I just got two pocket watches back from one of the highly respected professional watchmakers I use, who had COA'd them. One watch, a V&C, is keeping time highly accurately. The other watch, a Cartier, is behaving very strangely, although my watchmaker said it was working perfectly for him before he sent it back to me. He's asked me to return it to him, which I will do, but I am really curious as to why the watch is misbehaving.
The Cartier loses about 4 minutes within an hour of first fully winding it and setting the time. Then it starts to lose time more slowly, losing another 4 minutes over the next 2-4 hours. Then it stops losing time and runs 8 minutes slow for another 24 hours. This occurs when I run the Cartier dial up or dial down. What would cause such misbehavior?
My watchmaker thought that the watch might have gotten magnetized in transit to me, even though the V&C was in the same shipment and is running fine. My watchmaker asked me to use my demagnetizer to demagnetize the Cartier, which I did. The de-accelerating slowness I described in the preceding paragraph reflects performance after I demagnetized the watch. I think it had been running even more slowly before then, but I didn't keep records of that.
The Cartier loses about 4 minutes within an hour of first fully winding it and setting the time. Then it starts to lose time more slowly, losing another 4 minutes over the next 2-4 hours. Then it stops losing time and runs 8 minutes slow for another 24 hours. This occurs when I run the Cartier dial up or dial down. What would cause such misbehavior?
My watchmaker thought that the watch might have gotten magnetized in transit to me, even though the V&C was in the same shipment and is running fine. My watchmaker asked me to use my demagnetizer to demagnetize the Cartier, which I did. The de-accelerating slowness I described in the preceding paragraph reflects performance after I demagnetized the watch. I think it had been running even more slowly before then, but I didn't keep records of that.