zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

: I have a chronometer - not even two months old
: - and every week I lose about 1 to 2
: minutes. Is that normal?

A little excessive, but then you may not be operating it correctly.

: I thought this watch doesn't need winding.
: I'm confused.

Only battery operated watches don't need winding--all mechanical watches do.

That statement leads me to believe that since you don't understand how automatic watches work, you might not be using it correctly.

All mechanical watches NEED winding. It is just that automatics have a way to do it for themselves by capturing your body movement as momentum using a small moving rotor inside. But this only works well if you wear the watch and are active enough--usually wearing it for at least 14 active hours a day.

If less than that, you may need to occasionally hand wind it to keep it from running low or completely out of power at night when you are sleeping. Obviously, a symptom of a watch that is running down is that it will lose a lot of minutes.

Try winding the watch by hand fully (about 30-40 turns) each morning for the next four days. I fthe problem goes away, then that was all that was wrong.