My magical skill of killing wind-up watches

I was sorting through my jewelry box of things I don’t wear and that’s a lot since I rarely wear jewelry. I’m sorting it out and I find three very nice watches I have received once upon a time. Usually for some special occasion sort of gift. Back when analog watches were gifts, and we didn’t have Smartphones implanted in our lives permanently.

The problem with wind up watches for me

I can’t wear any of those nice watches I received. Not regularly for Sure. And not in a way that makes it a dependable and reliable way to tell time. Because they stop working when I wear them. And fast.

They were very nice watches and I wanted to wear them. Especially since I apparently have no concept of time. So I needed a watch constantly or simply lost track of the day. But a watch that stops working constantly didn’t help with that at all. I had to plan How to wear my first nice wind-up watch.

Basically, any wind-up watch slows down and then just stops. I have to put it aside for a bit (a day or two) and then it will start working again- and then I can wear it again for maybe a day, sometimes two, before it stops again- and start the process all over again. So basically 1 day out of 3 I could maybe wear one of those watches. But when I had three, I could do a rotation system.

If I accidentally keep wearing it, as I did with one, it will stop working and just Not work Again.

It’s a consistent, persistent issue with wind-up watches that made them pretty unreliable to use. I’m totally fine with battery watches. Well, I can’t say whether battery watches were affected or not, to be honest. Batteries fail for all sorts of reasons, but I know for sure they lasted longer than a couple of days. I did go through a lot of them, but I assume batteries don’t last long in them. I do know I really got sick of watches, and I love that I can depend on a Smartphone now.

Hereditary quirk

This quirk is hereditary as my grandmother has the exact same problem. And if you look it up, it does run in families. Just a little family quirk.

If you look it up online, you see a whole lot of speculation about Why this happens to some people.

In some cases, this quirk can be more than just wind-up watches but other tech they are exposed to regularly and go through way too fast. It is hard to confirm whether other tech involved is accurate or not. Pretty easy to confirm every time you wear a wind-up watch it stops within a day. Not so easy to confirm you’re burning through More of some sort of thing than other people. That could just be perception because things are just not made to last these days.

Electromagnetic fields? Magnetism?

A whole lot of people speculate it is the fields we generate that interfere with the watch in some of us… as in our fields are wonky or strong and that is why the watches fail.

It is often suggested it has to do with electrical fields in the body. But this isn’t quite an explanation because usually it is used to explain the failure of battery AND wind-up watches.

In some very rare cases, people will put on a watch and it will just stop ticking. This phenomenon, as weird as it sounds, is due to high electrical currents in a person’s body. Depending on the level of electrical currents in your body, or if you have ever been exposed to electricity, you may have an effect on the battery life of your watch and if it works or not.

5 REASONS YOUR WATCH STOPPED WORKING

But there are specific reasons a battery watch might fail faster on a person that are totally different. Excessive sweating, high acid, or a crap battery in it. There are, apparently, some reasons why watches fail faster. But why wind-up watches just stop all the time with some people- no one can really explain. Or why it is hereditary.

Demagnetizing

But, here is the thing, back in the day when I had this issue, I went to the jeweler in town here and explained my problem… that I had this issue with watches, and I accidentally kept my watch on too long and Totally Killed it. It wouldn’t work at all. And he said it happened with some people and that it just needed to be demagnetized.

That is what he did. And he revived my watch. It was back to working fine and stopping if I wore it a day or two… and would start working if I let it be for a day or two. But, again, if I wore it too long I would ‘kill’ it and have to bring it back in and get it demagnetized. Exactly what my jeweler said was a thing that just happened with some families.

Watches that have been magnetized won’t suffer any long-term consequences, however they will need to be demagnetized to resume normal function. When your watch is running erratically due to magnetism there is no need to panic; any watchmaker should be able to tackle the job. Alternatively, demagnetizers are available fairly inexpensively on many websites or at a horological tool shop.

THE TRUTH ABOUT MAGNETISM AND WATCHES

And other people say that electromagnetic theory is a total crap theory

For a person’s electromagnetic field to have the necessary strength to erase a VHS tape (the example from the article), it would have to be so great that it would almost certainly kill that person. The same goes for a wristwatch, or any other electronic or mechanical device you might use.

If your body had enough magnetic force within it to disrupt a watch, then not only would your insides be frying at this very moment, but you couldn’t be reading this article, because your computer or phone would have stopped working ages ago. Every time you went in public, you’d cause massive disruption.

WHY WATCHES STOP WORKING

Confirmation bias?

So clearly if it is impossible, it must be confirmation bias. Not saying it isn't in some cases. Confirmation bias is common in many situations. In this case the idea would be- We believe it to be true. The thing happens thus confirming our belief this thing is actually true.

But if you can never, ever wear a wind-up watch for more than a day or two it is more than a coincidence. Especially if it is more than one watch (Not a Faulty watch) and all the time (Not occasionally or takes a month or seems like they don’t ‘last as long’). So a well-proven and established theory. And well-established with my grandmother as well. It is just a ‘thing’. Plus, the solution is easy enough and confirmed.

In the larger scheme of things, the solution is insanely easy, as I learned when I was younger. Stop wearing wind-up watches. I switched to battery ones. A wore them loose so they made no real contact with my wrist (more a comfort thing really). And those lasted longer. And the ultimate solution came with the Mighty Smartphone era. Boom. Problem solved.

I never think much about it at all these days until I came across those 3 fancy watches I had as gifts I can never wear but keep because they are so nice.

So anyways…

Anyway, I remain super curious about why this happens. Occasionally, I do look to see if anyone ever did find the answer. And, nope, no one has. One of life’s quirky weird mysteries.

No one likely will figure this out because wind-up watches are not really much of a thing anymore. Hell, analog Clocks are not really a Thing anymore.

So, I guess my superpower will always be the ability to kill wind-up watches- which is a sucky superpower. Pretty lame. Sort of redundant these days. I kept those watches because they were gifts. I’m not quite sure what to do with them. I would need to ‘fix’ them in order to gift them. And gifting them to someone young would be useless since they are analog. Or… vintage? Hmm…