Hi everyone, long time lurker on here and found out all kinds of useful information! I have a little issue (not necessarily a "problem") that I thought I'd run by you... I recently bought a Speedmaster Automatic Chronometer (ref. 3210.50.00) from about 2011. It's in absolutely mint condition as a I believe the previous owner kept it in a drawer in Dubai. It has an interesting "quirk" however. Let me explain... Let's assume I want to set the watch for 11.37AM. I pull the crown out when the seconds hand is at 60 seconds and stop the seconds hand. I set the minute hand EXACTLY at the 37 minute marker. (I'm a bit OCD about getting it exactly on the marker..). Using a speaking clock, I push the crown in on the "beep" for "11.37 exactly"). The second hand starts up and that should be that... However. The second hand gets round to 60 again. At this point I would expect the minute hand to now be EXACTLY on the 38 minute marker. But in fact the minute hand is roughly halfway between 37 and 38. I repeated this several times and got the same result. Watching the minute hand closely after pushing the crown in, it appears that it doesn't move for ≈30 seconds, then starts off. Once it gets going, everything is fine but obviously it will continue to be halfway between minute markers when it should be exactly on one. I can work around this by stopping the seconds hand at the 30 second mark instead of at 60, and then setting the minute hand for 11.37. Then I push the crown in at 11.36 and 30 seconds on the speaking clock. Doing this allows the minute hand it's "waking-up" time so that when the second hand gets up to 60 the minute hand starts going and the time is then right going forward. I hope this explanation is clear. Basically it seems to take approximately 30 seconds for the minute hand to start moving after the crown is pushed in and the seconds hand restarts. NOTE: Interestingly, this only seems to happen when RE-SETTING THE WATCH i.e. after moving the minute hand to a different position after stopping the second hand. If I simply pull the crown out, stop the seconds hand and then push the crown back in, the minute hand starts moving again immediately. So if for example the watch was running 20 seconds fast, I could simply pull the crown out, wait for 20 seconds and then push the crown back in and all would be well. Weird. I returned the watch to the dealer and he had his service guy look at it, but couldn't find any issue. He said it simply seems to be an idiosyncrasy of the watch. What do you knowledgeable folk think? Many thanks for any thoughts. Cheers, Rick.
I'm not a watchmaker. But there is a little "slop" in every movement. Technical term is gear lash. Normal. Basically gears cannot be perfectly fit together they need a little space so they do not seize. So you set the watch and it takes 30 seconds to take the slack out of the system.
You can experiment with this by moving the minute hand FORWARD to the mark then BACKWARD to the mark, to see if there's less slack in one direction.
No need to experiment - move the minute hand past the mark you want to set it at, then back up. That will take up the slack in the gears of the time train, and the hand will start moving immediately when you push the crown in. This is completely normal in a 7750 based watch by the way. Cheers, Al
Is this Groundhog Day? Wasn't the exact same question asked - and answered - just a few days ago?!? I even believe it was @Foo2rama who answered it that time around!
Depends on the design of the movement. Some designs have the centre wheel pinion as an "idler", driven as an accessory by the going train. The wheels and pinions in the going train are subject to torque from the mainspring, so generally, gear lash isn't the same problem, causing minute hands that are hard to line up. Movements that use an idler pinion to drive the minute hand have gear lash, resulting from no spring tension. Resulting in lagging minute hands when the watch is re-set. I have several Rolex watches with the caliber 3035 and 3135 movements that have that problem. Fortunately, I don't have to re-set them too often.
And voila! Problem solved, and a smidge more knowledge loaded into the little grey cells! Going 30 minutes past the time and then backing up again did the trick immediately. I'd never heard the term "gear lash" but a quick Google revealed the exact issue. Many thanks guys! I was a little concerned that I had bought a lemon, but now I can get back to enjoying my Speedy without OCD niggling at me!
No no, I'm just really baffled! I genuinely felt like I was reliving a part of last week - very odd sensation.