How to Wind a Watch
Winding watches daily used to be an essential thing to do back in the day before the advent of the mechanical watch. If you own a functioning manual watch, make sure that you know how to wind it properly. Here’s how.
Take off the watch from your wrist.
Make sure that your watch is a manual watch, not a mechanical one. If the watch’s face has a label of Kinetic, Quartz or Eco-Drive, then it’s not a manual watch, and not meant to be wound.
Another way to determine if the watch is manual is by observing the second hand of the watch. If the second hand hesitates before jumping forward, then you have a mechanical watch in your hands. However, if the second hand moves smoothly, then you have a manual watch.
Hold the watch in your less dominant hand (left hand if you’re right-handed, and vice versa), with the number 12 of the face at the top, with the stem on the right side.
Use your thumb and forefinger to pinch and pull the stem gently out of the watch. This action will release the winding mechanism.
One way to wind the watch is to twist and release. First, wind the stem in clockwise, from the top of the watch, away from your body, until you complete one full term. Keep winding slowly until your fingers cannot reach further. Release the stem, and put your fingers on the position they were in the beginning. Wind the stem again until you feel the turning become more difficult to do. Once you’ve reached this point (an average of 50 turns), then you can stop winding and wind the stem backwards several times. This action will relieve the watch’s internal mechanism.
Another way to wind your watch is the forward and reverse method. Again, pinch the stem using your thumb and forefinger. Turn the stem forward gently and then backward, without releasing it. Continue with these motions until it becomes hard or difficult to wind. Once you get to that point, release the stem.
Once you’ve wound the watch, use your thumb to gently push the stem back in the lock back into its place. You can now wear the watch until it is completely winded down again. If you’re not using the watch daily, you can wind it once a week on the same day every week.