1. Extending the life of the leather strap

If you buy a new watch with a leather strap, spray the strap with a leather spray (e.g. for shoes) and impregnate the leather. It will become more resistant to sweat and water and stay nice for longer.

If you have had a watch with a leather strap for a long time and want to clean and upgrade it, soak the strap in chlorine cleaner for 1 minute and then dry it with a cloth. Again, it is advisable to impregnate with a leather spray.

2. Saving the watch battery

If you are not going to use your watch for an extended period of time, for whatever reason, raise the crown to the hand control position - this will stop the time and therefore stop the battery drain. Of course, the watch will not have the correct time on it, but you can set this from another timekeeper - I am trying to describe here the only option for those who want the battery in their watch to last as long as possible.

3. The humidity in the watch

Does your watch fog up from time to time on its own from the bottom of the glass? Are you unaware that water has gotten into your watch? Water may have gotten into your watch slightly, you don't even know how. And if you have it in there, you need to find out so that you can possibly have the watch dried out at the repair shop. If you have moisture in your watch, you can find out by heating the watch to about 50°C and then touching the glass with an ice cube for a few seconds. Then look very carefully at the glass - preferably with a magnifying glass - and if it has not dewed, even slightly, from underneath, there is no moisture in the watch. If not, I recommend that you do not open the watch to allow air to enter, as water will not react by corroding the components unless it is mixed with air. In the case of a non-waterproof watch, I recommend pulling up the crown so that the moisture is immediately removed and visiting a watchmaker as soon as possible to open, dry and lubricate the watch.

4. Adjusting the chronograph and alarm hands

If you happen to find that your watch with stopwatches - chronographs - do not return and stop all exactly perpendicular to No. 12 after resetting (usually with the bottom right button), this is not a watch malfunction. You can adjust this fairly easily - I'll describe the two basic chronograph movements here, and I believe one of them will be yours:

1. Raise the crown to the hand control position. Then the top button usually sets the central hand and the bottom button sets one of the small - eccentric - hands. After adjusting to the default position, or the perpendicular up direction, gently tuck the crown into the date control position and adjust the last small hand.

2. Pull the crown up to the hand control position. Then hold the right top button for approx. 5 seconds. The central second hand will circle around quickly and when it stops, use the bottom right button to set the hand where you want it. Then press and hold the top right button again for approx. 5 seconds to set the next hand. And this is how you proceed until the chronograph is fully set, and the last setting stage - calibration - belongs to the alarm.

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5. Determining the price of an antique watch

The price for an antique watch is primarily determined by the brand. Secondly, it is very important what condition it is in and whether it is functional. The condition of the watch can be assessed by physically inspecting it. You can test whether they work yourself. However, there are quite a few very expensive brands that you may not be familiar with. So how can you tell if your watch is a designer watch?

Every branded watch has a logo somewhere on the dial, usually under the number 12. Type this logo into a search engine and it should find the brand's parent site - the website for that brand. And from the sale prices of new watches on the web, you can get a rough idea of the level of your watch brand.

6. Leather straps on waterproof watches

As we know, leather expands and works when it comes into contact with water. That's why I recommend customers who want to swim and dive with their watches to wear watches with metal and plastic bands - they don't absorb water and therefore their properties remain the same in any contact with water. Today, waterproof leather bands are also produced, but they are more expensive than normal leather bands. If you want to be at ease when swimming and diving with your watch, buy a watch with a plastic, rubber, titanium or steel bracelet - tension.

If you do have a watch with a leather strap, and you can't avoid the occasional swim with it, once you get out of the water and dry the watch including the strap, immediately spray the strap with leather spray.

7. Saving the battery in a chronograph watch

If you have a chronograph watch, you need to know that when the chronograph starts, the battery consumption goes up. It's logical - there are other counters involved, and they need to be powered by something other than battery power. So the more you use the chronograph, the sooner the battery will run down.

8. Choosing a watch according to criterion 1 - glass

If you are looking to buy a watch in the near future and know that you will wear it daily and that it will be virtually impossible to take off your wrist, seriously consider a scratch-resistant sapphire crystal. Next to waterproofness - and therefore shockproofness - this is the most important criterion for making sure your watch stays nice for as long as possible.

