About The Watch

On this page, I want to admit that this really is a project within a project.

Presently, my watch gains 25 sec per day, a bit under 3 minutes a week. I have discovered that, when you have a digital readout, accuracy seems to be important. If you have an analog clock face it is not. If someone asks you for the time, you usually say: “It’s five to nine.” …where with a digital readout you would say something like: “It’s 8:56:25.”

Nonetheless, I would like to improve my accuracy to +/- 10 sec per day. I am told that watches gain or lose depending on three things: The degree of wind (fully or partially wound), the position you leave the watch at night and the maintenance condition of the watch.

This Watch Winder Project is to determine if it is winding correctly.

	Is my personal level of activity enough to keep it fully wound?
	The 7S26A movement has something called the ‘magic lever’ which allows the watch to wind when rotated clockwise or anticlockwise. Does this function correctly?
	Experts claim that a watch slows down as it approaches full-wind and speeds up as it approaches unwind (counter-intuitive). Is that true?

So, my Programmable Watch Winder is to be used as an analytical tool.

In conclusion, the Seiko 5 family of mechanical self-winding watches is an interesting phenomenon these days when battery-operated watches dominate the market. If you search eBay for “Seiko 5” you will normally find hundreds of them on auction. They are sold by legitimate vendors, brand-new, made on an automatic line by Seiko in Singapore. They are inexpensive and the experts claim the 7S26A movement to be a well-designed workhorse, which might run 20 years without service, and could be set to be accurate and consistent by a good watchmaker if …you are willing to spend the money to do so. To find out more about the Seiko 5, read the excellent article by John Davis, located here: http://www.thepurists.com/watch/features/8ohms/7s26/index.html

Don't go. We're not done yet.