Strange sound when winding

Just because it's not in a manual doesn't make it irrelevant.

I am sure your years at the bench have taught you many things about horology that are not in any "manual". I have learned much more during my years at the bench than I learned during my 4 years of professional horological study.

Would you not say the same?

If I understand correctly, handwinding an automatic can do no harm and you have never seen any damaged reversing wheels or any other issues in the autowinding train that were caused by handwinding. In my experience I have seen damage, many times, from winding too fast, or continuing to turn past the "gentle" feel and stripping teeth off, where is the harm in my comment intended to help prevent damage?

Why make fun of my comments (cordless drill?) I thought this forum was mature and wanted new input and idea's so it can grow and provide insight to all members. I am only trying to help, not start a fight or argument, differing opinions are what makes the forum interesting.

You can wind too fast and damage the autowinder wheels and pinions and sprague clutch levers.

I guess new input is not well received when it adds something to the conversation and perhaps new insight that differs from the usual. So it's better to read than participate on the forum and try and offer my experience, sheesh, tough crowd...

Horlogerie, I meant no offense or mockery of your position on the subject... I'm truly sorry if it was taken that way. I just was wondering how you can wind too fast. The crown on my watch is very small and I actually find it difficult to really move it quickly.. The cordless drill comment was just in good fun..

Getting late in France, so off to bed...eat your popcorn quickly I won't be offering anymore info... 😀

I don't know why the manufacturers don't include info on winding, so I can't offer any insight.

In my experience "normal" winding speed means a different thing to different people, but when I say "slow" and "gentle" my customers understand, the slow for obvious reasons and the gentle to help prevent the customer who winds slow but has vice-grip fingers and continues to hand wind against a lot of resistance due to a problem inside the movement, and his slow winding with a lot of force ends up stripping gears.

I am not in any way trying to cause panic because I am a watchmaker, the opposite is true, I am trying to offer advice to help owners from unnecessarily damaging their movements.

WUS? well my last post on mainsprings was ignored as were my emails to pithy and the good Dr, what else can I say, there are many who don't get along with WUS, didn't I read a post here today of another banned member...enough said...I think that comment was a bit off topic, don't you think?

Understood, sorry I over reacted, no harm done 😀

I'll add the following, I have seen a number of stripped gear teeth on the 7750 series, I have also come across many damaged ETA 28XX series reversing wheels were handwinding caused the rotor to spin like a gyro top, as well as damaged wheels and pinions in the autowinding train. Maybe I was just lucky and ended up with all these issues, I don't know, all I know is that I am simply trying to prevent possible damage, that's all...no need to panic at all.

There's nothing more readworthy than a slight spat between two watchmakers. There's always plenty to learn and take in .

Believe it or don't: I wasn't liking how long it took to wind up a Seiko Kinetic by just moving around, so I opened it up, stuck a piece of rodico on the rotor, and spun it up with a Riyobi cordless. Worked a treat.

I think it's best to call it a healthy discussion rather than a spat. There is no emotion to what I am typing, but I do see now where I went wrong, providing my comments without backup, and for that oversight I do apologize. I will correct it here:

So let me back up to put things in context, I am British Horological Institute Professionally qualified as a watchmaker, during my 4 years of study I won 3 prizes at each of the 3 exam levels for my practical and theory work, and while you may rightly say "so what, just because you are an MBHI doesn't mean you know anything about autowinders..." what I would offer is that the MBHI qualifications do mean that I have met a standard, both in theory and practical work, and it's not an easy one to achieve. So that is my Horological background.

I am also a regular contributor to the BHI Horological Journal, where my watchmaking submissions are peer reviewed by some of the institute's highest qualified Fellows, and I can tell you that they are a tough crowd to please, so this back and forth on the forum is a welcome change. And I appreciate Archer questioning my comments and forcing me to quantify them, you the readers get more insight from two sides instead of only one.

Where I went wrong is because none of you know anything about me, my qualifications, skills, or experience, so now you know. I made my comments without supporting them because I know the background of my statements, but you don't. So whereas Archer has been here forever, I haven't, and you are right to question what I say.

A lot of my work is on vintage pieces where no parts are available, I have the tooling and ability to fabricate most movement components. I can make most but not all parts, and where a part can't be made or sourced the watch is rendered unusable. Many of the autowinder parts are not capable of being made in a workshop such as mine, they can only be fabricated at the original factory, if the part is damaged it has to be replaced, no replacement = a handwind watch.

