Thank you Panerai - you’ve helped my OCD
I have a real problem with time. I obsess about the accuracy of all my watches and am continually checking the time on the current watch on my wrist to the actual time on my phone. If after a day, I’m out by 2 seconds or more, I get very twitchy and have to reset the watch. I suppose it’s possible the phone is wrong, but somehow I really doubt it.
I’ve just acquired my first Panerai on the internet, sight unseen and with no experience of the brand. For whatever reason, it had never occurred to me until it arrived that you can’t tell the time accurately until the minute hands aligns with a marker. So for 48 minutes in every hour it’s a total guess as to what the actual time it is. My movement is non hacking too, so the best I can get is an approximation of the time. I hadn’t realised how liberating it is to know it’s now XX.XX o’clock (ish). I won’t be using the Panerai to time any re-entry burns in the atmosphere on my return from the moon, laps at LeMans or how fast I can run a mile (about a day), but I will know the time to an acceptable level of accuracy and it turns out, that’s good enough.
All the gear and no idea. I love watches but am pretty ignorant on details. Not that it matters. It’s just fun looking at, acquiring and wearing watches of all types.
TBH if I wanted to know the actual time I check my phone anyway. My watch is just for an approximation.
I sort of accomplish the same thing with my watches? I'm also acutely aware of when my watch doesn't align with exact time, especially when I often sleep with a radio syncing g shock square on and switch to another watch in the morning. My go-to watch is my Marathon GSAR, which runs like 2-3 seconds slow per day. My second go-to is my Hamilton khaki auto that runs roughly the same error in the positive direction.
What I do to get around adjusting my watches constantly is I set them up for their error to occupy the range of 0 to 60 seconds fast. My GSAR gets set 1min fast and is allowed to slowly lose time until it's basically spot on, and then I set it ahead another minute after a few weeks. My Khaki Auto is set exactly and is allowed to slowly gain time until it's a minute fast, and then I pull the crown out for a minute.
This means I'm always in that +0 to +60 second range somewhere, but I know it's not the exact time. It's way less annoying to go from +37 seconds to +34 seconds than it is to go from 0 to -3 seconds. My watch is a tad ahead, but I know I'm never behind or massively ahead. I might expand that to 0 to +120s or even to +180s if I had a watch that was around 10 to 20s off per day, but I've been pretty lucky with my main watches.
Excellent points. Thanks for the response.
The biggest joke for me, however, is having a 6K watch without hacking.
But yeah: The OCD is „forcibly“ done
I understand I can be a little obsessed about accuracy too. Sometimes I'm checking how much my watches are off each day sometimes every hour but fine if watch is 15 seconds fast per day at most but don't like if it's more than 5 seconds slow. Since acquiring my Hamilton Jazzmaster Thinline Auto (no second hand but does have minute markers) I can only give an approximate guess on the accuracy after keeping it wound for 2 weeks. When the minute hand is halfway between markers I know that's 30 seconds. After wearing the watch for 2 weeks I'd guess it was maybe about +1 to +2 at worst. Nice not to be obsessed about accuracy.
I understand I can be a little obsessed about accuracy too. Sometimes I'm checking how much my watches are off each day sometimes every hour but fine if watch is 15 seconds fast per day at most but don't like if it's more than 5 seconds slow. Since acquiring my Hamilton Jazzmaster Thinline Auto (no second hand but does have minute markers) I can only give an approximate guess on the accuracy after keeping it wound for 2 weeks. When the minute hand is halfway between markers I know that's 30 seconds. After wearing the watch for 2 weeks I'd guess it was maybe about +1 to +2 at worst. Nice not to be obsessed about accuracy.
Thanks for that. Excellent points. 👍🏻