What to do to your watch — and what not to do

Protect your little ticking friend to let it serve you trustfully along

Before beginning, remember that the mechanical watch of yours is like an old car. A vintage car, that is, one which is not assisted by electronics, requires a constant care — and the presence of someone who knows how to spot problems before they become serious. And you won’t have a sort of electronic unit which you would plug to the watch to check it, as you do with a modern car. Nope.

So, this all amounts to the fact that your mechanical watch — be it automatic or not — is a sort of tiny mechanical wonder, which is a miracle in itself — and requires lots of attention and care to keep on ticking and tocking.

I have written much more about how to take care of your watch in my book, The Watch Manual but these are the three main culprits you should take good care about.

Here we come to the three main no-nos.

1 — Beware of humidity

One of the worst offenders of mechanical watches is humidity. And people have devised lots of very different solutions to counter the effects of humidity. Alas, while no one would even think about wearing a watch while submersed in water in the beginning of the 1900s, nowadays this is a rather common occurrence. So, you should avoid, at all costs, water to get into the watch. Even if you think that the watch is safe because is is “water resistant to 30 meters”, it really is not: what is written above means that it is designed as to withstand a water pressure of 3 atm — which is not that very distant from the average pressure of water distributed in the public water system (which is around 3 bar — that is, around 2.97 atm). Yes, this explains why modern watches have a minimum water resistance of 30 meters.

If you think about it, this also means that if you put a 30 meter water resistant watch directly under an open water faucet, water COULD leak in. So, do NOT shower with such a watch on.

Humidity is a killer for watches. If a lil bit of water gets in, your watch could become ruined very soon. The good news of this is that you generally can notice it. If you see that the watch glass becomes foggy from the inside like in the photo above, get your watch to a repair service, presto.

And if you do not have access to a repairman, you can still unscrew the back of the watch so to expose the movement, and leave it with the back open to dry for a few days. But do that immediately, and then bring it to service when you can for oiling and checking.

2 — Preserve it from shocks and drops

Even if the watch engineers have introduced in time lots of anti-shock features in watches, remember that watches still rely on small elements which require a most precise positioning to work, and could bend or break when subject to an outside force. The main issues happen with the gears, which are minuscule — and are constantly in motion, so a heavy shock could break them, especially their pivots — and if they do, adios — you are in for a costly repair.

What you see above are two pallet forks. You can see that the top pivot in the one on the right is broken. So, you have to find a spare, disassemble the watch and then mount it in.

This means that while you can wear mechanical watches when you do sports, it is much better to have them very well secured to your wrist so they do not risk about falling down and hitting a hard surface.

3 —Give it a proper maintenance

Remember what I have said above about cars? Imagine you have one, and do not substitute the oil filter. The car works perfectly until its performances begin to deteriorate. You have to add oil constantly, because the engine burns it. And one say, the car stops because the filter is clogged, and the engine cannot get more oil to lubricate itself.

Well, this is what happens, in a way, in a mechanical watch. The mechanism inside it is based on gears, and the gears produce attrition while moving against one another. To counter the attrition, watches need specialized mineral oils which in time get a bit more cloggy and dirty (another very common problem in watches, apart from water, is dust). So, the movement begins to behave erratically, and then it stops.

This is why you have to take care of mechanical watches. Experts suggest that you should service them every five years of activity. Some of the newest movements have a service interval of up to ten years — but check what the manufacturer says.

A service would require a specialized technician disassembling the watch (either in a service shop belonging to the official network, or an independent one. He would be cleaning every part of it with an ultrasonic cleaner, and then re-assembing it while putting the right amount of oil inside its parts — and in the right places. The more the watch is complicated, the more this process would cost. But if you do not take good care of it, it will become less precise, and eventually stopping — at first randomly during the day when you are wearing it.

So, these are the three first culprits of mechanical watches. There are others, more specific, but most of the time they do not apply to every kind of watch.

Just remember that a good watch needs a bit of attention and care. If you give it to it, you would end up having a trusty companion which will age up very well.