Watch accuracy tolerances - one for the watch peeps?

i don't particularly appreciate the implied insult, but nevertheless.
have you any idea how many components there are inside an automatic watch? it's ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like building a small kit. it would be absurd of me to believe i have the skills to build a watch like that properly.

Not just the number of components, but the tolerances between them, which are astonishing.

Tefal, before you start making such accusations, you might want to check your facts please.

With unlimited resources he said, he could go on half a dozen courses and become a watch maker.

You know like the people that actually make them :/
 
My Tag Heuer Carrera Tachy loses about 5 secs a day which is acceptable for me.

People really need to know what they're buying before shelling out tons of money for expensive watches (I believe 100% of them are all mechanical)
then complain that they're not as accurate as a quartz Timex in Argos!

The fact is they ARE NOT and can never compete in terms of accuracy with quartz watches but who cares? If you want accuracy, get a Casio G-Shock!

Quartz: http://www.timezone.com/library/archives/archives631703148375478424

Mechanical: http://www.timezone.com/library/wwatchfaq/wwatchfaq631668591017665598
 
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My £130 Seiko doesn't lose a minute a week lol

I have to adjust to summer/winter time every 6 months but in between it i say it doesn't lose even 30 seconds.

How do i know? Well, i leave for work every morning at the same time, for the past 6 months i've been getting to the station (I look at the monitor when i walk through the door), it's within the same minute :D.

If the watch is slower by like a minute a week, within a month i would start missing my train.
 
If you're looking at a watch made by a 'master watchmaker' then it's not that easy - and yeah a lot of tolerances involved

Depends if you want it uniquely hand-made and designed.

;)

you can't get excellent tolerances made by hand. They are designed on computers and then cut and machined on hugely expensive machines automatically. Then assembled by hand.


A human with a file just cannot compete with a incredibly accurate robotic arm with a far more rapidly vibrating file and more delicate application of pressure.
 
But you do get what we're getting at no??

Not really, I can understand the design and development that goes into a mechanical movement, but as more of a chemist/material science guy I always find far more amazement at the quartz watch, it seams so simple yet it's founded upon principles so very bizarre, and more upon the the innate inquisitiveness of man., than the reservedness of the mechanical design.
 
I bought a watch in Menorca for €20 that lost 30 seconds a night on the Digital display but was accurate to the second on the Analogue.

Weird

Anyway I have barely had to adjust my £10 Casio in 5 years so if I speant £200 on a watch I'd expect it to be perfect.

That's just me though
 
Surely if you spend mega bucks on a watch you want it to be as accurate as possible? In which case you would surely want a quartz one.......you mainly cant see the mechanism in the watch anyways so I cant see the appeal myself
 
If its gaining time, then lay it vertical (with crown facing up) at night and it should gain a lot less time..... or just get it regulated/serviced.

I know how my watches behave and I know how I should lay them at night to keep them within 30 seconds (either way) of the correct time. When the watch comes off at night I glance at the wireless controlled clock on the wall and then at my watch and depending on whether it's running slightly slow or slightly fast I put the watch down appropriately.

Split second accuracy isn't that important to me any more. It was when I was 16, in fact I was obsessed by it, but not now. Life's too short.

 
bah! if you want super-accurate, just get a Caesium-Atomic wristwatch!
gauranteed +/- 1 second every eighty million years!
 
if I speant £200 on a watch I'd expect it to be perfect

I think that is exactly what people are getting at, i have a ~£500 watch which is perfect, and a ~£300 one which is also. I can only assume that they both use cheap quartz mechanism's.

The watch which is losing time i can only assume to be a proper mechanical one.

Does seem silly i agree, but the time gain doesnt actually bother me, the purpose of the thread was to see if people would deem the watch to have an issue, as i know there are other owners of mechanical watches here.
 
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