For my 60th birthday almost 2 years ago my wife and I decided that I should have an Omega Aquaterra coax. It's got an 8500 movement, gray face and is absolutely beautiful to me. The problem is that in my career it's best that I not wear a watch like this day to day...it's just too nice and I work in an industrial setting. I end up wearing it on the weekends but that means once a week I'm resetting the time. I don't think that is ideal for the watch. I believe this watch has a power reserve of about 60 (?) hrs. Should I be able to get that reserve built up in wearing it, say, for 12-15 hrs in any one day that I would wear it during the week.

BTW, we just bought this same watch in quartz so I'm debating which to keep.

 

Buy a watch winder.

 

Hand wind it.

 

I'm kind of in the same boat but 3/4 of my watches are manual wind and/or without a date - so it's no big deal. I do wonder if it really is beneficial to the movement to keep the parts moving with a winder box. If so, that would tip me over the edge to get one (a Wolf box).

 

A winder is just adding unnecessary wear to the movement. If you have a watch with moonphase etc. complications, I can understand using one, but not otherwise. Agreed, some automatics are quite difficult to hand wind - my IWC dress watch with an 8541 movement is an example, and there are fairly well known issues with eta 2824 movements if not kept serviced properly, but overall, with care handwinding as needed is preferable to running them all 24/7. The OP's AT - if mine is anything to go by - is easy to hand wind.

 

I don't have difficulty winding it. I'm concerned that having to reset the time once or twice a week is not an acceptable mode of ownership. IOW, perhaps, would I be adding unusual wear to the rewind mechanism?

 

One of our frequent posters is “Mad Dog”. He uses a fabric cover over some of his wrist watches. It is held in place by Velcro, and is easily peeled back to enable viewing the watch. Colin (“Mad Dog”) posts most often in the WRUW thread. Maybe find a post from him and send him a PM and ask him to post a picture of what he uses.

 

I have the same watch and don’t wear it daily, I give it a wind every couple of days just to keep it ticking over, even though it’s an auto you should still give it a wind.

If you’re wearing it every weekend then I wouldn’t see much of problem however, there are much more qualified people on here who can help.

 

If your requirement is to have the watch 24/7/365 when not being worn so you don't have the inconvenience of resetting it (you inevitably will have to unless it's 100% accurate) then your choice is either to hand wind it, or as was suggested earlier, get a winder.

Any time a watch is running there is wear to some components. I don't have the expertise to know whether constantly turning the rotor on an 8500 movement accumulates more wear than an occasional hand wind. It would probably be to different compnents anyway.

Probably the quartz does fit your requirement better.

(Edited to remove irrelevant comments)

 

There's no problem with just letting it run down, and when needed resetting the time and giving it a wind.

Cheers, Al