Irony Of The Bernard Favre Manually-Wound Watch Crown Winder

by Ariel Adams (RSS feed)
May 7th 2009 at 3:00PM

A lot of people ask me if there are devices that will help them keep their manually-wound (hand wound via the crown) mechanical watches wound, so that they don't have to wind them each day or so. Automatic mechanical watches have all sorts of winders that mimic the oscillation needed for the watches to be wound - that would occur as though you were wearing them. Automatic watch movement winders are easy to find, and devices that wind manually wound watches are more rare, and of course expensive.

Manually wound watch winders all pretty much look the same. The watch is placed into a vice like grip, and an adjustable claw of sorts is hooded over the crown. This claw is attached to an arm that spins in the right direction to wind the watch. The machine must be capable of sensing resistance so that it can stop spinning, so as not to damage the movement with over-winding.

The whole point of a watch winder is to be convenient, so that you don't have to wind the watch yourself if you are not wearing it. Thus, it is utterly ironic that the beautiful Bernard Favre Crown Winder must be manually wound itself. That's right, the Crown Winder device, is a manually wound watch winder for manually wound watches. This is starting to sound awfully ironic and perplexing. The nature of the device requires that you wind it yourself, so that it can wind your watch, itself. Yea, I don't quite get it either. Even if the power reserve in the Bernard Favre Crown Winder is longer than your watch's power reserve, it still has the same downfall. Though I don't think this is the case as I believe it has a 24 hour power reserve cycle.

The Crown Winder looks great, and I have no doubt is of a high quality commensurate with the luxury pricing, but is it just me, or did the designers completely gloss over the point of why people even want to invest in manually wound watch winders in the first place?

Ariel Adams publishes the popular watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

Tags: bernard favre, BernardFavre, Crown Winder, CrownWinder, manually wound, ManuallyWound, mechanical, watch winder, WatchWinder

Filed under: Gadgets, Timepieces / Watches

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Methuselah May 9th 2009 9:59AM

Great for the gentrified gentleman or gentlewoman with age-palsied hand or eye who also doesn't want the servants leaving their grubby pawprints on a prized timepiece, though. We must remember that net worth, often, increases with age; and so might the size of the brazen 'assistance' devices for keeping up appearances. ;)