This blog post may be controversial, but it is from my humble opinion from my experience as a watchmaker for the past 44 years and after repairing about 30,000 watches.
If someone can give me a valid scientific explanation of why I am wrong, I would be glad to hear it.
I was asked a question recently about the idea that if you lay your Rolex on a counter, stem facing down, it will make the watch run faster or slower.
No, this is not true.
When we repair any watch, we time it normally in four positions — dial up, dial down , stem up and stem down. The two most important are dial up and stem down.
Those are the positions that your watch is in most of the time.
(Think about it, how often is your watch dial down or stem up?)
So when we regulate a watch, we do our best to get all four positions running as close to the same as possible.
There really is no a way to make stem down run faster than dial up without doing a lot of manipulation to the hairspring.
I have read this idea of placing your watch stem down at night in order to slow it down or speed it up, but have never heard an explanation as to why this would work.
In order to actually change how the watch runs, you would need to know from the watchmaker exactly how each position was running on the timing machine, then adjust how you lay it down at night to change how it is running.
There can be a difference in how a watch runs in the dial and stem positions depending on the condition of the balance and hairspring, but you can’t just assume that dial down is faster or slower on every watch.
Hope that logical explanation answers your question.
The internet forums and chat rooms are full of “wannabe” watchmakers that have a great many opinions on watches and none of the knowledge or experience to back them up.
So my opinion about the internet is, don’t believe everything that you read!! When in doubt, ask someone that actually does this work for a living not as a hobby.
As Forrest Gump would say, “That is all that I have to say about that”!
Mark Sirianni Watch Repair
25 Fraley Street
Kane, Pa. 16735
814-837-9435
814-558-4818 (cell)
watchdoctorpa@gmail.com
Charley Picture of the Week: If I look cute, maybe they will feed me!
30 Comments
Marc Jurek
Great info. Mark. I was just reading an article from a person on Quora last night. He was saying something to that effect that depending on how you lay your watch down, one can regulate the speed one way or another. I’m glad I heard it from a knowledgeable person who works with the tools everyday and knows what he’s doing. The www. seems to have more and more of those wannabe’s type people every time I logon. Thanks again!
Michael Lowe
It is true, nonetheless and as Mark pointed out, that a mechanical watch runs at slightly different speeds in different positions. What he is saying is that is not necessarily predictable one way or the other between watches. It is something to be aware of. Maybe spend a month putting it to bed in one position; then the other way for a similar period of time to see how it effects YOUR watch…
Melvyn Schuman
Most informative
Len (UK)
Thanks for this insight into watch timing, it’s a very interesting point.
I assume that this procedure is carried out with a fully wound watch, yes?
George Adam
I was friends with a jeweler in San Francisco who worked on railroad watches and he loaned me a book on watch timing and the final touch up was to “needle” the hairs spring. Did you ever hear of that?
Link
I always thought you put it stem down on a table to minimize the contact the polished surfaces have with anything.
Tony Wade
The Master Craftsman with nearly a half-century of experience never fails to fill
his blog with interesting insight. Thank you, Mark.
Jack Dee
Generally speaking, dial up the balance wheel is resting on the ends of the pivots (mainly the end of the lower pivot) and stem down it is resting on the sides of both pivots and has more friction and runs slower. You yourself say that stem down is usually slower than dial up and this is the reason.
So the advice of stem down to slow the watch a bit and dial up to speed it up often works. If this is important to you, you can play with all 4 positions and see what works best on any particular watch – the main point is that, since the timekeeping is not identical in all positions you can use this to your advantage to keep the watch closer to accurate. This costs you nothing.
Don
This “Idea” was taught to Railroaders who carried RR pocket watches. If they knew which position gained and lost they could keep their watch very closely timed during the 2 week period between inspections.
Jorge M Lopez Fernandez
I find your postings very interesting and Forrest Gump touch a very resourceful one. But the explanation to your query is explainable in very simple terms in the language of physics. The metal parts of a watch mechanism are not uniform and each one has a center of mass that when assembled does not yield, not even by far, a predictable center of mass. So by placing the watch in various positions (unknown) produce undesirable, advance or retardation on the measure of time. And the regulation of a watch does not solve this, because the initial idea of regulation was to add minute counterweights to the mechanism in the same manner so as to “place the resulting center of mass” at a convenient place, but, alas, this convenient place might be different for different people. When you balance the wheels of your car you solve the problem of getting the center of mass balanced with respect to the geometrical centers of the wheels and these will avoid vibrations. Tourbillons were invented for this purpose and some Chinese watches keep very accurate times and they have, I have seen two tourbillons. Finally, regulating the watch in one position deregulates it in another that is the nature of the process. I mean, the center of mass stays in the same place and off-centered anyway, at least at an unpredictable place in the configuration of the mechanism. There is a lovely book about the invention of the clock “Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time” that explains how regulation is a very important process to get a watch accurately giving time in all positions. The inventor John Harrison compensated the first clock that will give the time in a conveniently chosen place in the world (Greenwich for the British, Cádiz for the Spaniards that I know of). But, I stress, regulation means “relocation” of the center of mass and that is never done. For John Harrison, this is what was meant for regulation. Regulation is a very personal thing because we all have different habits about the way we place our hands during normal posture and that is the position that should be used to regulate watches.
