How many jewels does a watch need?

Watch Blogger — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 19:48:22 +0000

As most of you will know jewels like ruby or saphire are used to reduce friction in the bearings of watches. While it is common belief that the more jewels there are the better the movement, this article explains how jewels have been added to watches just for marketing purposes, without providing any functional value.
There is an ISO standard which defines a functional jewel as a “jewel which serves to stabilize friction and to reduce the wear rate of contacting surfaces of the components of a timekeeping instrument” and a nonfunctional jewel as a “jewel used for purposes other than as defined in 3.2″ (ie a Functional Jewel). The author of the article provides some interesting examples of both functional and nonfunctional jewels and goes on to explain how watchmakers use jewels that are functional according to the ISO standard, but still useless, as they neither significantly enhance the performance nor the longevity of a watch.
It seems like the highest number of useful functional jewels a watch can have is 23, as shown by the example of a Hamilton Grade 923 movement. The author still doubts the value of jeweled barrels, so the actual number may be even less.

Getting complicated

Watch Blogger — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:29:17 +0000

If you look up the term ‘Watch’ at Wikipedia, you will find a paragraph entitled ‘Complicated watch’. While I feel the term complicated has a negative touch to it, actually complicated watches are actually very interesting watches.
According to Wiki, it is used to describe watches that have additional functions beyond basic time keeping. Examples are moon phase watches or chronographs. Allthough I rarely have any use for the stop watch capabilities of a chronograph, I like the looks of watches like the Omega Speedmaster a lot. While simplicity can be awesome too, the additional knobs and hands make them look very interesting. Maybe Sophisticated Watch might be a better term for these devices.

Watchawa

How many jewels does a watch need?

Getting complicated