I deal 1 on 1 with all my customers and when it comes to problems with the autowinder I have always queried my customers on their hand winding habits and methods. In all cases of autowinder wear/damage, the customer reported that they hand wound a lot (some as a nervous habit during the day while wearing the watch) and the other comment was that they could feel the winding getting stiffer, but continued to exert more force to overcome the resistance, eventually stripping the teeth off of the wheels or pinions.

If you ever have the chance to see the working of the autowinder, remove the rotor and watch the wheels as you turn the crown. Very little crown motion results in a lot of autowinder wheel action, so this is why I suggest "wind slowly" there are a lot of gears spinning round at a high rate, why risk damaging them by spinning them at high velocities.

And as for my "gently" a better word would have been "without a lot of force" in other words, if it feels hard to wind, don't, get it checked out before you cause damage.

While it's easy to source most parts for most of your watches - today, consider that today's modern watches will be the antiques of the future, and we have the ETA parts embargo on it's way and at some point in the near future spare parts will run out, just as many spare parts have today run out for some not so vintage pieces from only 50 years ago.

So without causing anyone to panic over their hand winding of automatic watches, please go ahead and wind all you want, all I would offer is that you have a choice when winding, why not do it slowly and without excessive force, so that you maintain your investment for the future. That is the message I was trying to convey.

I hope this clears up and provides context to my comments, again apologies if anyone was offended.

Thank you.

www.roberthoran.eu

Having had the benifit of a nights sleep to consider my thinking and the wear patterns shown on the reverser pivots by Al, I would offer the following.

Does number of turns of the rotor alone have the ability to cause extreme wear in the autowinder gearing? When it comes to the rotor, I think everyone will agree that it has a slow velocity and a low energy input, after all it's only a small weight driven by gravity.

When I see a deep grove cut into a large diameter pivot as shown in Al's photo's, that deep grove tells me one of two things, the pivot was subjected to either high velocity, or high pressures, or maybe both. To form a grove that deep on that pivot, something has to be forcing the wheel sidewards in in it's jewel. Could it possibly be the gentle rotation of the rotor forcing the wheel sideways with that much force to grind a grove that deep in a high carbon steel burnished pivot? or even grind away the pivot completely? and even considering the million or more reversings of the wheel during a year, does that in itself have the ability to cause the damage?

As the pivot wore out the depthing of the teeth would go off line, which will increase friction to the point that the rotor would eventually stop working because it doesn't have the energy to overcome the high friction. I have a difficult time accepting that the rotor alone - is capable of that damage, but I don't have a difficult time accepting that someone turning the crown could excert enough force to overcome the depthing misalignment and high friction and cause the wheels to rotate and wear. I don't believe that number of rotations alone are responsible for wear, there has to be either high speed, or pressure, both conditions which exist during handwinding.

Consider that the mainspring barrel in a slow beat movement will complete an average of 6 turns in 24 hours, for a total of 2190 turns per year. The highest area of pressure in the movement is in the mainspring barrel arbors, next up is the center wheel, and decreasing in pressure all the way to the escape wheel. As the pressure decreases in the train, the rotational speeds increase. So while the mainspring barrel does a lazy 2190 rotations per year, the escape wheel will complete 14,400 rotations per year. Yet despite the increase in the number of rotations, I never find wear on the escape wheel pivots, but I do find a lot of wear on the mainspring barrel arbor or center wheel pivots, wear in area's of high pressures.

With Al mentioning the WOSTEP Theory of Horology manual, I had a read through mine and came across this interesting section:

Section 8.3.6, first para which states in part:

"When the wearer winds his or her self-winding watch using the winding stem, it is important that there is a system which uncouples the reduction gearing train in order to keep it from rotating too quickly, which would cause excessive wear or even the breakage of one or several parts"

So I still stand by my initial comments (which I re-wrote to better express what I wanted to say in the first place), and I will continue to advise my customers as I always have.

I'm thoroughly enjoying reading this thread and have great respect for the two main parties. As a mechanical engineer who is now enjoying the magnificent world of horology in general, I have to say that in this case I have to come out on the side of Horlogerie when it comes to the manual winding of automatic watches. His views on winding, bearing loading and wear are in alignment with my own.

The most important thing is that these types of discussions are put across in a friendly and informative manner with good reasoning.

I'm not a professional watchmaker so I'm not sure I follow the arithmetic here. If the escape wheel in an 18,000 vph movement has (typically) 15 teeth, surely that wheel must rotate once every 6 seconds or 5,256,000 times per year (14,400 times per day)

I did notice the wee slip in numbers, but knew what he meant.