Can You Overwind a Watch? Here’s What You Need to Know

Are you concerned about overwinding a watch of yours? Here’s everything you need to know!

My first manual winding watch was an old Bulova from the ‘30s. This was back when they were still American. When I got this watch I had a big concern. 

See, at this point, I’d only had automatics and quartz models. I didn’t actually know how to wind a watch. My dad showed me how, but I’d soon forget, and I’d often just wear the watch as a fun gold accessory.

Anyone who has ever feared overwinding a watch can relate to my next statement. I didn’t want to break it. See, I’ve heard stories about overwinding watches. I didn’t trust my ability to discern how much resistance was too much resistance.

Fast-forward to today. I’ve wound hundreds, if not thousands, of watches in my lifetime. Still, my fears weren’t completely unfounded. Just mostly unfounded. 

I mean, sure, you’re not likely to overwind many really great contemporary watches.

But since the movement is the heart of the watch, can you ever be too careful?

Can You Overwind a Mechanical Watch

Depending on the watch, technically, yes, you can be too careful. This is especially true if you’re Superman or the Incredible Hulk. 

As we explained in our other exploration of overwinding, you’re not likely to hurt your watch. But, to cover all of our bases, let’s explore situations in which overwinding is theoretically possible. After all, it it can be a possibility.

If you wind a watch so much that it stops working or starts to display problematic functions, it likely has something else wrong with it to begin with. So, from a practical perspective, it’s good you caught it. That watch needs servicing and probably needed it for some time.

It may have misaligned gears or parts that have been disengaged or broken.

What if you know the movement needs servicing but don’t want your watch tinkered with? Then you can do one of two things. 

Either walk on eggshells and wind your watch a tiny bit at a time. Avoid constant winding and pay close attention to the normal tension of the crown and harder resistance. Or, you can wear it as a non-functioning accessory.

But as far as the logic that you can overturn the mainspring and it becomes stuck? Or that something breaks in the winding train? Or does the winding crown fall off?

Even for the most unprotected watch movement, you’d usually need an inexplicable amount of strength to do that to a healthy watch.

Can You Overwind an Automatic Watch

You can’t really overmind an automatic watch. Again, if you “overwind” an automatic, it likely was faulty to begin with. Even more, you don’t have to wind automatic movements.

Remember that the difference between automatic watches and manual winding watches is that an automatic wind itself. It uses the movement of your wrist. 

Meanwhile, a manual wind will stop running and you’ll need to wind it if you let the hours of power reserve run out. A manual wind is often just referred to as mechanical, though both automatics and manuals are technically mechanical watches.

As such, if your Rolex Submariner finishes up its power reserve, you can simply put it on. Your wrist movement throughout the day will repower it.

You can’t even wind a lot of workhorse automatics, the Seiko SKX007 (which runs on the heritage caliber 7S2), for example. If it runs out of power, you would just shake it for a minute to get the automatic movement going again.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking at a modern automatic watch (or a modern hand-wound watch, for that matter), it’ll likely be built to avoid overwinding. 

Rolex Perpetual models, for instance, feature a slip gear that activates when you’ve fully wound it. It prevents the over-tensing of the mainspring, effectively unwinding the movement when it’s wound past a certain point.

Basically, most winding mechanisms floating around the market today are protected.

How Often to Wind Watch

How often you need to wind a watch depends on its power reserve. Again, you never really need to wind an automatic.

However, for a manual winding watch, most of which have about a 40-hour power reserve, you can wind it every 40 hours. Or, more realistically, since no one counts time like that, you can wind it a bit daily.

If the watch has a 70-hour power reserve, you can wind it every other day. There’s no harm in winding your watch while it’s running, so you don’t have to wait for it to run out of power to wind it up again.

Which Way Do You Wind a Watch

Besides worrying about overwinding, you may be wondering which way you wind a watch. 

When you wind your timepiece, make sure to turn the winding crown clockwise.

You can turn it a good 15 to 20 times. Usually, if you turn the crown around 30 or 40 times, you reach the full power reserve — which isn’t necessary unless the watch isn’t powered up at all.

Each turn is aligned, more or less, with half of the crown’s revolutions. Of course, every movement is built differently, so this is a rough universal estimate.

Keep turning until you feel resistance or hear a click.

Again, you typically can’t really overwind a movement, but you never want to wind your watch the wrong way. This actually can compromise or strain the springs and gears inside since they’re meant to move in a specific direction.

Conclusion: The Truth About Overwinding

The long and short of it is that there isn’t, for the vast majority of situations, really such a thing as overwinding.

In fact, even in cases in which you’ve “overwound” a compromised watch, the very phrase is faulty logic.

Again, there were likely problems with the watch to begin with. It would be like knowingly driving your car with little gas, stopping in the middle of the road with an empty tank, and blaming the malfunction on “overdriving.”

Overwinding is really an old wive’s tale. Or, in my case, an old grandfather’s tale.

How often do you wind your watch? Tell us in the comments! And subscribe to our newsletter at The Slenderwrist to get more cool watch content!