How to Maintain Your Watch

Setting the time on your watch is a simple task however it is essential to learn how to set it and what the right way is to do it.

Setting your watch and how frequently you may have to set it depends on whether your watch has a quartz movement (battery powered) or a mechanical movement (powered by movement). If it is the latter, it is also dependent on how often you wear your watch.

Firstly, if you own a quartz watch, you will have to set your time once for every battery, as the watch will always keep time for as long as the battery has power. Once it replaced however, you will have to reset it.

An automatic watch on the other hand, keeps time due to movement. Therefore, when you first receive the watch after it has not been worn and thus has not been moving, you must wind it before setting it. Moreover, if you have not worn your automatic watch for a few days, you must also wind it and reset it again.

Lastly, a manual watch runs solely on manually winding the watch therefor you would have to wind it once a day. This type of movement is more rarely seen however this means that you will have to reset the time whenever it hasn’t been fully wound and the watch stops.

The process of actually setting the time is the same across both quartz and mechanical watches.

The first step is pulling out the crown. Some watches have a screw down crown. In this case, you must unscrew its crown first and then pull out it out once. If your watch doesn’t have a date display you may proceed to set the hands to the right position.

If the piece does have a date display, you must pull the crown out slightly, to the first position, which controls the date disc. You must then set the watch to the previous day’s date. Afterwards, you may pull the crown out further, to the second position. This position of the crown allows you to control the hands of the watch. At this point, you may keep turning the crown, moving the time forward until the date changes to the current day’s date. This thus indicates that you are within the first 12 hours of the day and from here, you can ensure you are properly setting the time. If you skip this step, you may be setting the time to 6:30 in the afternoon for example, rather than 6:30 in the morning, which would then cause the date to switch too early. If the time at which you are setting the watch is before noon, you can proceed to set the hands to the correct time. If is after noon, you must turn the hour hand once around the dial from, starting from the 12 o’clock mark, in order to ensure that your watch is in the second 12 hours of the day.