zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

: The analogy that was used was that you don't
: keep your car running when you aren't using it.

The problem with some analogies is they distract from the flaws in thinking inherent in the initial discussion.

Cars are *not* designed to run continuously for decades. Watches are.

Further, the logic of a watch having a finite number of ticks before it fails is baloney. The weak but reasonable sounding logic here is that if a watch will run for 87,660 hours (10 years) before failing, running it only half the time will make it last 20 years.

This logic fails because it assumes that parts wearing down from use would be the dominant cause of failure. Thinking that simply the total number of hours (or ticks) the movement has run--especially in a static environment like a drawer--is the most significant cause of wear is incorrect.

In the real world, other forces including shock, corrosion, entry of microfine foreign particles through the seals, temperature changes, and your unique patterns of wear are *much* greater influences on when the movement will fail. Almost all of these occur only when the watch is worn and out in a changing environment. So whether the watch is running or stopped when off your wrist, in a drawer, in a controlled static environment is not going to appreciably change these more dominant forces of wear.

So the answer to your question is that whether or not you keep the watch running when not in use is unlikely to make any significant difference in how soon the watch would ever fail.