The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Ok, this might sound a little ignorant, so bear with me.
I've always hand wound my autos 40-45 times clockwise as instructed by the manuals, yet the other day I was having a conversation with one of my patients who was in the watch making business with his family for many years and he was explaining to me that I should roll the crown back and forth in my fingers to wind it, not just one direction. He mentioned something about keeping one of the watch components from locking up...(cant remember exactly to quote him).
Can anyone ellaborate on this?

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Cheers,
Christopher

Currently...
Blackbird, Black Hercules, PAM 000
Down to a humble three...

It makes no difference as far as I'm aware. When you roll the crown back and forth, it still only winds in one direction. On the "non-winding" direction it's not moving any internal gears - the noise you hear is the teeth on one of the winding gear cogs (someone will know the name!) racheting back ready to engage for teh next winding turn. It's like on a normal bicycle - if you turn the peddles backwards it just freewheels.

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Driver8

Site Moderator

Marty will no doubt correct me, but I'm not sure why it would make a difference.

When you wind a watch you are actioning something called the keyless works. The keyless works wind and set the watch and when in a winding position the adjusting pieces are disengaged.

The crown stem is connected to the crown and passes through something called the castle gear. The castle gear is the ratcheting piece and when wound forwards it transfers the rotation of the stem through a series of gears / wheels into the mainspring barrel and hence winds the mainspring. When you wind backwards the castle gear slips through the ratcheting element and nothing 'downstream' of that moves.

I guess theoretically winding it backwards will help to distribute the oil across the castle geasr teeth, but I'm not sure that it's a real issue.