Windup watches

[dontpanicbobby]

Who still makes them?

 

[Hadron]

Oh, loads of manufacturers still make them. All of the high-end manufacturers do, and indeed many of the real high-end don't actually make any quartz models.

Fancy a windup watch and have €21,000 to spare, here you go. If that's too plain for you then try this one (the price is there, you just need to reveal it. Though if you need to know what that costs, it's not for you!). And after looking at those this will look cheap, and this one an absolute bargain .

I don't know whether anyone still makes the cheap windups that were around when I was a kid: given that a windup is more expensive to make and less accurate than a quartz I can't imagine there's much of a market for those, except maybe if you live somewhere where it's hard to get hold of batteries.

(BTW I took "wind up" very literally: those are all hand-winders rather than automatics).

 

[dontpanicbobby]

Of course.
When I say $50 I mean $20.
All it has to do is tell time.

 

[Hadron]

My watches usually tell the date as well. But that's as far as I go with complications.

(That's why I'm not interested in that Patek, of course: the dial is too fussy for my tastes. Nothing to do with it costing more than some houses do...)

 

[Clementine_3]

I miss the cheap wind-up Timex of my youth. I loved the tick tock noise they made, I sleep on my arm and heard it all night. Really, I miss that.

 

[puppykickr]

Oh, loads of manufacturers still make them. All of the high-end manufacturers do, and indeed many of the real high-end don't actually make any quartz models.

Fancy a windup watch and have €21,000 to spare, here you go. If that's too plain for you then try this one (the price is there, you just need to reveal it. Though if you need to know what that costs, it's not for you!). And after looking at those this will look cheap, and this one an absolute bargain .

I don't know whether anyone still makes the cheap windups that were around when I was a kid: given that a windup is more expensive to make and less accurate than a quartz I can't imagine there's much of a market for those, except maybe if you live somewhere where it's hard to get hold of batteries.

(BTW I took "wind up" very literally: those are all hand-winders rather than automatics).

I had an 'automatic' winder once.
Absolutely hated it, with a passion.
It was like $350 USD about 15 years ago, and the piece of crap would not wind up for the life of me.

I tried actually shaking it for 20 minutes straight, and it ran for about 5 minutes.

Being a bit more mechanically inclined than the average individual, I opened the back of this shiny, expensive paperweight.

The mechanical turd had a battery in it!
A dead, junky, cheap, rechargeable pill battery.

I was furious.
Obviously, the advertised feature- 'Never Needs Batteries!' was a complete and intentional lie.

The stupid thing definitely needed a battery- all of the time- and the one it had wasn't working, so it needed another.

The 'self winding' mechanism consisted of a very tiny magnet on a pendelum that allowed it to pass back and forth through a Faraday coil. Supposedly the daily movement of your body would move this magnet through the coil enough to keep the battery charged (I seriously doubt that.).

Think of a Shake Light (remember those stupid things?) in extreme miniature.

We had a naughty name for those flashlights, stemming from the motions that one had to do (way too much) to keep a charge on the device.

The watch was even more useless than that flashlight (or the act that the flashlight's charging motions mimicked).

The watch was given to me (thank God), so I had no receipt.
The jeweler that sold it was not willing to do anything except replace the battery, at my cost, and it was (of course) a special order- and I would have to pay for the install as well, as it was soldered in place.

I wound up trying to use the band on a cheap watch of about $10.

Sadly, it didn't fit.

The whole thing wound up in the circular file. It just wasn't worth the hassle or the cost to repair it.

I don't even wear a watch at all anymore.

 

[Hadron]

Do you remember who made that watch? I know Seiko make watches that use movement to charge a battery (in early models it was a capacitor, but apparently those were unreliable and they switched to batteries around 20 years ago). But I don't think they'd have marketed it as "automatic", they use the brand name "kinetic" for that type of watch.

Real automatics can survive a surprisingly long time when not used. Over a year ago I found a cheap automatic one of my younger brothers owned as a kid (so it had been sitting in a box for perhaps 35 years). Wound it up and wore it for a laugh and blow me but the thing kept running and kept time pretty well. My brother didn't want it so my daughter claimed it for her collection (for when she thinks a slightly tacky retro vibe will suit her outfit).

