This post is what got me into mechanical watches as I've always wondered how the analogue clocks/watches work but couldn't bother myself to actually read upon it. But after the article, I even got myself a clean Seiko 5 automatic, not because I wanted a fancy watch, but I wanted to own a piece of mechanical wonder.
Grand Seikos are some of the best mechanical watches. Their quartz line is also exceptional. Very underrated and much prefer them over overpriced Rolex.
The Spring Drive movement is amazing, very accurate, very high quality and that smooth sweeping seconds hand is mesmerizing. Availability is good, and the price is a lot better than the high-end Swiss brands.
Rolex these days is a joke, even the authorized dealers will rip you off shamelessly. They will either refuse to sell you a watch they have in store, or they will force you to buy 30 grand in extra jewelry just to get the Rolex you want.
That's true but it's still driven by a spring and mainly mechanical. I understand people who don't like it, but I also see it as a reasonable tradeoff and find them just as fascinating as purely mechanical models. In the end people wear them for the same reasons.
It's a mechanical movement regulated by quartz. In a traditional mechanical movement, the escapement prevents the main spring from unwinding all at once. It is done with a fork which ticks at a certain rate governed by the balance wheel. In a Spring Drive movement, the escapement is replaced with an electromagnetic "brake" governed by a quartz crystal. So it still has many of the characteristics of a mechanical watch: it's still powered entirely by a main spring which can be wound or automatically wound by your body movements, it needs regular maintenance like other mechanical watches, and it isn't as durable as most quartz-only watches.
I agree with you. I used to stock up gold Rolexes as investment but sold them when their value peaked during the pandemic. For collection purposes? Rolexes are duds.
Incredible as usual. Like a visit to a science museum. Wikipedia should commission this guy to explain all the things in this intuitive, interactive, visual way.
Do you know where he says he's not taking commissions? Just curious bc I wonder who is trying to commission this kind of stuff, and what his reason is for not doing it.
My favorite watch ever was a self-winding mechanical Swatch. I suspect they (Swatch) acquired the company that made it. Disappointingly, when the pins that held the band on started to slip, there was no good way to repair it.
I've since switched to a smart watch, but I keep getting tempted to go back. I generally use my smart watch as a very gentle alarm, and for fitness tracking. I just don't want to be the geek who wears two watches. Maybe I should only wear it at night?
A self-winding watch needs to be worn for hours each day to not run out of power. A manual-wind watch will be a better choice for a night-only mechanical watch.
The Swatch brand was founded 1983 by ETA CEO Thomke and his Engineers. ETA is a watch movement manufacturer.
Speaking of Swatch and mechanical watches: the Sistem51 is an interesting watch, since it's the only mechanical watch ever fabricated in a 100% automated production line. The parts are welded together and held by a single screw.
https://www.swatch.com/en-us/sistem-51.html
I have been torn between wearing mechanical watches and smart watches. I don't need/want/like notifications on my wrist, but I really enjoy the activity and heart rate tracking of the Apple Watch.
I have been reluctantly wearing a Samsung Withings watch that looks mechanical but is actually smart, but a mediocre compromise (you need to wear it higher up the wrist than I usually do, and I don't believe it gives accurate heart rate and activity measurements). 30 day battery life is pretty cool though.
I may just start going back to my Vostok and Seiko watches full time at this point. (I don't like spending a lot of money on watches, anyone who is curious on getting into them should check out both brands as economical starters - the Vostok Amphibia has a storied history!)
Consider something like a Whoop or Oura Ring which monitors health metrics but doesn’t rely on a watch? That’s what I’ve settled on so that I have the best of both worlds.
Wow. I had looked at the Oura Ring before and thought it looked cool, but I missed that it basically requires a subscription, which is wild considering it seems like I get all of the same metrics from my Garmin watch with no subscription required.
Try Garmin Instinct? It's a digital watch (not analog) and more of a fitness tracker than a smart watch. You can disable any notifications you don't want.
That's where I ended up. My Instinct has replaced my mechanical watches for every occasion except for the most formal. The app is decent, the metrics are awesome, and the accessories work without fuss (I pair mine with the Heart Rate strap when doing kettlebell stuff). I love my other watches and still have one or two I will eventually convince myself to buy, but the Garmin Instinct 2 has been on my wrist for 90% of the last year.
Mechanical watches these days are primarily about aesthetics. Although I must say that I find myself reaching less and less for my mobile these days to find out the time because I wear a mechanical watch.
A smartwatch is about data, primarily.
You can have both. Use the mechanical watch for occasions that require a formal attire and use the smartwatch as your daily driver and sport companion.
For me it's the opposite. Notifications and payments are my main benefit. I would never wear a watch that shows only the time (hence I never wore one since the late 90s until mid 2010s). Sleep tracking with SpO2 is a big thing for me too though.
I think mechanical watches are much more about being jewellery than function, even though it's impressive engineering. But I'm not a very flashy guy (I don't even own any shirts that fit anymore, just T-shirts lol) so I don't really care.
But it's good to see everyone can get what they like. I'm personally really happy with how far smartwatches have come.
Yes I've seen that kind of watch too. I forget which brand it was but it was one of the mechanical brands.
For what it's worth, the amazfit and Xiaomi products also have very great battery life (around 2 weeks) and some are very light. With the gadgetbridge or notify for Android apps they're really privacy conscious too.
If that's your use case, definitely check out the Withings Scanwatch line. If you're not using a lot of the other features, the battery can prob go well over 30 days between recharging.
If you're cheap/privacy/FOSS focused like myself, I find the "PineTime" is largely the modern day Pebble watch.
It may not literally watch every breath you take while you sleep, but I haven't wanted that personally anyways.
