This is what you need to know to understand & appreciate how watches are made. This is a basic 101 to introduce the ideas behind watch making.
Watches & watch collecting can be an expensive hobby, But it does not have to be. The best place to be is to have watches tied up to significant memories so that the thing on the wrist reminds you of something that makes you happy.
Watch movements
There are broadly speaking three types
- Quartz / Digital
- Mechanical hand wound
- Mechanical Automatic
Quartz
Quartz are technically the advanced, but much more simpler to make in bulk. A quartz crystal vibrates at a particular rate when current is passed. This vibration in turn drives the seconds hand & therefore the time in the watch.
Although this is technically more advanced, since the number of moving parts are very less. This type is much easier to make in bulk. Thus also driving the price down. Most of the cheaper watches are running quartz.
Since this is simply battery driven, accuracy of these watches is also very high.
Mechanical hand wound
In the beginning of watch making, there was no electricity or batteries. Hence people used a loaded spring as a store of energy. And this spring would continuously release power, which would be then directed towards moving gears. This is how mechanical watches work. These are complicated to make and involve a lot of moving parts.
Also, since this is relying on a loaded spring. Depending on the spring, the charge reserve is also variable. Charge reserves usually are anywhere around ~ 30 hours – 80 hours. And after that, they would need to be manually wound and “recharged”.
Since they are mechanical in nature, the time drift is also a problem. These watches could be off by a second or often times by a couple of seconds every day. So, recalibrating the watch once in a while is also important.
Mechanical automatic
Mechanical watches require to be wound manually every once in a while, automatics get rid of this problem by having a loaded weight at the back of the watch. Since the watch will be moved around when its worn, the loaded weight will move back and forth. Which in turn generates potential energy to charge the spring.
The automatic & mechanical watches have definite downsides, but the reason people buy them is in appreciation of the craftsmanship & engineering which goes in making them. My father has a HMT mechanical watch which was bought during his childhood, which still runs like a charm. The fact that these watches are built to last forever is very appealing to a lot of watch enthusiasts.
Watch glass
Broadly classified into a three categories
- Resin: very basic, easily scratched. Very cheap to manufacture.
- Mineral glass: slightly better, scratch resistant to a good extent. Slightly more expensive.
- Sapphire crystal: Extremely scratch resistant & transparent. Try to go for this if your budget permits. Obviously more expensive to maintain. Apparently only diamonds can scratch a sapphire crystal.
Other important notes
- Case diameter & thickness: These tend to be deciding factors when buying a watch. Watch makers usually have a couple of options here. Try them before buying to understand what size fits your wrist size.
- Water resistance: Unless you plan on swimming with your watch, most of the times this is not a massive deal breaker and most watches come with decent water resistance by default. There is a class of watches called the divers watch’s, these are meant to be worn by divers and have a very high water resistance (usually around 200m). If you plan on swimming then get a watch which is certified to be 100m/10 bar/10 ATM.
Respected brands in the industry
Not all brands of the conglomerate are listed, these are just some of my favorites
- Swatch group
- Tissot
- Hamilton
- Omega
- Rado
- Seiko
- Citizen
- Rolex & Tudor
- Casio
- Timex
A lot of the fashion brands like tommy hilfiger, Giorgio Armani etc.. actually source their machinery from Fossil usually. And just have a markup in price because of the branding. If that’s something you enjoy, then it makes sense. Otherwise, it usually makes sense to go for the titans of the industry.
My wish list
I would want to have one of each:
- Dress watch: An open heart automatic for me. Something to wear for formal or special occasions. It needs to look classy and clean.
- Daily driver: Something that is possibly not very expensive & something which looks good when you dress up & dress down.
- Beater: Something along the lines of a G-Shock or a Casio duro. A watch you would wear for sports, treks, etc..
Watches I own or plan on owning:
- Fossil machine
- The first serious watch I ever bought, bought it after my first job.
- This has been my daily driver for the longest time.
- Seiko presage automatic watch: blue open heart
- My dress watch of choice.
- My first mechanical automatic, bought it as a sign of reaching a particular milestone in my career and life.
- Always wanted an open heart automatic. When I got to know that a friend was on vacation in Japan, I asked them to get it from there. It happens to be about half the cost in Japan.
- Seiko 5 sports SBSA053
- Looking forward to add this into the collection. Will be the preferred watch for daily wear if I happen to get this.
- Timex weekender
- Casio Duro