 

[mikedt]

I had an 'automatic' winder once.
Absolutely hated it, with a passion.
It was like $350 USD about 15 years ago, and the piece of crap would not wind up for the life of me.

I tried actually shaking it for 20 minutes straight, and it ran for about 5 minutes.

Being a bit more mechanically inclined than the average individual, I opened the back of this shiny, expensive paperweight.

The mechanical turd had a battery in it!
A dead, junky, cheap, rechargeable pill battery.

I was furious.
Obviously, the advertised feature- 'Never Needs Batteries!' was a complete and intentional lie.

The stupid thing definitely needed a battery- all of the time- and the one it had wasn't working, so it needed another.

The 'self winding' mechanism consisted of a very tiny magnet on a pendelum that allowed it to pass back and forth through a Faraday coil. Supposedly the daily movement of your body would move this magnet through the coil enough to keep the battery charged (I seriously doubt that.).

Think of a Shake Light (remember those stupid things?) in extreme miniature.

We had a naughty name for those flashlights, stemming from the motions that one had to do (way too much) to keep a charge on the device.

The watch was even more useless than that flashlight (or the act that the flashlight's charging motions mimicked).

The watch was given to me (thank God), so I had no receipt.
The jeweler that sold it was not willing to do anything except replace the battery, at my cost, and it was (of course) a special order- and I would have to pay for the install as well, as it was soldered in place.

I wound up trying to use the band on a cheap watch of about $10.

Sadly, it didn't fit.

The whole thing wound up in the circular file. It just wasn't worth the hassle or the cost to repair it.

I don't even wear a watch at all anymore.

Yeh, "automatic" and "self winding" in quotes.

FYI real automatic watches, or self winding watches don't have batteries, magnets, faraday coils, or any electronics in them at all, and are totally mechanical in operation. Basically they have a weighted rotor that works from your daily movement, that winds the mainspring, and that runs the watch.

 

[olbriar]

I bought a Seiko self winding in the very early seventies. I later sold it to my father who wore it all the rest of his life. The watch made the round trip and it is in my possession once again. It runs great and keeps great time. Here are the only two true windups I own.

 

[puppykickr]

Yeh, "automatic" and "self winding" in quotes.

FYI real automatic watches, or self winding watches don't have batteries, magnets, faraday coils, or any electronics in them at all, and are totally mechanical in operation. Basically they have a weighted rotor that works from your daily movement, that winds the mainspring, and that runs the watch.

Yes.
My buddy has a real one, an excellent remake of one of (or the) original self winding watch.

It cost enough, but was not extreme, and it is transparent in many areas so as to make the internal workings visible.

That thing is truely amazing, and very cool.

 

[puppykickr]

Do you remember who made that watch? I know Seiko make watches that use movement to charge a battery (in early models it was a capacitor, but apparently those were unreliable and they switched to batteries around 20 years ago). But I don't think they'd have marketed it as "automatic", they use the brand name "kinetic" for that type of watch.

Real automatics can survive a surprisingly long time when not used. Over a year ago I found a cheap automatic one of my younger brothers owned as a kid (so it had been sitting in a box for perhaps 35 years). Wound it up and wore it for a laugh and blow me but the thing kept running and kept time pretty well. My brother didn't want it so my daughter claimed it for her collection (for when she thinks a slightly tacky retro vibe will suit her outfit).

No, I have no memory of the name brand.
The thing was/is such a sore spot in my mind, as if the person that gave it to me ever asks me about it I have to pretend that I still have it.

I detest lying, and that just makes it worse.

I should just have never excepted the blasted thing.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

I thought of a pocket watch @olbriar but then I realized none of my uniform pants or jackets had pockets to support them not to mention anywhere to connect the fob chain. Even Jean watch pockets are getting hard to find these days.
I only wear suits to funerals and weddings.

 

[olbriar]

I carry the little one now and then but the larger one belonged to my grandfather and it's just biding time before it's my son's. You are quite right about garments no longer designed for pocket watch carry. It's like tie tacks and cuff links.. I have a box full of them that's not been opened in the past forty years.