1. There are two types of pointer watches: quartz and winding – which are divided into automatic winding and manual winding, which we will explain here.
2. The energy that moves the hands is provided by the winding mechanism. The wearer turns the winding knob on the side of the watch, powering a system of springs and gears. This system stores the energy of the spin and moves the watch for a while. You need to wind it up often so it doesn’t stop.
3. The winding mechanism rotates the main gear, the escape wheel, which has two functions:
• Move the structure that controls the timing of the clock
• Rotate pointer gear set
4. First, let’s talk about clock timing. The escape wheel transmits the movement to the upper anchor rod. This rod makes the anchor move, hitting a pin and transmitting the movement to the balance wheel. At the same time, changing the position of the anchor causes its lower rod to stop the advance of the escape wheel.
5. After the balance wheel has turned one way, its spring makes it turn the opposite way. With that, the balance wheel pin touches the anchor and changes its position again. With this new change, the lower rod releases the advance of the escape wheel, controlling the energy released by the rope system.
6. Thanks to the action of the balance wheel, the escape wheel moves at constant intervals – something like five movements per second. Now, just take advantage of this constant range of movement to show the seconds, minutes and hours
7. This is where the gears come in. On the watch, they serve three things:
• Convey movement forward
• invert the direction of movement
• slow down the movement – the bigger the gear and the more teeth it has, the slower it turns
8. To show the count of minutes, for example, use a gear to reverse the direction of movement coming from the main gear – since it rotates counterclockwise. The minute gear is designed to make a complete revolution every 60 minutes.
9. To show the count of hours, the watch uses the movement of the minute gears. Drive gears carry the movement to the hour gear, designed to make a complete turn every 12 hours
10. Do you know how the hour and minute hands sit on top of each other? It’s just that the rod connected to the hour hand is a hollow cylinder. Inside it, passes the rod connected to the minute hand
11. All that remains is to show the seconds count. To do this, the watch captures the movement of the main gear with a gear designed for one full turn every 60 seconds.