Lubricants will coagulate in my Watch – Truth or Myth


In all honesty, I find Watch Winders are a convenient tool to keep your watches wound; especially timepieces with complications. Watch aficionado and collectors would agree to this as they have a larger collection of timepieces to maintain.


But as to keeping your timepiece from oil clogging, decomposing, hardening and coagulating, I think it’s just a marketing technique to scare people into buying now. I don’t blame them from trying ways and means to push numbers because I have been in sales before.

It is however true that all timepieces need servicing much like automobiles. A timepiece regulates at 18,000 beats per hour, some even higher at 36,000 beats. People with automatic watches wear them regularly, and perhaps play golf using it. These timepieces take a “beating” (wear and tear) in some way or the other. So when it comes to servicing it would be fair to say that a 3 ~ 4 year interval would be good with or without sitting on a winder.

With advanced technologies, most oils used today in timepieces are less viscous than earlier oils, and thus are not likely to coagulation fast. These specialized synthetic oils do have a life-span of about 5 ~ 7 years before it breaks down. Do not let a watch sit for a long period. Some experts advices to wind a timepiece at least once a month. You can Google this fact about oils in timepieces and find other interesting facts as well.

But there’s also logic that stopped watches would mean adjusting the time and this mean that you will have to pull out (or unscrew) the crown during this action. Having to repeat this every time would put stress to the crown; perhaps cross-threading might occur. Besides, I would rather just pick my watch, strap it on and go, then spend time re-adjusting it.

For this purpose, a watch winder saves you time and money.

Keep your collection safe in a winder unit or a watch collector’s box but please don’t put it in Uranus (UrAnus). I’m just kidding (I recently found a watch box with this name…)

Labels: watch winder oil