Only real drawbacks are battery life is only OK (about a week or so depending), the IPS screen can be bright in the dark (though it's a nice flashlight) and it only has 1 meter of water resistance, though it seems well sealed enough to trust it if I fall into water momentarily. (And really, swimming/showering with watches is kind of niche anyways)
I miss my Pebble :( I still have it, but I blame Apple and normiesl consumers for the death of the Pebble.
Consumers bought into Apple's shiny power hungry oled Apple Watch and yet they still complain about battery life to this day. Do you really need slick animations on your watch? Consumers will still buy what is shiny and cool looking over what actually works.
And don't even get me started on WearOS, Google's sorry excuse is such a disappointment, I swear I'd have to actually try if I wanted make as many bad UX & performance sucking decisions as they did.
For me it was an easy choice. First, I was starting to worry about heart health. Second, my mechanical watches could be sold for more than I paid for them.
I wear a smart watch at the gym to track my heart rate, but when not at the gym I wear a mechanical watch (or some other normal watch... I recently got a Casio World Time I have love way more than I probably should).
I had an Apple Watch, but sold it, as I felt guilty not wearing it more, with all that it can do. I ended up getting the cheapest Polar watch option, that does everything on-device (I don't have an account or anything), and can wear that to the gym if I just want to check out my heart rate.
I had both a Pebble v1 and a Pebble v2 and loved them both. Pebble went defunct though, so I switched back to a Seiko 5 automatic dive watch once I found I didn't really care for any of the other available smart watches at the time.
There's something beautiful to me about a mechanical watch being tied to my personal relativity. Compared to an NTP synchronized smart watch, nothing should update the time on my watch but me. The actual usefulness of this feature is merely philosophical but it makes me happy to consider.
The only thing I miss is weather at a glance on my Pebble. I used a watch face with the temperature on it and to this day I still look at my wrist when I'm thinking about the temperature lol
I disabled all but the most important notifications (calls, texts primarily) and it's been great. I no longer have to drag my phone out of my pocket when someone calls me, and all unnecessary notifications can wait until I'm bored.
I was wearing a MiBand and getting ready to get an Apple Watch. Then my wife got me a Longines auto. I'll never go back to smartwatches again.
I'm not a collector when it comes to watches, and I can happily wear that Longines until the end of time, and will be happy.
Having a tactile watch with real hardware with no electricity inside brings me more joy than some capable electronic toy which needs constant tending and replacement.
If I was climbing mountains, maybe but mere outdoor activities I have a ProTrek. More than enough.
In a similar story, my wife gave me an Omega calibre 1861 Moonwatch years ago, and I nearly always wear it. But a few years ago, I got an Apple Watch for running, and now I often wear both, because I like the heart monitor, the haptic hints while driving, and don't always have my phone along. I wish the Apple Watch had a face that didn't have a time display.
Any smartwatch will become unusable, polluting garbage a few years (months?) from now: a canonical example of planned obsolescence. Their self-tracking functions are a double-edged sword, a source of stress as much as relief.
Any well-built and well-maintained mechanical watch will last you decades. No dependencies on electricity and network connectivity, it's a self-contained and entirely autonomous piece of human engineering. Mine was built in 1975 and is one year older than me. In a world where everything fades away so fast, wearing it everyday feels like owning a precious relic.
>No dependencies on electricity and network connectivity, it's a self-contained and entirely autonomous piece of human engineering.
This already veers straight back into the marketing territory that everyone in this thread remarks was an eye opener when they actually got a mechanical watch.
I have a mild prepper tendency and I had to eventually kill my romantic views of mechanicals when I realized it just time drift and wouldn't last long without regular maintenance from someone with the tools and knowledge/skill, not to mention someone in this very comment section mentions a mechanical watch suffering a death from drop onto carpeted floor.
Mechanical watches are cool, but I easily spend less time without my PineTime (which I'm surprised nobody else in these comments has even mentioned) working than my friend spends manually syncing his seiko back to time/maintaining it.
I never heard about PineTime until now! Looks like a cool gadget. What has your experience been with it, apart from it being more accurate than a mechanical?
It's an interesting experience, I have github send me an email on the odd occasion the community developed "OS" gets an update. Then I download the zip file on my phone browser and upload the file on Gadgetbridge for the update.
I sometimes call it my "soviet in a good way" watch, it ended up becoming my "function over fashion" watch, which means almost all day every day wear for a few years now.
pros:
decent battery life (1-2 weeks, i turn off bluetooth and gps on my phone overnights which helps both devices)
"good enough" design (durable enough for all but swimming/showering)
easily replaced or modified (even takes standard watch bands)
flashlight, notifications and all traditional digital watch functions
multiple community "OS" options
cons:
community development can be slow, buggy
water droplets particularly from natural rain can trigger the touchscreen, not amazing if you bike in seattle or something
anemic hardware
The charger is cheap and isn't that quick but again, the pinetime kind of excels in knowing the difference between good and good enough, as I once heard an engineer say (about something else), and I rarely find myself bothered by it's lack of luxuries.
>What do you think is the PineTime's biggest strength when compared with a mainstream smartwatch?
Frankly, I think the combination of price/replaceability and privacy are the only things unique (besides niche FOSS modding) to it among smart watches; and I like the open aspect of essentially every detail.
It makes it the only smart watch I've used that feels like it respects my dignity, frankly. A minor philosophical quibble but one I take stoic pleasure in. It is a tool, and technology that serves me, not another.
> Have you found the watch to be hackable? Is there any sort of customization that you've done to it?
