Regulating Mechanical Watches

[Riff Raff]

I bought a Tudor Heritage Chrono last year. When I got it, it was running about 10 seconds a day fast. OK, it's not COSC certified, but I have half a dozen mechanical watches, a few of which aren't COSC and the worst of those in terms of timekeeping is maybe 3 seconds a day fast.

So I sent the HC away to Rolex to be regulated. It came back a few days ago, and since then, it's been spot on. And I mean spot on. Worn maybe 17 hours a day on the wrist, and then 7 hours face up on the bedside table.

So, the question is, if they can get a watch this close at the service centre, why didn't they friggin' well do it when they manufactured it? It probably didn't take them all that long to fix it, but the turnaround time was about 8 weeks. That's quite a long time to spend without a watch after having just shelled out €3,000. It's tarnished the image of the brand for me. Or have I got a real case of unrealistic expectations?

Edited by Riff Raff on Friday 11th March 14:42

[RemainAllHoof]

If it's not COSC then +10 is damned good. As for why they couldn't do it straight away, I think the mechanicals need to settle in which comes from regular use.

PS paragraph 2 doesn't make sense. You ask a question then state you've done it already?

[andy tims]

I wouldn't have bothered personally. Everyone has to wait in the queue at service centres.

As for how the service centre was able to set fot better accuracy - I suspect that with your brief have just made the wastch run 10 secs per day slower, given your wear pattern.

[Adrian W]

Cant be bothered, if I want to know the time that accurately I look at my phone

[Riff Raff]

RemainAllHoof said:

If it's not COSC then +10 is damned good. As for why they couldn't do it straight away, I think the mechanicals need to settle in which comes from regular use.

PS paragraph 2 doesn't make sense. You ask a question then state you've done it already?

My bad. I typed D instead of S.............. corrected.

I think the point about +10 being not good is still a valid one though. I haven't ever had a mechanical watch that's been that far out, and I bought my first decent one in '71. Of my current collection, including the non COSC's, nothing is more than about 3s a day out. Maybe I've been spoiled - modern mechanicals seem to be much more accurate and well built than they used to be. As for the mechanical bits needing to settle down, surely they do that whilst they are going through the quality control / certification process? None of my watches has ever varied much from the day I bought it through to whenever it (they) needed a service, so I'm not sure whether they do change when they've run in for a while.

andy tims said:

I wouldn't have bothered personally. Everyone has to wait in the queue at service centres.

As for how the service centre was able to set fot better accuracy - I suspect that with your brief have just made the wastch run 10 secs per day slower, given your wear pattern.

Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have bothered either, but there was something else that had to be sorted, so I requested the regulation at the same time. As for waiting in the queue, I don't have a problem with that, but my point was that if they got their QC right, I wouldn't have needed to be in the queue in the first place.

Edited by Riff Raff on Friday 11th March 15:21

[RemainAllHoof]

I've got both modern and old mechanical (manual and automatic). The non-COSC timings vary from +/15s to +/-3minutes depending on quality/brand.