Hi folks, I am back with an amateur question. My Seamaster has been mostly sitting on the watch winder(turned off) during the pandemic. Last month I started the watch and turned on the winder(350TPD bi-directional, 700 turns a day in total) for a week. I had noticed that 2 days after I turn off the winder, the watch was still running. And finally, it stopped after approximately 65 hours after the watch winder was turned off. And I did that again last week, I left the watch running on the watch winder for 5 days then turned it off on this Monday. The watch is still running now. My watch winder turns on from 10:30 pm to 4:30 am then rests for the day every day till I turned it off. So from the point of time, the winder stopped turning, the watch has been running 58 hours and still running. The power reserve of the 8806 movement is claimed to be 55 hours. I suppose that means a fully wound 8806 watch can keep running for 55 hours without further winding. But is that normal a watch runs over the claimed power reserve time significantly like 10 hours over? Update: This time it also had run 65 hours before it stopped. I guess that is the watch's actual power reserve.
The 3861 is listed at 50 hours, I'm getting 64 out if it. So IMHO Omega is being conservative in the product specs.
There's no phenomenon of getting extra power reserve from 'overwinding'. In fact, overwinding should be impossible on your watch. The vast majority of automatic movements have a slipping clutch that prevents the mainspring from getting wound once it's at full tension. Over winding a watch would have the opposite result and your watch would only run for a few hours or not at all-- in that scenario either you've broken your crown or snapped your mainspring as a result. There are hundreds videos and articles that describe this.
Thank you for your adequate explanation. Yes, I have heard about the slipping clutch mechanism preventing automatic watch from being overwound. My usage of of the word ‘overwinding’ was a oversimplified expression of my strange guess there. Anyway, getting 10-12 hours extra power reserve still feels a little bit abnormal to me. Omega recommended 720 Turn Per Day for movement 8806 to ‘ensure a minimum power reserve of at least 30 hours after removing the watch from the winder’. I didn’t even think 700TPD would fully wind my watch in a couple of days.
I just had another wired idea to explain the extra power reserve. Tell me if I am wrong. In the ceramic and titanium version of Diver 300, the hands are also made of titanium. In theory, the weight of the titanium hands will be about 45% lighter than the stainless steel hands used on the most of other models powered by 8800/8806. So, with the same amount of potential energy the fully wound springs in 8800/8806 movements can keep, the titanium hands are supposed to move more to use up the energy due to their lighter weight. IDK if this made any sense.
Your worries sound like it's a bad thing you got more than Omega has in the official communication. I would take it as a bonus and not overthink it.
Yeah, I overthought. I thought mechanical watches are all about hundreds of delicate parts working precisely and flawlessly together and anything not that precise would indicate something in that system had gone wrong. Now I believe it's ok.
Hi guys, I bought a new 38mm Aqua terra with the 8800 movement last week. Wore it for a few days then decided to test the power reserve. Gave it a full wind ( 65 turns), put it in the box. It lasted 64 hours and 25 minutes.
