Hi and welcome to a new video. In this video we will deal with the question if obsessive overwinding damages your watch, if that is true for a handwinding watch or for an automatic watch. And we will look at the following questions. Does overwinding damage a handwound movement? Does handwinding or overwinding damage an automatic movement? And what are things that you should not do with your watch in terms of winding and how to wind your watch the correct way? First of all, for a handwound movement the question does overwinding damage your watch? Absolutely yes. And this is in fact the most common damage that is inflicted by the owners of a handwinding watch themselves. And it happens, especially in old watches and in pocket watches that have stopped you to not having a service for a long time. And typically in those watches you can make them run again a little bit when you have them fully wound up and try to put extra pressure, extra power into the movement through the crown. And in those cases, especially in old watches and in pocket watches, the main springs are prone to breaking. For people who are not familiar with watches at all, this is a very, very common thing to occur that they actually make the spring snap. If you have a handwinding watch and you don't know much about that yet, you have to approach the end of winding it with ease to not overstress the main spring. In handwound watches, the end of the main spring is usually fixed to the barrel and therefore they will break if they are overwhelmed. Some are fitted with a slip spring to prevent this, but handwound movements and therefore handwound watches are also more prone to damage and wear in general because of the handwinding. Opening and closing the crown opens the watch up to humidity, which will cause rust. It will open them up to dust, which will shorten the surface intervals. So a definite answer for handwinding watches and movements, yes, overwinding, pretty significantly damages the movement. And it's basically a very expensive thing to repair because you have to strip down the entire movement to get to the main spring and to replace it. And therefore, each and every time you break a main spring, you basically have to do a full service. And depending on the watch, that can be very, very expensive. So the second question is, does handwinding or overwinding damages an automatic watch are an automatic movement? And what is different with automatic movements, simply because of the nature of their automatic replenishment of power is the fact that they have basically an overwinding protection. This is usually realized in the form of a slipping main spring within the barrel and this prevents the main spring of overwinding and therefore overstress and breaking within the barrel. So if the automatic module and the movement has basically wound the main spring to the fullest, it keeps slipping basically like a clutch and it's not adding any more power into the movement. There are also generally two ways how the coupling in a automatic watch is done between the automatic group winding the main barrel and the handwinding winding in the main barrel where the automatic group would move along when you wind the watch by hand and you often pretty much feel that. That if you hand wind your automatic watch, that you're moving more wheels within the movement than just winding the barrel, you kind of feel that you're also moving the entire automatic train along with winding the main barrel. And this obviously puts pressure into the automatic works from the other side, not from the rotor side to the main barrel, but through the main barrel to the rotor. This definitely increases where on all of these parts. So if you regularly just for fun, wind your automatic movement without necessity, you put extra strain and extra wear into the automatic group of the movement and therefore you will have to service your watch probably earlier than you would have to otherwise. And therefore a handwinding can damage your automatic watch. So if you have an automatic watch, I would not recommend you to wind it by hand just for fun. If you really just do this every day for fun because you think you have to or you just want to, this is something that will increase the wear on the movement and especially on the automatic part of the movement pretty significantly. My recommendation would be to just put a couple of winds into the watch just to make it start and then set the time. So here are a couple things, things that you should not do with your watch in terms of winding. And first of all, you should never wind your watch automatic or hand wound when it is on your wrist. Take it off the wrist and the simple reason is that you are very prone to put power and stress onto the crown stem from an angle where it could snap. There's also a chance that if you're sweating, there's moisture, salty moisture getting into the crown tube and onto the stem and therefore humidity could pretty much over time either way at your crown stem. And also typically if you're wind your watch when it's on your wrist and you kind of play around with it in meetings or in between on train or in traffic, you're not really 100% focused on what you're doing. And this is something that will at some point be to your disadvantage if you break something. Therefore, I would not recommend it, especially also not setting the time while having the watch on your wrist. This is a very, very bad idea. So take your watch off your wrist when you wind it and set the time. The second thing is not to one sideedly wind the crown. What I mean is to take a finger and run it over the crown from one side, always take the crown in between two fingers, usually index finger and thumb and rotate it with that because this one side of pressure on a very, very delicate part like the crown stem. This will not only wear the crown stem, potentially break the very brittle, hard steel in the crown stem. It might also put wear on rubber gaskets because you're essentially bending everything if you just put pressure on from one side of the crown. Another thing you should look out for is if you're in humid or wet conditions, you should not wind your watch in these circumstances and you should also set, especially not set the time in these circumstances. For one, humidity and sweat could get into the movement and this will damage parts in the watch by rusting them out and it is not necessarily just water in its liquid form. More damaging is actually water in its gaseous form simply because it can very easily bypass these stem and seals in the crown. For example, in my opinion, one of the toughest environments for a wristwatch is when you're in the rain and you have the watch underneath a rain jacket because what typically happens is that you're sweating, especially if you're hiking or if you're rushing to get a bus or train or something like that. So you're all sweating in an environment that is not very breathable. The watch is sort of trapped under your rain jacket and if you then try to open it and wind it and set your time or whatever, all of that moisture that build up underneath your jacket will get into the watch and damage the watch. So this is, although it sounds kind of funny, this is a very hard environment for wristwatches and most of the conditions where your crown breaks off because your stem has rusted away or condensation on the inside of the glass, this typically comes from these kinds of circumstances. It does not have to be water, you know, swimming in the pool or jumping into the ocean. It's most likely that water in its humid form got into the watch. So winding and setting the time on your watch in these circumstances is definitely something to avoid. So how to get it right? How to wind your watch the right way? For an automatic watch, if it's starting from dead zero, I would just pick it up and wind it 10 to 15 times just to get it going and then let the automatic group in the movement do the rest, you know, grab the crown with two fingers index finger and thumb and turn it in the back and forth motion or in an always forward motion that that doesn't really do anything to the watch. It does not damage the watch if you wind it backwards and sort of nothing happens because there's a special clutch built into the watch. So this is not something that will damage the watch. But if you like to do that, you can also wind it just in a forward direction and also obviously do not wind it or set the time in humid or wet conditions. Or your hand-winding watch or hand-winding movement, it's best to obviously not wind the watch and wet in humid conditions or with wet hands. For the best performance, my recommendation is to wind the watch every single day at the same time. So every morning when you get out of bed or every night when you put the watch on your night desk, these are good times to wind the watch. If you wear the watch every single day and you sort of get accustomed to what kind of power reserve is left at the evening, you also sort of know after some time how much power you can put in in the morning, for example. And this means that you don't fully have to wind it. But typically with modern watches, you're fine. Even winding them all to the end, basically, where you also find the resistance that the watch is not winding any further. And this is definitely the point where you should not put any more power in it or where you should not stress the movement anymore because that would be the point where the main spring is most likely to break. Thank you for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it. Like and subscribe if you don't want to miss out on new videos in the future and you can also follow me on Instagram for more content. You find the link for Instagram in the video description. If you have any watchmaking related questions or if you have any ideas for future videos, feel free to comment them in the comment section down below. Thank you and I hope to see you in the next video again.