How many of you regulate your watches?

Yes, if by regulating you mean adjusting the regulating lever, I do that to any watches I have open. I do have several autos that I have never had the case back off, so I just leave them alone for now as I don't feel like pressure testing them just because they are off a second or two per day. I don't have a timing machine because in my experience the machines only time the watch for a perfect world. Yes, you could time the watch in all six positions, and then do some sort of average, but I find having the watch on my wrist for a few days provides me with a much more accurate method to adjust the watch to my personal wear habits. I sometimes match the time to the NIST website and make my calculations from there. Usually I just use my trusty 20-year-old G-Shock as it only gains about 2 seconds per month. Plenty accurate for anything I am trying to adjust.

andy b.

I've done a bunch over the years. They all ran better, but the lack of a fine adjust lever or screw on most Seikos means it often takes several tries to get it right. Most of my vintage watches get serviced, so the watchmaker does it then (Ken has done most of them). I've usually been able to get 7000 series movements to better than 10 sec/day myself, and several within 5 sec/day, but they often still have daily variances that keep them outside of COSC specs. My 7002 (rebuilt by Ken) runs reliably at +4 sec/day for weeks at a time once it's "warmed up" for a day or two. That's about my best performance from a lower-end Seiko movement. To put it in perspective, all of my new (or almost new) ETAs (2824; 2892) have been easy to regulate to within 5 sec/day, no doubt partly due to the fine adjust screw.

Paul

TakesALickin said:

.... I barely nudged the arm and it would go from -20 per day to +40 per day. It took quite a few attempts before I happened to get it just where I wanted it. Seems to be running about +3 per day now.

Click to expand...

Well, I got you beat! ;D

My SKX007 was running consistently 39 seconds slow per day. That was annoying, since I pretty much only wear that watch and don't really rotate the others. I had to reset the time once or twice a week on it.

So I bought one of Jake's beginner's watch modder tool kits, and used the caseback opener it came with. Since I got no skills, I then proceeded to test it on a handwind Hamilton Khaki I have that gets zero wrist time, just to get the hang of it and see how bad I can scratch a caseback. :-[

So, after getting the '007 opened without scratching the case ;D , I started to tweak. Here's how it went.

First attempt: -39s/d to [glow=red,2,300]+300s/d[/glow] You guys weren't kidding!

Second attempt: +300s/d to -95s/d All right, now. Stop drinking coffee!

Third attempt: -95s/d to +180s/d

Fourth attempt: +180s/d to +75s/d

Fifth attempt: +75s/d to +25s/d

Sixth attempt: +25s/d down to +1.5s/d

The way I've got it set now, the watch runs barely fast during the day and loses about five seconds overnight if I leave it crown-up. 8)


So I finally added my vote to the survey. I now consider myself a self-regulator!

I gave regulating a try for my first time ever on my blue Sumo (6R15) last week (it had been losing about 10 seconds a day... no big deal but I'd rather have it slightly fast than slow) and kept notes. Here's what I got after the 5th try:

5th attempt at regulating. Tried to barely move the lever. Reset to 0 at 5:38 p.m. on 5/5/10
So close to 0 I can't tell if it's fast or slow @ 6:38 p.m. on 5/5/10 (YEEEEEEAHHHH!!!)
Still very close to 0, just slightly slow @ 10:50 p.m. on 5/5/10 (yeeeeah!!!!)
very close to 0 @ 11:55 p.m. on 5/5/10
placed watch dial up.

+1 @ 4:00 a.m. on 5/6/10
wore watch back to bed for a few hours
barely less than 0 (maybe -.3?) at 11:41 a.m. on 5/6/10

left watch face up overnight, from 11:30 p.m. on 5/6/10 until 6:30 a.m. on 5/7/10
+4 @ 7:10 a.m. on 5/7/10
~+4.5 @ 9:00 a.m. on 5/7/10 slightly under +5 @ 10:45 a.m. on 5/7/10 ~+4.5 @ 2:00 p.m. on 5/7/10 +4 @ 3:00 p.m. on 5/7/10 +4 @ 3:45 p.m. on 5/7/10
+4 @ 5:50 p.m. on 5/7/10

+3.5 @ 8:00 p.m. on 5/8/10

+4 @ 6:40 a.m. on 5/9/10
slightly under +5 @ 3:30 p.m. on 5/9/10
slightly more than +5 @ 8:00 p.m. on 5/9/10
placed watch crown up until around 10:30 p.m., then placed watch 6 o'clock up over night.

slightly under +8 @ 8:15 a.m. on 5/10/10 around +8.5 @ 11:50 a.m. on 5/10/10 +9 @ 1:45 p.m. on 5/10/10 +10 @ 4:25 p.m. on 5/10/10
left watch at home on 5/11/10, crown-up.
+16 @ 5:25 p.m. on 5/11/10
reset to 0 @ 7:18 p.m. on 5/11/10

+5 @ 6:30 a.m. on 5/12/10
reset to 0 and hand wound a few times at 6:35 a.m. on 5/12/10
+.5 @ 8:10 a.m. on 5/12/10

So from May 5th through 11th it gained 16 seconds total, but had stayed fairly consistent up until the last couple days when it started gaining more time. I had been wearing it while doing lots of lifting and moving around at work, so maybe that sped it up... Ted



p.s. no electronic timer used, just compared it to http://www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?Eastern/d/-5/java