How much (wrist) activity is needed to fully wind an automatic watch?

This can be likened to getting your vehicle ready for emissions inspection/IM Readiness.

There are actions you do when driving that, without your knowledge the car's computer is tracking.

So with a normal drive your car can be IM Ready without trying.

So your mechanic will tell you, "you need to drive the car".

How long/far?

"Like 50 miles or so. Then come back."

But you can do it deliberately in short order if you know how.

Something similar with winding your watch. "Just wear it all day and it will be fully wound. Eventually."

But how many licks...

What was I on about?

A 15-30 minute walk should be sufficient for a 24 hour winding.

I've been keeping a Seiko 7S26 wound with a bit of morning exercise and evening wear. Be sure to wear watch while brushing teeth!

I've said that the only good point of a display case back is the ability to study rotor motion. I'm of the opinion that repeated thumb up, thumb down motion is the quickest and most efficient way to do things.

Moral: you will need a watch with a power reserve meter to find your answer. Or someone who has done it.

If I ever had one I wouldn't have asked. 😄

My understanding that is if the movement has stopped completely, then you should wind the watch 20 to 30 times. This would then allow the movement to move freely and not try to keep up with your movements in winding as well. Apparently that puts less stress on the main spring. 🤔

** Also, its allright to let a watch stop. It can sit eternally without running and then 💥 you fire it up and set it up. That's the allure of our hobby, the re-bond each time.

Since you've been here about as long as I have, I'll let you in on the secret Watch Crunch highly efficient winding technique:

Wait, are you brushing your teeth with your left/watch hand?

I try. Sacrifices must be made.

Good night now 🤣

This truly depends on the winding style of the movement (one direction or both), and the specific activity of the wearer.

Just about all of my automatic watches wind completely in a normal day of wear for me which generally consists of desk diving. My Blancpain that has a 5 day power reserve also winds to a full charge with one day of wear. The ten day Panerai takes 2 days if I let it run all the way down.

Most of my Seikos have bi-directional winding and reach full power reserve faster than on day of wear. You can conduct your own experiments and find your specific results.

Why is this even a question? Unless you don't have the ability to manually wind the watch, you should always manually wind your automatic before wearing it initially to optimize performance.

You are highly unlikely to be able to wind it sufficiently by just moving your wrist.

Here is a great video to explain it:

https://youtu.be/AHnSa57a3po

Folding laundry can really add a lot to your automatic power reserve. Doing dishes does a lot too. A power reserve indicator can be like a “close your rings” indicator and encourage you to get a lot of house choirs done 😉. Your wife may actually encourage you to buy your next watch if she’s aware that that’s what happens. If you have an automatic with a exhibition case back, you can see what motions are required to wind up. Holding it level and waving it left, right with a horizontal motion will wind it up…. You can hear it wind up in a quiet room. Ofcourse, you can always just wind the crown, but that’s no fun.

I've been thinking about what kind of activities will generate the most wrist movement in the least time and decided that maybe it's something I should try when I'm alone at home.

Well, I don't mind that everyone's having fun on this topic, but I asked the question mostly because of the well-known issues with ETA-2824/SW-200 and extensive use of manual winding.

Some popular movements don't do well if you wind them manually often - e.g. https://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread.php?507566-Here-s-what-happens-when-the-reversers-stick-on-an-ETA-2824

From what I gathered automatic movements rarely strengthen the manual windings gears, as it's not expected that such watches would be wound often in this way. Most people have just one and wear it every day - collectors have rather unique issues, because of their multiple watches.

This truly depends on the winding style of the movement (one direction or both), and the specific activity of the wearer.

From what I've observed unidirectional movements are quite uncommon these days. I think so far I've seen unidirectional rotors only in some JLCs.

Most of my Seikos have bi-directional winding and reach full power reserve faster than on day of wear. You can conduct your own experiments and find your specific results.

Yeah, I've been doing some experiments myself. I was just curious if there was some deeper dive into the topic somewhere. I guess I like to wonder about silly stuff. :-)

I think you misread the thread you linked. The post is talking about when there is damage or when there is not proper lubrication. Then, of course, forcing the gears will result in damage to the teeth of the gears.

Take a look again at the link...

The post actually encourages the winding of an automatic. The person writing the post indicates they regularly manually wind their automatic watches with 30 turns of the crown.

On most automatics with a 40-hour power reserve this makes sense as each 10 turns equates roughly to 10 hours of power reserve.

Hope that helps.

I guess I didn't read this article before sharing it - there are several similar problems with the ETA-2824 and I assumed this was the one I had in mind. 😄 This video has a good explanation of the problem around 12:00 minute mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ictSUwMGBRY&t=437s

There's also a nice similar discussion here https://www.reddit.com/r/Watches/comments/p56h5m/damasko_dk_30_with_a26_inhouse_movement/

Anyways, I'm obviously not an expert. Probably manual winding is not that big of an issue for the 2824 in practice, but enough people had this problem just because so many such movements have been sold world-wide over the past few decades.

Thank you for sending the video...really instructive. Now I understand your point.

Makes sense that where the watch is using steel against brass it could degrade the watch over time. Marc does make the point that handwinding the automatic movement provides better operation of the watch.

He also points out the small reverser gears that are made of brass, that have nothing to do with the handwinding, but relate to the movement of the rotor. He also explains that it's the brass parts that over time degrade whether you are handwinding or using the rotor. So it isn't so much the handwinding of the ETAs but the use of brass gears that will cause the movement to degrade over time whether or not you handwind it.

Considering that so many watches have these ETA movements it's surprising that they are still making them this way.