Winding Your Watch
A watch winder is a piece of equipment that keeps your self-winding (also referred to as automatic) watches running when you are not wearing them. These automatic watches run on the principle of a weight moving inside them, which rotates or swings while being worn. This turns the watch's winding mechanism. If the watch is not on a person's wrist, then, it is no longer powered and will run down and stop. Almost all of these self-winding watches can be manually wound, but not always easily. The best alternative so far has been a watch winder.
A watch winder holds your watch, or perhaps more than one watch, and keeps it moving in circles, which mimics the movement of a person's wrist. The watch "thinks" it is being worn and keeps rewinding itself.
Your automatic watch cannot be over wound by a watch winder. In fact, these self-winding watches are made with a piece of equipment inside that stops the winding when the watch's mainspring is wound fully. What you'll want to choose, however, is a watch winder that is based on time, so you won't have too much wear on the watch's winding mechanism. A watch winder doesn't have to run continually when the watch is off your wrist. A maximum of 30 minutes each day should keep it running continually.
You can't use a watch winder with a quartz battery operated watch. It's pointless. If your watch has no battery, however, the watch winder can be used to generate electrical power just as it mimics the movement of a person's wrist. Examples of quartz watches that have no battery and can be wound with a watch winder are Seiko's Kinetic series and Omega's Matic styles.
The Basel 2000 watch exposition debuted the first watch winder for watches that are generally wound by hand. This watch winder was introduced by Orbita. The firm plans on marketing it soon.
While a watch winder is not crucial, it is handy. No one seems to think that a watch winder does anything to prolong a watches life overall, or actually improve on it in any conceivable way. In fact, it's not awful if a watch winds down. A watch winder is simply for the wearer's convenience.
A watch winder is not cheap, and can run $200 - $8000. The reason for the high cost is not so much that they are such complicated devices but that they aren't widely used and so the limit of quantity creates a per unit cost that is higher than those items turned out on the assembly line in droves.