Lewie Webb
Great explanation, Mark. And the best picture of Charley yet!
Lewie Webb
Great explanation, Mark. And, the best picture of Charley yet!
James Munro
I think that you have answered your own question.
That fact that you say there is a difference of 3 seconds between dial up and dial down ( not in my experience of 60 years) tells you that you will get a slight variation in different positions.
Not very scientific I agree but I don’t see how you can argue about that.
chris wadd
Very Interesting i knew nothing of this how fascinating ,the only thing is your expertise in watch making.
How could you Charly be denied. thankyou again for the article and stay safe.
Chris [ uk]
Johnny
Great info as usual Mark.
Robert Hollingsworth
What about wearing a Rolex while playing golf? Ok or no?
Bill
Rolex says if your arm can take it, your Roley can take it. (But I take mine off while playing for my personal comfort)
Todd
I’ve read that you shouldn’t wear your mechanical watch while mowing lawn or other vibrations, abrupt shock, etc. Makes sense to me.
Timothy Mashburn
The balance wheel is a simple harmonic oscillator and the things that affect its period/frequency are rotational inertia, spring stiffness, friction and to a smaller degree gravity/acceleration and gyroscopic precession forces when in translating/rotating motion. Predicting the microscopic effect of position/orientation on all of that is gonna be pretty tough. I’ll take the Watch Dr’s word on it. He has the empirical data.
Robert Brown
I would guess that everyone with a Rolex has heard that myth. I’ve gone so far as to practice it just long enough to note that any variations I ‘thought’ I detected were so insignificantly minute I was not only wasting my time, but more convenient not to take it off and yield to diurnal randomness to make corrections. Now, I know for sure I was powerless, but that was many years ago.
Robert Brown
I would guess that everyone with a Rolex has heard that myth. I’ve gone so far as to practice it just long enough to note that any variations I ‘thought’ I detected were so insignificantly minute I was not only wasting my time. It was more convenient not to take it off and yield to diurnal randomness to make corrections. Now, I know for sure I was powerless, but that was many years ago.
Rick Campana
Mark, I always love when a subject matter expert like yourself teaches what is by dispelling “the myths” of what is not! The irony for me personally is how interesting I found this topic to be yet how unimportant that 3 second differential are “practically speaking” in my day to day life. To put it simply: would it be worth my time at 71 years of age to spend the time to find out what position my watch is most accurate. All of this reminds me of a funny quote an experienced jeweler (who was wearing a Rolex) once said to me, “If you want an accurate watch, buy a Casio!”
Joel Bergmann
Yessir! Most amusing! Considering the differences between electronic crystal accuracy, and horologic quality/accuracy.
Miami Mike
Guy I know has an Invicta (sorry, I need to bleach my keyboard now), claims they have to go back to Switzerland for service (to the best of my limited geographical knowledge, Hallandale Florida isn’t part of Switzerland) and the machine that MUST be used to pressure test the cases costs $100,000+. They should be shopping for that on eBay, they’ll get $99,600 in change.
Flea market guy (obviously a world class watch expert) once sagely informed me that Rolexes have a secret system which will make the watch stop working if anyone other than an authorized Rolex service center attempts to work on them. Wonder why Mark S. has never encountered this?
There was a huge, long, involved, heated and acrimonious squabble on the Accutron website about how the tuning forks would work harden from vibrating all these years and that would change the frequency, hence the accuracy of the watch. It got really deep into the weeds of exotic and speculative metallurgy but fortunately, my 1975 214 Accutron Spaceview doesn’t read stuff on the internet and is therefore, to date, completely unaffected.
Every so often, one finds a grain of truth on the net, this site is one of them. Most of the rest is either outright lies, arrogant ignorance or trolls. We haven’t even mentioned political content . . .
Brad
Hi Mark thank you for the info, I truly never thought about it, but I guess gravity has something to do with it. Good thing to know and I’m glad you brought it to our attention. Thank you for your many years of service. I have had my Rolex for 35 years now and you have kept it going all those years. Now the kids are fighting over who is getting the watch when I die. They show me pictures over the years and say your wearing the same watch so there you go a watch for a lifetime. Thank you
Patrick Bissell
Charley needs attention and treats.
Thanks for information. I’m a lefty so my submariner is usually stem up. Never have had any issues of faster/slower. I also have a couple of railroad regulated pocket watches and I believe they are times in 5 positions. All rub well when properly maintained.
Justin
That’s a myth I’ve not heard before!
Hope Charley got something to eat. He certainly looks cute!
GREG KEEFER
Fascinating article and lesson Mark. Thanks very much for posting.
glad to see Charley’s looking good.
Joyce
I believe all you say regarding watches……what I really want to comment on, is, …… that Charlie is a MAJOR adorbs munchkin pup! ????!
Robert W Swartz
Never heard these myths before, I always learn new stuff here. Thanks Mark.