I actually got it hoping I'd have the inclination to tinker with it, but my only idea that wasn't already being worked on by the default "OS" is a red flashlight mode, which with the IPS screen is a moot point anyways, since the black pixels when turned on make for a low-light flashlight anyways, heh. A hardware drawback that ironically makes it a more accessible tool in my experience.
The PineTime is still an electronic gadget that you won't use for very long.
My watch takes 15 seconds to rewind each day, and 5 seconds to be time adjusted by one minute twice a week. Service is every 5 years, the last one cost me 88 €. It gets more valuable each year, and I plan to bequeath it to my son in a (hopefully) very distant future.
Yes, it's manual. I have no experience with automatic ones.
Admittedly, it is a rather pricey model (Omega Speedmaster). I bought it second hand for 1500 € a few years ago. Unfortunately, prices have since skyrocketed for many emblematic watches like this one.
I wish I could buy an Apple Watch without screen, crown and button. Just a smart disc to record all my Health and activity data, worn under my wristwatch
Bartosz does an amazing job of making custom interactives and animations to support his articles. It looks like he uses custom canvas with webgl for the 3d renders.
There are 3d engines in JavaScript like three.js (https://threejs.org/) that can abstract some of the 3d rendering work for you.
I agree with naet that threejs might be the thing to look at if you want to make 3d animations. My own interactive diagrams are 2d, and I often use svg with reactive data filling in the parameters. [1] I've also tried hand crafting and it's not so bad for pages like this. They're mostly write-once pages, not software that's being maintained for many years. Some of our intuitions are out of whack when they tell us that we need abstractions and frameworks for maintainability.
Nice to see this again. Such a clear breakdown of a complex topic, presented beautifully.
Tangentially related, the documentary The Watchmaker's Apprentice [0] is a captivating look at the dedication it takes to create a mechanical watch. It's amazing that it's possible for a single person to craft each tiny cog and spring from scratch and put it all together.
This blog is what got me into the fabulous hobby of watch repairing. Well, this blog and Marshall's awesome repair videos over at Wristwatch Revival: https://www.youtube.com/@WristwatchRevival
Watch repairing is a very rewarding hobby. It requires copious amounts of patience, but there's something fundamentally satisfying about disassembling something to its individual components, cleaning them and reassembling them meticulously. These things are designed to be taken apart, and it shows. I'm hard-pressed to think of other modern day objects that are meant to do this.
I can relate - i took repairing espresso machines as a hobby since the pandemic. The parts are not complex at all and even 60+ years old E61-machines can be serviced easily (apart from not so cool stuff like asbestos as boiler insulation, leaded solder for boiler + fittings and mercury pressure switches).
But even todays machines (depending on manufacturer and origin) are very serviceable. Especially italian made ones.
Great espresso machine! Very pretty and takes almost no space + heats up promptly. I had a pre millenium "professional" model until last year (not my daily driver though).
I had a Dalla Corte mini as main machine but couldnt resist a great offer and upgraded to Ascaso Baby T recently :)
What surprises me about the Italian coffee machines is you can buy many of the parts at a local hardware store. They look home made. The Chinese ones seem to be 100% custom parts, maybe to account for price at scale.
Lenovo vs. Apple notebooks. My ThinkPad T430u comes apart simply and you can remove subassemblies quite easily. I replaced the touchpad and battery on my daughters MacBook Pro and it was a nightmare.
A co-worker keeps a blog of his watch restorations. I have no interest in the hobby, but I do have an interest in viewing the work of someone that does. Of particular interest to me is that what he restores isn't high-end stuff, but common watches that might have one particular bit of history that makes them interesting. Radium dials, for example.
They’re not complex, just easily taken apart and meant to be repaired by humans. The software isn’t particularly complex either, the reason for their surge recently was due to patents expiring for additive manufacturing. https://futurism.com/expiring-patents-set-to-improve-3d-worl...
Yeah, I suppose the software to control the printer is the relatively straightforward bit, the complex part is the software that slices the model and converts it into an efficient set of G-code commands for the printer. (That and the software used to create 3D models to begin with...)
That isn’t complex either. There was no reason besides patents that 3D printing could have been a reality decades ago. Simple math is all you need and gcode isn’t just 3D printing it’s also for CNC, something that was able to be done around that time.
While 3d printers aren't necessarily complicated they are fun to watch. They are like an inside-out machine. Most machines are hidden in some sort of casing or under a hood. 3d printers are exposed, so you are able watch the gears spin, belts turn, and the print head extrude.
Everything about 3D printing seems to be basically free of any kind of nonsense. Simple, highly reliable hardware (Sometimes you get a clog or something but nothing really fails badly for a very long time), made of cheap commodity parts, with software constantly being pushed to the limit of what's possible.
So many other hobbies feel like they're just excuses to bikeshed or gear collect, or they rapidly become gear collecting hobbies, sometimes leading to some disappointment in yourself when you see the hoard you never use.
Plus, it's repeatable, so you don't have to build daily routines around something irreplaceable. Some people enjoy that, but it doesn't fit well in the high tech mindset where anything that isn't repeatable feels like a liability, especially if managing physical objects and keeping track of your stuff is already a major source of stress.
Files don't wear out either, so it's not like software, where you assume it will likely need maintenance at some point and could stop working in a system update at an inconvenient time.
It also doesn't need much space or expensive equipment, and doesn't take so long to learn that us modern screen addicts would probably just give up before making progress.
> If it wasn't for the computing power/software complexity required, hobbyist 3D printers could probably have been a thing in the 70s or 80s
That statement completely ignores enormous quantities of engineering that have occurred.
Stepper motors, for example, had huge amounts of engineering thrown at them by disk drive manufacturers in order to get them where we are now.
Resin printers needed high precision galvanometers to direct laser beams. The control of that would have been ridiculous in the 1980s.
