I have a 1968 vintage Geneve automatic. All parts have been certified as authentic and it is in lovely condition. My question involves the timekeeping. It has recently been serviced and keeps excellent time throughout the day whilst I am wearing it but find that by the morning it has lost 3-5 minutes per day.

Is this in need of servicing again or can someone let me know if it needs winding (and how?!). I have no idea how the crown works on the watch.

All help appreciated.

Cheers

 

Even an automatic watch needs to be fully wound to perform correctly. The auto-wind function is only intended to keep the mainspring charged after it has been full charged by hand winding.

Try timing the watch again after fully charging the mainspring by turning the crown clockwise 40 to 50 twists. Don't worry you cannot "over-wind" one of these.

 

If I understand your problem correctly, then when wearing the watch (during the day) it is keeping time fine, but when you take it off at night and check in the morning, it losses time? There are a few possibilities:

The first is that the mainspring is not holding charge over night and this is impacting the time keeping. This is unlikely, since wearing the watch all day should be enough to charge it for the few hours you are sleeping. Of course it is possible that the mainspring was not replaced during service and is broken or the bridal is slipping early, which causes the mainspring to not fully charge.

I think the most likely scenario is that the effect has to do with the position of the watch. During the day you are active and the watch is facing many positions. At night the watch is placed face up and stays that way for several hours. More than likely you have some dirt on the balance staff of pivot jewel, which is causing extra friction in the face up position. It could be other issues with the balance, but this should be easy to find out. Take it to a watchmaker and ask for him to test it on a timing machine in all positions. This should reveal whether this is the issue.

 

I hate to disagree with someone as experienced as Norm, but I have found that both cal 354 (bumper) and cal 552 (full-rotor) will wind themselves quite happily during daily wear on my wrist from fully discharged. After a week or so of daily wear, my best 354 will then run for 40 hours laid flat after no winding from the crown whatsoever. So if this Geneve is correctly set-up there should be no problem with running overnight, even if the winding crown is never used. Three to five minutes time loss in 24 hours is a huge amount, and indicates a mechanical problem with the movement, as Joe suggests.

 

Well, it makes for an interesting debate. What might make a difference is that I wear my watch on my right wrist and I am right-handed. I also lead a pretty active life, with lots of gardening, cottage maintenance, guitar-playing etc. But, for example, the guilloche-dial Seamaster I got recently from Tim has a cal 354, and I just wore it for three weeks straight off and never wound it from the crown. No problems at all. Having read the comments from Desmond on his blog that bumper movements are very poor at self-winding, especially on the right wrist, I was very impressed.

 

My apologies to the OP for getting a bit carried away . . .

 

Many thanks for all the posts. I have given this a manual wind today for the suggested amount and will report back in the morning on how much time we have (hopefully not!) lost!

Cheers

 

Tobias

Out of interest - how many hours a day has the watch been worn, on average?

 

Approx 12 hours per day I would say if not more!

 

It looks to have lost 2-3 minutes overnight

 

Ha! Vindicated

So the problem was not that the automatic winding was unable to fully charge the mainspring, because you fully wound it by hand and the watch still lost a very large amount of time overnight. Therefore, the suggestions Joe made probably hold the clue to this errant behaviour. I think that you need another trip to a watchmaker . . .

 

I would take it to a different watchmaker if possible.....