I don’t understand why most quartz watches are stuck with ticking second hands rather than smooth sweep second hands. I prefer quartz movements for their dramatically superior accuracy, but I also prefer the look of a smooth sweep second hand. I have yet to see a convincing explanation for why quartz second hands must tick beyond vague gesturing at power saving, but not only that, I have seen sweeping second hands on inexpensive quartz wall clocks from IKEA, so it’s clearly possible.
I regret to say I’ve started to think that ticking second hands on quartz watches are essentially cartelized marketing on the part of watchmakers to easily distinguish less expensive but technologically superior quartz movements from luxury-branded mechanical movements. Can anybody talk me out of this conspiratorial thinking, or confirm it?
High end watches aren’t really in my budget, but it is gratifying to hear that there are very high end quartz movements. But jewels and precious metals aren’t really my jam. What I want is a reasonably accurate watch that will run without me having to wear it or wind it, with a second hand that moves nice and smooth. (And since I’m also kind of particular about how they look, I want a nice wide variety to choose from, but that’s kind of my own thing.) The Seiko Spring Drive is a cool idea and the second hand movement is very nice, but I’d want a battery in there to obviate the winding.
Everyone has their own preferences. Personally, I hate having to use disposable batteries to keep something running, and I find winding a to be a nice, enjoyable thing to do while having my morning coffee. And, if it’s an automatic, a mechanical watch only needs winding when you first start it up, as long as you wear it every day.
Oh, and jewels as in “jeweled bearings” is more about durability and efficiency than expensive materials. Jeweled bearings, often referred to as just “jewels”, are made from synthetic ruby, but they’re incredibly cheap, pennies each. Instead of having metal on metal surfaces which wear on each other and create power wasting friction, you have a polished metal on polished ruby surface, with a tiny bit of lubricant that clings to the bearing due to its shape and surface tension, which provides a very low friction, very durable surfaces for support of rotating elements, like the posts the hands are mounted on, or arbors that support all the various gears in mechanical watches. Lots of better quality quartz watches use at least a handful of jewels for exactly the same reason. Lower drag on moving components and better durability is good whether the oscillator is quartz of mechanical. Since quartz watches have fewer, and lower mass, moving parts, thet can often get away with omitting jeweled bearings, but many quartz movements, even fairly low cost ones, will have a few jeweled bearings.
That’s fascinating about jeweled bearings! I had no idea, I definitely thought that watch descriptions of jewels was about incorporating additional luxury/expense.
As far as watch winding goes, I agree everybody gets to enjoy what they enjoy, and disposable batteries are kind of a drag. I’m not that interested in automatic or hand-wound movements because I like to be able to switch between a two or three watches, so I might go a week or two without wearing one, and I like it to still be running and on time when I put it on.