Modern resin printers rely on high-resolution monochrome LCD displays. That requires cheap LCDs (only remotely viable after 1990+) as well as enormous quantities of embedded RAM (4K monochrome takes almost 1MiB of RAM which was half the total memory of Powerbook 100, for example).
And modern printers rely on high-power UV LED sources to create uniform flux. Blue+ wavelength LEDs we're a decades long research task.
Revolutionary technologies appear when a series of engineering barriers drop that allow a synthesis of ideas.
The printing press is a good example. Lots of people talk about how the Chinese and the Muslims had the printing press, but that wasn't enough. The printing press needed engineering in paper, inks, moveable type, eyeglasses, an alphabet, etc. before it could take off.
Watch repairing is a very rewarding hobby. It requires copious amounts of patience, but there's something fundamentally satisfying about disassembling something to its individual components, cleaning them and reassembling them meticulously. These things are designed to be taken apart, and it shows. I'm hard-pressed to think of other modern day objects that are meant to do this.
There are thousands of tiny parts inside each warhead,
so steady hands are key. That’s why technicians go
through a skills assessment that includes disassembling
and assembling a mechanical wristwatch.
I have a Kershaw Leek, which while it isn't particularly expensive, is easily on the "cost exceeds direct utility" side of things, is easy to take apart, and I can't imagine what I would regularly take it apart for.
Well if you carry it regularly, when you take it apart you will find there is lots of lint and other gunk on and around the detent ball, in and around the pivot and elsewhere. Upon cleaning and oiling it you will probably notice the action is a lot smoother. In rare cases if it gets really gunked up it can actually effect the locking mechanism of the knife presenting a potential safety hazard. Having your pocket knife close on you while breaking down a cardboard is no fun!
Kershaw leek is really a great knife.
Also keeping your pocket knife sharp is another example of it being directly maintainable and repairable. I often spend several hours a month sharpening my pocket knives though I probably have a few more than the average person.
Very relaxing. Until impossibly small $15 Incabloc springs start flying around the room. I'm convinced these sublimate into a vapor the moment they fly out of view of your loupe.
Not relaxing to me, like the YouTube videos. It is difficult and frustrating. It is very easy to wreck things like brass threads. Often lots of things are seized up on anything more than a few years old. Fun all the same.
I do, I have a fine whetstone. I agree, properly sharp/shaped screwdrivers make a huge difference. I think I need a better roller sharpening guide, and lots more stuff. :)
I wish there was a good beginner level entry point with a kit or something. But most of what I saw was "you need to build your own tools and then you can start" and that's too high a barrier for me.
Is there by chance a simulator of this on Steam if a good beginner hobby kit doesn't exist?
Bah, don't listen to 'em. Inexpensive set of jeweler's screwdrivers, and pair of precision tweezers, some sort of magnifying device, and a couple oils (use Liberty oil for the pivots, it's cheap but good enough to start). Cheap oiler tools off eBay or amazon. I have maybe $50 in tools.
Buy some cheap movements off eBay, and dive in. Yeah, you'll lose parts and break things but you'll learn a bunch.
I have a couple Westclox watches from the 60s that I bought for $10/each on eBay, and they both now run at +/- 2 seconds a day.
A set of small screwdrivers (at least one 0.8mm and one 1.2mm or so), pointy tweezers and a movement holder should be all you need to try the hobby out.
The screwdrivers and tweezers should be of good quality though, at least get the ones that cost 3-4$ each from China.
And you don't even need a mechanical watch. Cheap quartz watches also have tiny interesting parts in them that you can try to disassemble and reassemble.
Marshall’s channel is amazing. He is so humble and always curious about learning. It got me into watchmaking as well, primarily because his attitude of “If I can do it, so can you!”.
This is so true. I used to repair phones and other gadgets before starting with watch repair... and I was kinda scared to take apart something filigree like a watch because it surely would never go back togheter properly.
But no, everything goes back togheter fine without having to apply any kind of force. If it doesn't it's 99% my fault. E.g. even tiny screwholes are slightly tapered so the screws kinda fall in there automatically.
Watches are pretty amazing, a mechanical engineering marvel crammed into tiny compartment that can easily keep working for 100 years with minimal upkeep, very sturdy, looking great at almost any design era and helping with time. I never got the lure of 'smart' watches of these days, they all look like plastic toys for kids including most expensive ones, definitely when compared to good mechanical watches. Also in formal environment its one of few 'jewelry' items that are always allowed along with wedding ring, anything else may raise eyebrows and give negative points depending on location/company.
I've seen people's OCD around me or similar issues getting worse with arrival of smart watches and nearly constant interruptions from notifications. Yet those folks don't turn them off even if I mention visible degradation on their part, I guess then they would end up with charging-needy expensive-yet-soon-obsolete gadget without much else (sport monitoring is cool for some folks, again I simply don't get the desire for constant measurements and comparisons - for me it takes away most of the fun that sports should be in first place, I focus on being challenged at my current level, not chasing some meaningless numbers).
I guess if one is 'free' from such things the described effect is less bad, but why the heck would I ever wanted to be notified instantly on my hand when something happens? Peace of mind and clear focus are rare and precious things these days, and this destroys it for few seconds of dopamine kick.
I have a relatively inexpensive Seiko 5 mechanical watch that I really like, but as much as I love the idea of mechanical watches I simply don't have the patience to tend to it. Accuracy is a big problem (at least with my specific watch). Half of the time it's magnetized and running a few minutes fast per day, and the other half (shortly after de-magnetizing it) it's running a few minutes slow per day, meaning I needed to remember to adjust it every morning and always had to assume there's at least a minute or two margin of error one way or the other any time I read it--almost completely defeating my reason for wearing a watch in the first place.
