Guide to Buying Watches
Planning to buy a new watch? Whether you are buying a fashion watch for this season, or infinitely valuable timepiece, there are a few details that you must consider when buying a watch! Those details are mostly hidden in the production and technical aspects of every watch and majority of the buyers are not familiar with them.
Waterproof
Waterproof watches will resist rain or hand dishwashing, but if you plan to jump from the highest rock on the coast or dive into the deep-sea, check if your watch is water-resistant up to at least two hundred feet.
Repairs
Ensure that sellers from whom you intend to buy a watch can do a repair in their own shop. If they have to send the watch in for repair, it can happen that for ordinary maintenance and petty repairs you’ll have to wait more than a month.
Strap or bracelet
Leather belts are usually very comfortable to wear, but you should have in mind that even the best will wear out after few years, and the cost of a new belt can rise to over thousand dollars. To have a longer lasting leather strap, ask when buying a clock, safety buckle (which partly covers the skin and clicks when closing) instead of plain one with holes.
On the other hand watches with metal bracelets should last a lifetime. However bracelet downside is that clocks with bracelets tend to fall off more often than those with leather straps.
Warranty
Once you buy the clock, do not forget to fill the warranty card and verify it. Basic warranty usually covers several years of maintenance and repairs, but you can pay extra warranty that allows additional years or even a lifetime warranty.
Allergies
Most of the watches are made of stainless steel, but if you are sensitive to nickel (also present in some stainless alloys) or you simply want a glittering version, opt for the 18-carat gold.
Dictionary for beginners
Pop-hour
This pop-hour disk is usually located under the dial that leaps forward to each hour. Complication was popularized by Daniel Roth, but it was originally derived from a watch dial.
Silicon
When the topic is watchmaking, word silicon is the right new gold. This material is nonmagnetic, stable in a broad temperature range, strong and flexible. Perfect for the prototypes, but shows some problems in industrialization. His only real rival is carbon, so the future belongs to one of these materials.
Chassis springs
As the need to wind up the watch was decreasing, meaning the watch had to work longer without winding up, the chassis springs were designed so that it enables a minimum of three days without winding up. Lange’s model Lange 31, which as its name suggests, can run without winding up for thirty-one days, and after that you need a key for winding.
Locking System
The heart of a watch is the timer, unquestionably Swiss invention that has lasted for centuries, despite imperfections in its work. New ideas have penetrated the dam, when the Omega accepted Daniels coaxial locking system. Usage of silicon and other similar techniques opened the way to a truly radical ideas like Perregaux Constant escapement.
What makes them tick?
Quartz battery
This is the most popular and safest source of power for watches. They should be replaced every few years.
Automatic winders
Movement of the hand of the owner ensures the energy that runs the watch automatically. You have to wear them constantly or they will stop working. However in recent times increasingly popular are winding boxes, in which put your automatic watch, and they simulate the movements of the joint and keep the watch in constant operation.
Mechanics
Winding crown allows operation of the watch and its springs. This old-fashioned technology is not perfectly accurate as watches with quartz batteries, but this does not worry many lovers of mechanical watches.
Solar Energy
Lithium battery transforms light into energy and never needs replacement. As a technology, has already been present for forty years, but still has not found a wider application.