How To Set Your Watch Time

Welcome to Product Support , a series devoted to helping y'all get the most out of your stuff.

Setting the fourth dimension on your mechanical sentinel is deceptively simple, but it'due south possible to unwittingly impairment the delicate movement inside with seemingly innocuous actions. There are just a couple basic rules to retrieve: 1) only plough the hands clockwise; and 2) only adjust the date more than 3 hours away from midnight. That's information technology. But you should also understand why not to do these things, and how to gear up your watch the correct mode.

Mechanical watches require regular attention from the user, such every bit setting the time and winding. These are the times when you collaborate most directly with the motility inside, and different watches offer different tactile feedback that is adamant past the movement itself too as how the watchmaker has constructed the example and crown. If you lot wear the same automatic watch daily or keep it on a winder it will require less frequent setting, but at the very to the lowest degree, most unproblematic automatic watches with a date (that are not perpetual calendars) will require periodic adjustment.

Watch newbies should definitely exist aware of these of import spotter-health guidelines along with other watch maintenance — mostly very simple stuff. Even many longtime watch enthusiasts who follow these rules, yet, might non know exactly why they follow them. Gear Patrol spoke with the excellent watchmakers that work with Analog/Shift and got the technical details. These principles should generally utilise to most common watches and movements.

Don't Set Your Watch Counterclockwise

How to Set a Watch the Right Way:

Pull the crown out to its second position (unscrewing it starting time, if necessary) to set the fourth dimension. If it's the kind of movement that stops the seconds hand ("hacking"), you may want to wait until it reaches zero — you know, only for OCD precision'south sake.
Then plow the hands clockwise to set the time — this is oft (but not always) done by turning the crown towards yourself.
Printing the crown in to start the watch again.

How It Works: It'due south called "clockwise" for a reason: that'south the way it's designed to go! Dissimilar setting the date incorrectly (see beneath), this does non risk immediately breaking your watch. Rather, it causes undue wear on the gear railroad train, much more so than normal performance. If done regularly over time, this wearable can have adverse effects on the watch'southward overall health. If y'all infinite out and overshoot the exact fourth dimension you're aiming for (it happens), turning it back slowly a couple minutes isn't such a big deal and far easier than spinning through another 24 hours and cycling through the date (see below) again. Consider this a best practise.

Don't Set the Date Inside 3 Hours of Midnight

How to Set a Watch's Appointment Safely:

To be safe, it'southward a good thought to just make it a addiction of setting the date when the hr hand is traveling somewhere along the lesser half of the dial (following the instructions above for setting the time).
Set the engagement by pulling the crown out to its first position for the vast majority of mechanical watches with a date office.
Turn the crown gently to prepare the date. If your watch too has a solar day-of-the-calendar week brandish, you lot can usually also set information technology via the crown in this position by turning information technology in the opposite direction.
Push button the crown back in when finished.

How It Works: When the fourth dimension approaches midnight, you may notice that the date disc appears to be gearing upward for the change, and that it sometimes doesn't actually click over until, say, xv minutes past the hr. That's the case for many watches, using, for example, movements like the common ETA 2824-2, though some higher-stop ones have dates that change instantaneously at midnight.

As watchmaker Harris Freedman explains, a pin sticking off of the date cycle (a gear) pushes the engagement disc (which displays the date) forrad each 24 hours. As the pin comes in contact with the disc, chop-chop turning the date disc via the crown can cause it to jam or, in a worst-case scenario, crusade the bike to actually break. If that happens, you'll not only have to replace the wheel, but likewise probably have a full service in example any debris got into the motility. That's why you lot want to get that pin clearly out of the way before changing the date by keeping the hour hand toward the bottom of the dial.

Got it? Skillful.