For a while I wore a solar-powered Casio that self-adjusted every morning using the NIST atomic clock radio signals, and the peace of mind knowing that my watch was always accurate was such a pleasure in comparison. It was kind of cheap build quality and eventually fell apart, but I don't think I'll ever go back to a mechanical watch again after that.
Accuracy can vary a lot even within one price segment. My Seiko 5 was pretty inaccurate too, while my current watch cost 30 bucks more and has less than 3 seconds deviation per day. So I set the time once every 1-2 months and that's perfectly fine for me.
But it's definitely not the most practical tech.
> almost completely defeating my reason for wearing a watch in the first place.
Maybe it's just me but I don't need perfect accuracy on a wristwatch. If one minute more or less matters I'm already too late anyway.
I'm the same. I had several Seiko 5 watches in the past and even modded one of them with a hacking mechanism. I would monitor the accuracy every week with a timegrapher app on the phone and try to make small adjustments.
The convenience of having a modern Bluetooth-syncing cheap Xiaomi fitess watch is so great I don't believe I'll ever go back.
Half of the time it's magnetized and running a few minutes fast per day, and the other half (shortly after de-magnetizing it)
Wow, that's bad. Do you know what is magnetizing it? A cheap Seiko 5 should be able to keep time within a few seconds a day. Minutes a day means it is broken. It isn't a just tuning issue, there is something else going on.
Yes, it sounds a degaussing and calibration. My simple Seiko 5 with 7S36C is within +/- 4 seconds per day, and I never adjust it except short-month skipping.
Seiko 5s have clear back covers generally, and a water intrusion should be pretty visble, in my opinion.
Oil age maybe a factor, but maybe it’s dropped? I had a Swatch with an ETA movement (with shock absorption nonetheless), and I somehow managed to damage its balance wheel assembly by dropping to a soft carpet from ~80cm, because it started stopping when it was not in dial up position. They even opened it and recalibrated and oiled it, but it’s dead.
Put it one a timegrapher and check amplitude, beat rate & beat error in different watch positions (watch dial up, dial down, crown up, crown down etc.).
There are timegraphing apps on the iOS/Android app stores (using the microphone for detecting beat signals) for a very quick test. The watch's tick signal may be a bit on the weak side but i usually get some data in a reasonably silent environments with direkt contact of the watch to the phone's body.
I also got really into learning about watches and watching a watch repair stream on twitch (in 2020), and I even pulled out my great-grandfather's pocket watch from the 1890s and got it serviced/repaired (or at least running again for a while but now it won't run again; I suspect the person I took it to didn't do a great job).
When it came to buying a watch for myself I also ended up also getting a solar powered Casio with NIST synchronization ("Waveceptor"), the type with hands (for the looks). I love the idea that it's technology without software updates or battery changes (hmm, does the battery you charge with solar wear out?), and always keeps perfect time to the second without any effort on my part. This one (price seems a lot higher than before): https://www.casio.com/us/watches/casio/product.WVA-M640D-1A/
Somehow, watching all those meticulous adjustments to make sure the mechanical watches kept good time made me prioritize that to the point I didn't even get a mechanical watch.
Even though my mechanical watch wasn't as inaccurate as yours (mine was only a minute or two off a week), the act of regularly adjusting it to match the true time slowly changed my impression of it from a "serious timekeeping device", the image cultivated by marketing, into "this is a silly hobby for people who have too much time and money". Doubly so when you look how much it costs to repair a mechanical watch.
This single-use timekeeping device was literally the least accurate timekeeping device on my person, compared to my phone and computer.
It's also the only timekeeping device that will still work after three days away from an electric plug, and the only one you would wear all you life.
1 second/day is 10 PPM. Reaching that accuracy with only mechanical means in a device small and robust enough to be worn on the body is something to admire, not to fault for its limits.
Digital watches also exist, last years on a single cell and some have a solar cell to extend that. A cheap Casio F-91W is accurate to 1 sec/day and I imagine you’ll find others that can do better.
I replaced my mechanical watch with a G-Shock that lasts ten years without charging of any kind. Even my current Garmin will last a week when charged - it will last even longer if I turn off every single feature.
I use the Garmin to track my exercise - I don't care if the mechanical watch will last all my life if it doesn't do what I want it to do, and it's not even that great at the one thing that it does do.
There aren't a lot of normally-priced mechanical watches that get 1 second/day accuracy. That precision can be admired in mechanical watches, but as I said, it becomes a fun expensive hobby.
People (including myself) often wear mechanical watches because they really enjoy the engineering/history/whatever of mechanical movements. To me, I enjoy getting to wind my watch/set the date and time/have a reason to interact with it. I enjoy that it's a conversation starter for some people (hey, nice watch!) and for others it's an opportunity to talk about something I enjoy. It's also nice that it's aesthetically very pleasing compared to a random seiko or electric watch.
Well, when the collapse happens and you have no batteries, satellites, etc., you can use the stars[1] to tell time and reset your mechanical watch to within a reasonable estimate given the circumstances. I own a relatively cheap mechancal watch I adjust every week. I bought a Garmin vs. an Apple/Samsung watch too. My Garmin battery lasts about 20 to 24 days depending on how I use the watch vs. 24 to 48 hours. It does more than I need, but has come in handy in my line of work.
I own a cheap seiko 5 as well. It's basically so close to perfect you need a specialized device that measures its error to a ridiculous degree to figure out its running slightly fast. It's like average 3 point something seconds a day.
