Am I the only one comfortable with asking his watchmaker to tweak the timekeeping for me after the watch has been on the wrist a couple of weeks?

I see a lot of you complaining (or at least commenting) on +12 every day... keep track of the rate and ask for your watch to be "adjusted for wear". My watchmaker says, "the first one's for free" because like most of them, they don't want to be fiddling with the regulaton, but on chronometers it's not all that difficult to turn a screw.

I get it, the coaxial is a pain to adjust because of the free-sprung balance, but it can be done. Once it's close enough, for example +3 a day, then I'll set the watch -15 when I pull it out of the box and wear it until it's +15, when I either reset it or wear a different watch.

 

I have some 100+ year old watches (as do you) that within the same minute is fine with me. My watchmaker will get most of my cheaper watches as close as he can without having to replace a ton of parts that are long NLA (he will tell me what’s toast and what is close). On my better watches he will get them within spec- spec is fine for me, I don’t need within 1sec if that wasn’t spec. On my Rolexes he actually sets them a little fast after service and then after a few weeks they seem to fall right into spec.