I am looking to purchase a watch winder. Lots of simple winders have constant rate of 5 turns per minute.
Would appreciate any your views and comments whether this is ok in order not to over-wind or "under" wind the watch.
Are there also winders with adjustable turn rate available?
Thanks and best regards.
Tom
Turns per day
Hi Tom,
You should look at the number of turns per day, not per minute. On the website of Orbita (see direct link to IWC page) you can check how many turns per day and what direction your watch requires.
The speed of 5 turns per minute is about what my Eilux watchwinder does too and I use it for all my IWC's.
I hope this helps a bit.
Kind regards,
Clemens
Turns per day
Clemens thanks for interesting information.
This 5 tpm rate I found on pages of some (asian) winder makers. It means abt. 7,200 tpd. From another source I understood 350 rpd for some movements is optimal to keep tension on the main spring (IWC Portuguese) , while 800 rpd is quoted as creating unnecessary wear of the movement's mechanics.
For a "green-horn" in w.winders like me all this sounds like hi-tech talking and really appreciate fellow forumers inputs.
Regards ,
Tom
wearing UTC Spitfire
also, keep in mind...
...that "over-winding" is not a major issue. After all, if you wear the watch it winds and will incur the effect of more than the minimum turns per day. There is a clutch to prevent over-winding.
Conversely, under-winding is easy to tell. The watch doesn't stay running.
So to me this "scientific" analysis is a little bit of marketing hocu-pocus. There is some validity to keeping a watch nicely wound, but I wouldn't get hung up in exact numbers. Only one company really markets this winding data, which happens to work for its programmable winders. Nothing wrong with that, and they make nice winders, but it's really not major.
Regards,
MIchael