There’s no doubt that smart watches offer way more functionality than a mechanical watch which is appealing to most consumers. However, what you’re buying with mechanical watches is more a form of art these days, and, for certain watches (eg Rolex) a status symbol. As someone who has always been drawn to watches (of all kinds), I really enjoyed this article. I even took off my watch (Omega Planet Ocean) and peered through the exhibition case back to take a look at the balance wheel and double barrels. Thanks for sharing!
There are semi-electric versions of mechanical watches based on "tuning fork" movements. They are cheap and accurate, and are a stepping stone between mechanical and quartz from the 60s/70s
to make it practical on a tuning fork, that movement of the forks would need to correspond to the tooth size of the wheel. For a large tuning fork, its probably in the order of mm, so not beyond home shop manufacture
A ratchet and pawl limits the backlash to the distance between the teeth on the ratchet gear; think of it this way; if it were to turn less than the radial distance between the teeth on the ratchet gear, backlash could still happen; similarly in regular operation, it turns the ratchet gear slightly more than that distance, and there is backlash until the pawl engages.
I have an Oris Aquis Date that I purchased for myself a few months ago, I love looking at the flywheel movement and hearing the tick when I put it up to my ear.
This reminds me of Dave Sobel's book Longitude, which tells a fascinating story on how John Harrison created the first reliable marine clock. Such stories humble me and make me deeply appreciate the ingenuity of mankind to conquer the seemingly impossible challenges to build the civilization we enjoy today.
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I always wondered what all those bits and bobs inside as mechanical watch are.
Rolex these days is a joke, even the authorized dealers will rip you off shamelessly. They will either refuse to sell you a watch they have in store, or they will force you to buy 30 grand in extra jewelry just to get the Rolex you want.
I've since switched to a smart watch, but I keep getting tempted to go back. I generally use my smart watch as a very gentle alarm, and for fitness tracking. I just don't want to be the geek who wears two watches. Maybe I should only wear it at night?
> night-only mechanical watch
I said that I was thinking of only wearing a smartwatch at night, because I really like the gentle alarm in the morning.
What I didn't say was that I use a smartwatch for tracking my sleep patterns.
Speaking of Swatch and mechanical watches: the Sistem51 is an interesting watch, since it's the only mechanical watch ever fabricated in a 100% automated production line. The parts are welded together and held by a single screw. https://www.swatch.com/en-us/sistem-51.html
I have been reluctantly wearing a Samsung Withings watch that looks mechanical but is actually smart, but a mediocre compromise (you need to wear it higher up the wrist than I usually do, and I don't believe it gives accurate heart rate and activity measurements). 30 day battery life is pretty cool though.
I may just start going back to my Vostok and Seiko watches full time at this point. (I don't like spending a lot of money on watches, anyone who is curious on getting into them should check out both brands as economical starters - the Vostok Amphibia has a storied history!)
A smartwatch is about data, primarily.
You can have both. Use the mechanical watch for occasions that require a formal attire and use the smartwatch as your daily driver and sport companion.
I think mechanical watches are much more about being jewellery than function, even though it's impressive engineering. But I'm not a very flashy guy (I don't even own any shirts that fit anymore, just T-shirts lol) so I don't really care.
But it's good to see everyone can get what they like. I'm personally really happy with how far smartwatches have come.
- Shows the time (and possibly date)
- Vibrates when I get a call (or maybe other notifications)
Other than that I'd like it to be small and have a long battery life. Is there anything like this?
I currently use a Garmin smartband, but there are so many features I don't use.
For what it's worth, the amazfit and Xiaomi products also have very great battery life (around 2 weeks) and some are very light. With the gadgetbridge or notify for Android apps they're really privacy conscious too.
It may not literally watch every breath you take while you sleep, but I haven't wanted that personally anyways.
Only real drawbacks are battery life is only OK (about a week or so depending), the IPS screen can be bright in the dark (though it's a nice flashlight) and it only has 1 meter of water resistance, though it seems well sealed enough to trust it if I fall into water momentarily. (And really, swimming/showering with watches is kind of niche anyways)
Consumers bought into Apple's shiny power hungry oled Apple Watch and yet they still complain about battery life to this day. Do you really need slick animations on your watch? Consumers will still buy what is shiny and cool looking over what actually works.
And don't even get me started on WearOS, Google's sorry excuse is such a disappointment, I swear I'd have to actually try if I wanted make as many bad UX & performance sucking decisions as they did.
I had an Apple Watch, but sold it, as I felt guilty not wearing it more, with all that it can do. I ended up getting the cheapest Polar watch option, that does everything on-device (I don't have an account or anything), and can wear that to the gym if I just want to check out my heart rate.
There's something beautiful to me about a mechanical watch being tied to my personal relativity. Compared to an NTP synchronized smart watch, nothing should update the time on my watch but me. The actual usefulness of this feature is merely philosophical but it makes me happy to consider.
The only thing I miss is weather at a glance on my Pebble. I used a watch face with the temperature on it and to this day I still look at my wrist when I'm thinking about the temperature lol
I'm not a collector when it comes to watches, and I can happily wear that Longines until the end of time, and will be happy.
Having a tactile watch with real hardware with no electricity inside brings me more joy than some capable electronic toy which needs constant tending and replacement.
If I was climbing mountains, maybe but mere outdoor activities I have a ProTrek. More than enough.
Any smartwatch will become unusable, polluting garbage a few years (months?) from now: a canonical example of planned obsolescence. Their self-tracking functions are a double-edged sword, a source of stress as much as relief.
Any well-built and well-maintained mechanical watch will last you decades. No dependencies on electricity and network connectivity, it's a self-contained and entirely autonomous piece of human engineering. Mine was built in 1975 and is one year older than me. In a world where everything fades away so fast, wearing it everyday feels like owning a precious relic.
