The 1916 Company Inbox: Safe Storage, Regulating A Watch, And The Realities Of Maintenance
Welcome to the The 1916 Company Inbox, where we answer questions sent to us by the The 1916 Company community. This week, we’re looking at how to store watches safely, the fine art of regulation, and why servicing your watches is actually a pretty good idea.
How do you think watches should be stored? Should you have them at the bank or at home? Is a safe necessary if you store them at home?
How your watches should be stored depends a great deal on the value of your collection and how often you think you’re going to want access to your timepieces. If your collection consists of a relatively small number of watches which you’d like to be able to see, appreciate, and use on a daily basis, then you probably don’t need to go as far as keeping them in a bank vault or in one of the safes designed for watch collectors. Good home security and well-designed, attractive boxes are probably enough. Whether or not you should go for a higher security solution depends on the value of your collection, but if your tastes run to vintage Patek, F. P. Journe, rare Rolex watches or anything else that represents a high dollar value, a solid watch safe is a wise investment.
One big drawback to safe deposit boxes is that they are not insured – the FDIC says, “A safe deposit box is not a deposit account. It is storage space provided by the bank, so the contents, including cash, checks or other valuables, are not insured by FDIC deposit insurance if damaged or stolen. Also, financial institutions generally do not insure the contents of safe deposit boxes.” If someone gains access to your safe deposit box and makes off with your valuables, you are out of luck unless you’ve gotten insurance yourself.
The most important thing to remember is that an inexpensive safe is often worse than no safe – all a cheap safe will do is tell thieves where the valuables are. A safe that’s small enough to move easily makes a burglar’s job much easier as well as they can just pick it up, carry it away, and break into it at their leisure. Remember, any safe, and I mean any safe, can be defeated eventually – the best safes are the ones that make the trouble not worth the effort. For real peace of mind, make sure your home is secured, make sure your safe is worth the investment (really good safes aren’t cheap but cheap safes are very bad economy) and if all else fails, you’ll want to make sure your collection is insured as well.
What does it mean to get a watch regulated?
When a watch movement is assembled in a workshop or a factory, it’s generally designed to run to within a certain specification. The accuracy of a watch is determined by factors like the inertia of the balance and the elasticity of the balance spring, as well as the balance spring’s active length. Regulating a watch siimply means adjusting either the effective inertia of the balance, or the effective length of the balance spring, or both, to make the watch run more precisely.
The most common system by far is the adjustable index found on many watches, which can be used to make slight changes in the effective length of the balance spring. It consists of two pins, closely spaced together, between which the balance spring’s outer coil passes, and by moving the index back and forth, you can shorten or lengthen the active part of the mainspring.
In so-called “freesprung” watches, where there is no regulator index, the inertia of the balance can be adjusted directly through the use of eccentric weights mounted on the balance, or timing screws set into the balance rim. Generally, higher precision watches will use freesprung balances as anything that interferes with the balance spring has been traditionally thought to produce less precise timekeeping, although this is not a hard-and-fast rule – there are high-precision watches up to, and including, observatory chronometers which use regulator indexes. Both Rolex and Patek Philippe use freesprung balances with timing weights for regulation – Rolex uses the Microstella screw system and Patek, its distinctive Gyromax balance system.
Occasionally, a newly purchased watch will run out of spec for accuracy, and the owner may want to bring it in to a service center and have additional fine regulation performed.
Why does an automatic engine need to be overhauled every few years?
“I have a Omega Seamaster Chronograph that stopped and now am told the automatic movement needs to be overhauled?”
A watch movement needs to be serviced for the same reason any machine needs to be serviced – it’s a machine, and no machine can run without some wear and tear. If you wear a watch regularly, all the essential components are more or less in constant motion. The rotor for automatic winding is swinging back and forth hundreds of times a day; the wheels in the automatic winding system that connect the rotor to the mainspring barrel are constantly in motion; the mainspring itself is constantly being coiled and uncoiling. The torque of the mainspring barrel produces side-load friction against its bearings and the same is true of the center wheel of the going train, and although side-load lessens a lot with every wheel in the train (the center wheel, third wheel, fourth wheel which turns once per minute, and the escape wheel) the speed at which the wheels turn increases as you go further down the train wheels.
At the escapement, you have friction where the escape wheel teeth meet the impulse and locking faces of the lever and at the balance, you have friction on the upper and lower pivots of the axis around which the balance turns (the balance staff). If you use the crown to wind and set the watch, there is friction in the keyless works and where the stem of the crown runs through the crown tube.
All of the bearing surfaces require oil, which deteriorates over time, and in a chronograph there is additional wear associated with the chronograph train, and with the action of the brakes and hammers for start/stop and reset.
As oil ages, wear increases and it’s prudent to bring the watch in for service before you actually have metal grinding against metal. (This is especially true of vintage watches, where finding or making replacement parts can be very difficult and very expensive). Long before that, you may see deterioration in accuracy as the lubricants at the escapement become gummy. When a watch is serviced, usually, the movement is disassembled, cleaned in an ultrasonic cleaner, re-assembled and oiled with fresh lubricant, and the mainspring barrel as well as the winding stem and other high-wear components may need to be replaced as well (mainspring replacement is routine and some brands replace the entire mainspring barrel). Gaskets age as well, and should be changed when a watch is serviced and the watch should be pressure tested as a final step.
Automatic watches are more susceptible, in general, to wear and tear thanks to the mass of the oscillating weight, the high speed at which the gears in the automatic winding system turn, and the relative delicacy in some movements of the reverser gears that allow the winding rotor to wind in both directions. Long story short is that expecting a watch to run indefinitely without preventive maintenance is about as realistic as driving your car until it inevitably breaks down, and then being amazed and astonished that lack of care has come to its inevitable conclusion.