How do you wind your watch?
One difference I picked up between myself and my watchmaker was how we wound our watches. I remember him winding his watch by turning the crown clockwise, then anticlockwise, then clockwise again, not lifting his fingers. Up until then, I had only ever wound mine by turning the crown clockwise, repositioning my fingers, then turning clockwise again. Does it matter? It probably doesn't. Does it wear out the ratchet? It probably does, although I doubt it shaves years from the life of a watch. I use both techniques, depending on the watch. My watchmaker's technique works best for me on watches with tiny or slippery (or both, in the case of my Edox) crowns, but I mostly stick to the conventional (who am I to say conventional, nobody ever taught me how to wind a watch) method with my other pieces. In other words, it's krr—krr—krr versus krr-crr-krr-crr-krr-crr.
A famous Dutch saying: “𝘕𝘦𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘣 𝘫𝘦, 𝘫𝘢 𝘬𝘶𝘯 𝘫𝘦 𝘬𝘳𝘪𝘫𝘨𝘦𝘯.”
I do it the way you do it. Haven’t seen anyone do it the way your watchmaker does it.
I do older/vintage watches A, newer B
Oh... And also.... I have an Edox, love the watch, hate the crown.
My vintage model probably has an aftermarket crown on. I'll try and track a genuine Edox signed crown down, which might help.
Absolutely miniscule!
I feel like this is a generational thing? My pops winds like the watchmaker and I wind like a normal person. Lol. I could be way off base…
All but one of my watches are automatics. I shake them a little, set the time and then I put the watch on my wrist. If I do wind my watches. I do it upside and backwards. I’m left handed so I hold the watch in my right hand with the wind away from me with my left hand.
There's a reason your watchmaker does it like that. It's not a generational thing [sic]. I don't want to butcher the technical explanation so I'll wait until someone can elaborate.
Your way of manually winding a watch is what I do because...well probably because this is what my father taught me how to do it and I guess that this was passed on from his own father.
Keeping my fingers on the crown and going clockwise and counter clockwise is a trick that I do only when I have to manually wind my Vostoks because otherwise I'll lose too much time finding the exact tension that is needed to clutch the stem due to the floppy design of the crown.
I only wind in the correct direction.
Here is a quote from the one of the most prestigious watch sellers in business since 1794...Hausmann & Co...
"Winding must be done rotating the crown just clockwise, avoiding the bad habit of rotating it back and forth, which causes the further wear of the small winding toothed wheels."
Here is a prior discussion on the subject...
https://www.watchcrunch.com/ChronoGuy/posts/watch-winding-so-why-do-some-people-wind-the-crown-back-and-forth-28709
Well i don't screw things clockwise and anticlockwise, so neither my watches. Never really think about it before to be honest. I don't know what is the amount of time you save by using B), but I enjoy spending time with my watches so I don't consider it wasting my time. Maybe for a watchmaker it's different
The thought of ratcheting never occurred to me, and holding the crown while rotating the watch seems risky and inefficient.