40 years old!

While looking for a watch fob in the drawer. I found my father's 40 years old watch. It is more of a toy watch. He said he got it from his uncle when he was 6 or 9 yrs old. It is a merry toys tetter-totter watch also known as see-saw watch. It is hand wound,0 jewels. It does not keep great time and does not run well. The see-saw goes up and down. Sorry for the blurry pic,took it from a phone.

How to: Use and maintain your automatic watch.

Automatic watches are hugely popular.But most of the people except us, watch enthusiasts,do not know properly know what is an automatic watch?Well, I have tried to explain it in more detail this time.
Automatic watches are also mechanical watches but with the addition of a rotor and a set of winding gears which wind the watch with the movement of the wearer's wrist.We will not go in detail of the workings of it as I have explained it in my earlier post.
Now let get to the point...
When people get their automatic, it is usually not working as the it's mainspring is not wound.What I recommend is to wind it 20-30 turns,180 degrees turns.Some of the people will go"Oh!just give it a few shakes..."Well a few shakes will give it only a small amount of power.In case it is a Seiko 5 or some other watch which you cannot wind by hand, I recommend turning it 30-50 times in both the directions. One thing I want to bring to you people's notice is that you cannot overwind an automatic watch. Please do not try that on any cheap Chinese watch as you do not know what mechanism they have inside.It could just be a normal hand-wound  movement which is modified to an automatic movement without changing the barrel. Even if it is an expensive watch do not try that again and again, as it will wear down the mechanism that prevents it from overwinding.
Another thing is servicing. I recommend servicing the watch after 3-6 years of the previous service.
Well if you follow those rules, your watch will last a lifetime.It may even outlive you!
Cheers!
V.Mittal

What is a mechanical watch?

Before 1970s there were basically two types of watches you could get, mechanical and automatic.Well, most of the people nowadays ask me what is a mechanical watch.I have tried my best to explain this in my blog.

HMT hand wound movement.

Mechanical watch also known as hand-wound watch is one in which one has to wind the watch regularly by the crown  in order to keep the watch running.This has to be done regularly (after every 24 hrs)or after the time intervals told by the manufacturer. If the watch has a power reserve indicator, then the watch has to wound when the indicator points at low.

Automatic watch is one in which the watch's mainspring is wound by the movement of the wearer's wrist.It is also a mechanical watch.It consists of a semi-circular weight which moves with the movement of the wearer's wrist.When the weight moves, it activates a set of gears which wind the mainspring.There are two kinds of automatics, one which is uni-directional,that is,the watch's mainspring is wound when the weight moves only in one direction.The other type is bi-directional winding,that is,the watch is wound when the weight moves in any direction,that is,either left or right it does not matter. I cannot post the pic of my automatic right now.Will post it when I will do a review on it.
The detailed article is here

Last but not the least,quartz. Quartz is your regular battery operated watch. It has a quartz crystal in it which vibrates at the frequency of 32768 Hz.There is a chip in the watch which counts it and then the hands move.I think there is no need to post the pic of a quartz watch as most of you would be aware of it.

Thanks,

V.Mittal.

My HMT Dhruva watch.

It is my first post ever on a blog. Well I am so exited! My first post starts with the review of my mechanical watch. It is an HMT dhruv watch,17 jewels,hand winding. Uses reliable in-house caliber 0231 which is based on citizen caliber 0201, which HMT acquired in the 1960s. Whenever I tell anybody about my hmt watch, their reaction is " but I thought that the brand was closed long ago" well if you also think like that then WAKE UP! Now posting the pics of it, note that it is on a strap, it is not the original configuration. It comes on a metal bracelet.It is one of the 'rarer' watches made by HMT.

It has a nice 'bluish white' dial.The diameter of  the case is 35mm or something. I do not remember exactly.

                                          It is very slim as you can see.

UPDATE- Government of India has decided to shut HMT down.