What is a sapphire crystal? Sapphire crystal is a synthetic hard sapphire, so we move up the hardness scale to number 9 - that's corundum, just behind the hardest diamond. By comparison - silicon glass is at number 4 - 5 on the hardness scale. As we know from physics, a material can only be scratched by a material as hard or harder - so sapphire glass can only be scratched by diamond or corundum.

9. What to do first thing when breaking glass

If you happen to accidentally break the glass of your watch, don't lose your head, it's quite common. The glass can be easily replaced with a new one and your watch will be back to normal. What I recommend, however, is to immediately lift the crown to its most retractable position when you break the glass. Why, you ask? Because in the rearmost position of the crown for controlling the hands, the time of the watch stops and therefore the hands do not get caught on the broken glass, which in many cases remains in the space between the old glass and the dial, and the hands (e.g. the gears) do not get damaged by having a constant impulse from the block to run and by being jammed and not being able to continue can cause bending or other deformation of the hands or gears.

10. The quality of the movement in Swiss watches

If you want to know more about the movement in your watch, first refer to the website of your watch manufacturer where you will find your watch and in the descriptions about it the brand of movement and the caliber - movement number. Then go to www.swisstime.ch, www.ronda.ch or www.eta.ch to find the movement and read about its dimensions, number of stones, etc. Here you will find that the basic Swiss movement manufacturers Eta, Ronda and Valjoux are on the same level - it always depends on the calibre of the quartz movement, how expensive it is and then how many stones it has etc. For mechanical movements it depends how many oscillations the flywheel has per hour, also the number of stones, if the movement is a classic or chronometer etc.

11. Altimeter in a watch - what to look for

If you want to buy a watch with an altimeter and you really want to use this altimeter reliably for walking or climbing mountains, look for an altimeter with calibration. The alpha and omega for a totally accurate calibration is the height above sea level - or if you would like to have an accurate altitude and be sure of it, put the watch at sea level and set the altitude on the watch to 0. Along with the altitude, set the pressure in the area where you are according to the meteorological institute. This will give you a perfectly accurate indication of the altitude at any ascent. In practice, this means that if you have a watch with an altimeter, you arrive at a certain location where you read (e.g. from a local map) the altitude. You enter this altitude into the watch. You then find out the pressure at that location and enter that into your watch. In this way the watch is ready - calibrated to the exact altitude in the area and the watch will accurately show you the altitude you are at in your ascent. For non-calibratable watches, the watch is calibrated by the manufacturer who most often calibrates it in the state where it is manufactured. This is because all altimeters work on the basis of air pressure, and that pressure decreases as you gain altitude. At the same time, the air thins.

12. Shock resistance of automatic and quartz watches

Automatic mechanical watches are more susceptible to shocks than battery-operated quartz watches. In automatic movements, the rotor plays the biggest role in the shock, as its weight can damage the bearing in which it is housed. Some brands make slotted rotors - these slots act as a "cushioning" for the rotor during an impact - this saves the bearing.

13. Innovation of metal bracelets - grinding and polishing

Fine scratches on polished or ground metal links can be innovated. However, this is in most cases recommended to be upgraded by a watchmaker. Grinding of fine indentations can be smoothed out with a glass brush (pencil), which is used to clean printed joints. Polishing is done with the fine wheel of a jeweller's polisher.

14. Replacing the battery in the watch

Any replacement of the battery in a watch should be carried out by a watchmaker. Each watch cap is notched for a special watchmaker's knife or special lever opener to prevent the cap from being cut or the movement from being damaged when the watch is opened. Sometimes the notches are visible at a glance, other times the specially hidden notch needs to be found with a magnifying glass. Using the notch of the cap when opening the watch is the basis for a good battery replacement.

15. The right size watch for your wrist

The ideal watch diameter size for your wrist (taking into account that you don't want a downright small or large watch) is the square root of the circumference of your wrist multiplied by x10.

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