Easy choice if you ask me.
This already veers straight back into the marketing territory that everyone in this thread remarks was an eye opener when they actually got a mechanical watch.
I have a mild prepper tendency and I had to eventually kill my romantic views of mechanicals when I realized it just time drift and wouldn't last long without regular maintenance from someone with the tools and knowledge/skill, not to mention someone in this very comment section mentions a mechanical watch suffering a death from drop onto carpeted floor.
Mechanical watches are cool, but I easily spend less time without my PineTime (which I'm surprised nobody else in these comments has even mentioned) working than my friend spends manually syncing his seiko back to time/maintaining it.
I sometimes call it my "soviet in a good way" watch, it ended up becoming my "function over fashion" watch, which means almost all day every day wear for a few years now.
pros:
decent battery life (1-2 weeks, i turn off bluetooth and gps on my phone overnights which helps both devices)
"good enough" design (durable enough for all but swimming/showering)
easily replaced or modified (even takes standard watch bands)
flashlight, notifications and all traditional digital watch functions
multiple community "OS" options
cons:
community development can be slow, buggy
water droplets particularly from natural rain can trigger the touchscreen, not amazing if you bike in seattle or something
anemic hardware
The charger is cheap and isn't that quick but again, the pinetime kind of excels in knowing the difference between good and good enough, as I once heard an engineer say (about something else), and I rarely find myself bothered by it's lack of luxuries.
What do you think is the PineTime's biggest strength when compared with a mainstream smartwatch?
Have you found the watch to be hackable? Is there any sort of customization that you've done to it?
Frankly, I think the combination of price/replaceability and privacy are the only things unique (besides niche FOSS modding) to it among smart watches; and I like the open aspect of essentially every detail.
It makes it the only smart watch I've used that feels like it respects my dignity, frankly. A minor philosophical quibble but one I take stoic pleasure in. It is a tool, and technology that serves me, not another.
> Have you found the watch to be hackable? Is there any sort of customization that you've done to it?
I actually got it hoping I'd have the inclination to tinker with it, but my only idea that wasn't already being worked on by the default "OS" is a red flashlight mode, which with the IPS screen is a moot point anyways, since the black pixels when turned on make for a low-light flashlight anyways, heh. A hardware drawback that ironically makes it a more accessible tool in my experience.
My watch takes 15 seconds to rewind each day, and 5 seconds to be time adjusted by one minute twice a week. Service is every 5 years, the last one cost me 88 €. It gets more valuable each year, and I plan to bequeath it to my son in a (hopefully) very distant future.
To each his own, I guess.
Admittedly, all the mechanical watch issues I've read tend to be pertaining to the automatic variety.
Admittedly, it is a rather pricey model (Omega Speedmaster). I bought it second hand for 1500 € a few years ago. Unfortunately, prices have since skyrocketed for many emblematic watches like this one.
What tool/library would you pick to create similar ones yourself?
Looking at the source [1], the author seems to hand-craft them using the canvas API, but man, that seems really difficult!
[1] https://ciechanow.ski/js/watch.js
There are 3d engines in JavaScript like three.js (https://threejs.org/) that can abstract some of the 3d rendering work for you.
[1] https://www.redblobgames.com/making-of/circle-drawing/
Tangentially related, the documentary The Watchmaker's Apprentice [0] is a captivating look at the dedication it takes to create a mechanical watch. It's amazing that it's possible for a single person to craft each tiny cog and spring from scratch and put it all together.
[0] http://www.thewatchmakersapprentice.com/
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Watch repairing is a very rewarding hobby. It requires copious amounts of patience, but there's something fundamentally satisfying about disassembling something to its individual components, cleaning them and reassembling them meticulously. These things are designed to be taken apart, and it shows. I'm hard-pressed to think of other modern day objects that are meant to do this.
A mechanical film camera (say, a Leica) is similar. They are also meant to be opened, cleaned up, lubed, etc...
But even todays machines (depending on manufacturer and origin) are very serviceable. Especially italian made ones.
I had a Dalla Corte mini as main machine but couldnt resist a great offer and upgraded to Ascaso Baby T recently :)
It's a great machine (got it refurbed and it's lasted nearly a decade already), but not at all easy to take apart. It's a lot of electronics though.
I take it the manual ones are easier to service?
https://www.westcoasttime.net
If it wasn't for the computing power/software complexity required, hobbyist 3D printers could probably have been a thing in the 70s or 80s
So many other hobbies feel like they're just excuses to bikeshed or gear collect, or they rapidly become gear collecting hobbies, sometimes leading to some disappointment in yourself when you see the hoard you never use.
Plus, it's repeatable, so you don't have to build daily routines around something irreplaceable. Some people enjoy that, but it doesn't fit well in the high tech mindset where anything that isn't repeatable feels like a liability, especially if managing physical objects and keeping track of your stuff is already a major source of stress.
Files don't wear out either, so it's not like software, where you assume it will likely need maintenance at some point and could stop working in a system update at an inconvenient time.
It also doesn't need much space or expensive equipment, and doesn't take so long to learn that us modern screen addicts would probably just give up before making progress.
That statement completely ignores enormous quantities of engineering that have occurred.
Stepper motors, for example, had huge amounts of engineering thrown at them by disk drive manufacturers in order to get them where we are now.
Resin printers needed high precision galvanometers to direct laser beams. The control of that would have been ridiculous in the 1980s.
Modern resin printers rely on high-resolution monochrome LCD displays. That requires cheap LCDs (only remotely viable after 1990+) as well as enormous quantities of embedded RAM (4K monochrome takes almost 1MiB of RAM which was half the total memory of Powerbook 100, for example).
