How Do Watch Winders Work?
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It's All In The Spring
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A watch winder in a mechanical watch serves to wind up a spring. Springs are a natural way of storing energy and then releasing it to perform various jobs, a sort of early mechanical battery. When you wind a watch, you are putting the energy it takes to turn the winder into the spring, where it will be held and released at a controlled rate to drive the clock hands for a period of a day or more.
Why All The Clockwork Bits?
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When you take a mechanical watch apart, you'll find plenty of little bits besides a winder, a spring, and a connection to the watch hands. The bits all work together to create a watch movement, and the majority of the pieces do one of two things: they either change the direction power is traveling, or they regulate how fast it travels. In the case of a watch winder, the spring is laid out parallel to the face of the watch, so that it can easily drive the drive shaft the watch hands are attached to. However this means the winder is at a bad angle to wind the spring up; the "easy" angle would be at right angles to the clock face, sticking straight out of the middle of the spring. On your wrist, that would mean that the winder either stuck up into the air or that it gouged down into your wrist. By using a variety of toothed cogs, the mechanism of the watch allows you to turn a winder, which turns a cog, which winds the spring, which powers the watch.
Winders are also used as setting controls: by pulling the winder into a secondary position the shaft of the winder connects with a different set of cogs, moving the placement of the hands on the clock face without engaging the spring.
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Why Do Quartz Watches Have Winders?
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While quartz drive watches, which work without needing to be wound, still often have winders, they are not used for winding the watch. Instead they are used only to adjust the placement of the hands of the clock. In this situation, the winder isn't really a winder, it's just a setting control.
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