Sadly I’ve long since got rid of mine, which some day I will regret bitterly. But I struggled to read the date in that small register. That’s not the reason I got rid of it - the JLC MUT Moon I still have has the same issue!
I stated
"Also if a watch has just begun to show signs of slowing down due to a weak spring or the lube aging the calendar puts enough stress on the system that it will be the first to fail, no longer changing the date or bogging down the movement and causing a unnecessary headache in the morning."
Since I've seen this first hand what makes anyone believe that it isn't true?
I stated
"Also if a watch has just begun to show signs of slowing down due to a weak spring or the lube aging the calendar puts enough stress on the system that it will be the first to fail, no longer changing the date or bogging down the movement and causing a unnecessary headache in the morning."
Since I've seen this first hand what makes anyone believe that it isn't true?
Indeed, it's all in the eyes of the beholder, prefering a clean symmetrical dial...
Remember when in 1952-53 Jean-Jacques Fiechter (Blancpain) and René-Paul Jeanneret (Rolex) designed a black dial diving toolwatch, it was intended & made for enthusiastic SCUBA-divers... so no need for a date function.
The date was later added in SubMariner & Sea-Dweller diving watches as professional saturation divers stayed weeks-on-end onboard commercial DSV - Dive Support Vessels working in pressurized diving bells and residing in the confinement of saturation chamber.
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What did you see?
Did you take the watch apart and diagnose that the malfunction you've experienced was caused by the two issues you mention above?
Watches that need service, need service. If they have a date function or not is irrelevant.
Give your alternative theory.
Its relevant if the loss of power results in the watch bogging down and losing time overnight or stopping completely because it can not change the date.
If the movement has a hand winding option you can top up the mainspring before setting the watch aside for the night, in which case there might be no noticeable loss of time or stalling out, but that is not an option for many automatic watches, the older Orients for example.
My Orient is only a couple of years old and because when I got it new I had less mobility in my left arm It did not have enough power in reserve to change the date at night unless I manually swung the watch back and forth for five minutes or so before setting it on the shelf till morning.
I have more mobility now but I still would not trust it not to stall out unless I went to the added effort before going to bed.
I've had no such problem with my much older Midland which does not have a date function.
While watch winding stands are common enough among collectors they are not at all common among the average watch owners, and of course they are of no use at all for a hand winding watch.
My every day watch has a date, because as I get older I need to refer to it more often.....
I prefer dress watches not to have date because the design is generally cleaner. This one however gets away with it. (Zenith movement cal 2552C in 14k gold, circa 1970).
If a watch has two incarnations one with and one without a date function, I will choose the watch without.
I think the dateless design represents a truer form of the watch.
You seem intent on making a simple date complication out to be some huge liability. It simply isn't.
With this logic anything that could potentially go wrong should be avoided, so not date, no day, no moon phase, no alarm, not chronographs and on and on...seems bit ridiculous.
I have no scorn for the date function, all my watches have it. Elves, on the other hand, give me the heebie jeebies!
If you want all those complications by all means get them. If such complications did not require more energy from a mainspring and more likely hood of something going wrong, plus greatly increased service charges, then all watches might have them.
A professional watch maker like yourself with connections for obtaining parts and tools and machinery for making some parts would be in a very different position than the average person who just wants a watch that will provide years of trouble free service, like still be running in the morning instead of stalled halfway through changing the date.
My Slava date only watch works fine for now. I recently found that these are modified from a day date movement that proved unreliable. Even simplified the Slava is known for failures of the calendar function.
The Slava differs from most calendar movements in that it changes date instantly when the hour hand reaches the 12 midnight position, no long drawn out change over several hours.
Different strokes for different folks.