And modern printers rely on high-power UV LED sources to create uniform flux. Blue+ wavelength LEDs we're a decades long research task.
Revolutionary technologies appear when a series of engineering barriers drop that allow a synthesis of ideas.
The printing press is a good example. Lots of people talk about how the Chinese and the Muslims had the printing press, but that wasn't enough. The printing press needed engineering in paper, inks, moveable type, eyeglasses, an alphabet, etc. before it could take off.
'1337 watch-repairing skillz qualify you to work on nukes: https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-warheads-military-bomb-pl...
Kershaw leek is really a great knife.
Also keeping your pocket knife sharp is another example of it being directly maintainable and repairable. I often spend several hours a month sharpening my pocket knives though I probably have a few more than the average person.
Is there by chance a simulator of this on Steam if a good beginner hobby kit doesn't exist?
Buy some cheap movements off eBay, and dive in. Yeah, you'll lose parts and break things but you'll learn a bunch.
I have a couple Westclox watches from the 60s that I bought for $10/each on eBay, and they both now run at +/- 2 seconds a day.
The screwdrivers and tweezers should be of good quality though, at least get the ones that cost 3-4$ each from China.
And you don't even need a mechanical watch. Cheap quartz watches also have tiny interesting parts in them that you can try to disassemble and reassemble.
I know, not exactly the same as repairing fine watches, but I think it might be similar.
This is so true. I used to repair phones and other gadgets before starting with watch repair... and I was kinda scared to take apart something filigree like a watch because it surely would never go back togheter properly.
But no, everything goes back togheter fine without having to apply any kind of force. If it doesn't it's 99% my fault. E.g. even tiny screwholes are slightly tapered so the screws kinda fall in there automatically.
I've seen people's OCD around me or similar issues getting worse with arrival of smart watches and nearly constant interruptions from notifications. Yet those folks don't turn them off even if I mention visible degradation on their part, I guess then they would end up with charging-needy expensive-yet-soon-obsolete gadget without much else (sport monitoring is cool for some folks, again I simply don't get the desire for constant measurements and comparisons - for me it takes away most of the fun that sports should be in first place, I focus on being challenged at my current level, not chasing some meaningless numbers).
I guess if one is 'free' from such things the described effect is less bad, but why the heck would I ever wanted to be notified instantly on my hand when something happens? Peace of mind and clear focus are rare and precious things these days, and this destroys it for few seconds of dopamine kick.
Wealthy: Patek Philippe
True wealth: "I DGAF what time it is or what looks good with this jacket"
For a while I wore a solar-powered Casio that self-adjusted every morning using the NIST atomic clock radio signals, and the peace of mind knowing that my watch was always accurate was such a pleasure in comparison. It was kind of cheap build quality and eventually fell apart, but I don't think I'll ever go back to a mechanical watch again after that.
> almost completely defeating my reason for wearing a watch in the first place.
Maybe it's just me but I don't need perfect accuracy on a wristwatch. If one minute more or less matters I'm already too late anyway.
The convenience of having a modern Bluetooth-syncing cheap Xiaomi fitess watch is so great I don't believe I'll ever go back.
Wow, that's bad. Do you know what is magnetizing it? A cheap Seiko 5 should be able to keep time within a few seconds a day. Minutes a day means it is broken. It isn't a just tuning issue, there is something else going on.
Oil age maybe a factor, but maybe it’s dropped? I had a Swatch with an ETA movement (with shock absorption nonetheless), and I somehow managed to damage its balance wheel assembly by dropping to a soft carpet from ~80cm, because it started stopping when it was not in dial up position. They even opened it and recalibrated and oiled it, but it’s dead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_timing_machine
When it came to buying a watch for myself I also ended up also getting a solar powered Casio with NIST synchronization ("Waveceptor"), the type with hands (for the looks). I love the idea that it's technology without software updates or battery changes (hmm, does the battery you charge with solar wear out?), and always keeps perfect time to the second without any effort on my part. This one (price seems a lot higher than before): https://www.casio.com/us/watches/casio/product.WVA-M640D-1A/
Somehow, watching all those meticulous adjustments to make sure the mechanical watches kept good time made me prioritize that to the point I didn't even get a mechanical watch.
This single-use timekeeping device was literally the least accurate timekeeping device on my person, compared to my phone and computer.
1 second/day is 10 PPM. Reaching that accuracy with only mechanical means in a device small and robust enough to be worn on the body is something to admire, not to fault for its limits.
I use the Garmin to track my exercise - I don't care if the mechanical watch will last all my life if it doesn't do what I want it to do, and it's not even that great at the one thing that it does do.
There aren't a lot of normally-priced mechanical watches that get 1 second/day accuracy. That precision can be admired in mechanical watches, but as I said, it becomes a fun expensive hobby.
Quartz watches go years on a small battery, and keep better time.
Sure, it's admirable engineering, it's just most obsolete. And that's ok!
The role of watches as jewellery has kept mechanicals going far more than practicality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_clock
Lasting years on a battery is easy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Drive
Advertised at +-15 seconds a month, but in reality it's much better than that.
I get your point, but I can easily get >2 weeks out of my Garmin Fenix or over a month if I put it in battery saving mode.
[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/tell-time-by-stars.htm...
There's something wrong with your watch.
I don't have the skills or machinery to make a wristwatch sized version, but I did make a _big_ sized version: https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/projects/electromechanical-c...
I think for a large tuning fork, you _could_ use normal watch gears. However I don't have the skill to try that, yet.
scaling it up you'd get something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u48n-jvo5N0
to make it practical on a tuning fork, that movement of the forks would need to correspond to the tooth size of the wheel. For a large tuning fork, its probably in the order of mm, so not beyond home shop manufacture