ideas that I' surprised doesn't already exist.
Turning the whole watch is silly if you think about it. |
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//Hopefully the magnetic field wouldn't interfere
with timekeeping. // |
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Au contraire. Most watches will be badly affected
by a strong magnetic field. First, the balance
wheel and pallet will, in most watches, be ferrous
or have some ferrous parts. Thus, a strong field
will really mess up the timekeeping. |
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Worse yet, though, the hairspring is usually
ferromagnetic. A strong field will induce a field in
the hairspring, causing the coils to stick to one
another. If the field is strong, this magnetization
becomes permanent and the watch will run very
fast. |
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Watchmakers usually have demagnetizers to deal
with these problems. |
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There are "antimagnetic" watches, but these
typically just have additional metal plates to
screen the movement, and will still be badly
affected by field strengths such as you would
need. It is possible to make truly antimagnetic
watches (no ferrous parts), but these are rare. |
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Would a simpler solution not be simply to wind
your watch (automatic or not) for 15 seconds each
morning? |
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As far as I'm aware, those watch demagnetizers work by slowly reducing an oscillating magnetic field. |
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//watch demagnetizers work by slowly reducing an
oscillating magnetic field.// |
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Yes, but the field oscillates very fast (usually at
mains frequency, I think). And the watch doesn't
usually run while it's being demagnetized. |
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//I wonder if there are self-winding watches that
have successfully overcome the overwinding
problem.// All automatic watches have
overwinding protection, as far as I know. The
mainspring has a clutch (actually it's just a spring
designed to slip) so that they can't be overwound
either automatically or by hand. If you hand-wind
an automatic, you should hear it make a little
slippy-unwindey noise as it reaches its limit,
which is the aforementioned clutch doing its job. |
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If your watch was gaining 3 minutes per day, it
probably just needed regulating, which is a very
simple job as long as you can open the caseback. |
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Well, I would guess they didn't want you or an
unknown watchmaker tinkering. If my Jag had a bug
on the windshield, the dealer would probably say I'm
best off bringing it in so they can look at it. |
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Jags don't have bugs on their windshield. They have flies on the windscreen. |
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Good point, [pocmloc], but I was translating. |
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I like it, Especially if it can get the the motion to work double-quick, or super-slow to handle time changes due to being on a plane. |
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It is a social ill of our day that online communications blur the boundaries between private an public. In the past, to contribute to public discourse, it was necessary to actually go the a public place, with all of the formalities of dressing, washing etc. that entails. Now one can make public pronouncements whilst in bed, or pooping, or even it seems whilst translating or ungulating. |
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I object, I have never knowingly ungulated in my life. |
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That just makes it worse. |
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