It's concerning that you need to wind it more than once a day. :/ Generally with pocket watches, you wind them once a day and at the same time so that the tightening of the mechanisms doesn't throw off it's time-keeping abilities.
I've never heard of pocket watches going awry if left unwound, but that seems like something that would happen to anything mechanical that's left unattended for an extended period.
At any rate, if it isn't worth the trouble to keep it in order, at least it's something pretty?
I also know, for the future, that pocket watches which run on batteries do exist. Not as authentic, but certainly less up-keep.
I think there's more likely to be a problem if a watch is overwound than if it's left to run down. If you overwind a watch, the tension in the spring can cause it to become misaligned or damage some of the internal mechanism. If you let a watch run down, say, for storage, most likely the worst that will happen is that you'll have to be extra vigilant about keeping it wound next time you use it since it won't have any residual tension in the spring from the last time you wound it so it's more likely to lose time or run slow if you're not paying attention
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And I would agree with becjasketch that it may be a matter of concern that you're having to wind it multiple times a day. Either the mechanics in this watch are very, very shoddy (pretty likely if it's one of those cheap mechanical watches from China, which it looks like it is), or you're not winding it enough in the first place. Mechanical watches don't generally have a mechanism to stop the winding key when you've wound it "enough", so it can be hard to tell if you're winding it enough, not enough, or too much. It can be a bit of trial and error to figure out how much winding it needs and how often, which is why a lot of people defaulted to such a regular schedule of winding. I'd try winding your watch a bit more next time and see if it'll run longer without problems.
My good mechanical watch can run for almost a week on one solid wind before stopping altogether (not to say it's particularly accurate after about 48 hours), so if your new watch is at all worth its salt, it should be able to run longer if wound sufficiently.
Are you sure you're winding it enough? Overwinding is such a taboo that I've seen many people afraid to wind a watch tight enough. Wind it until you feel a sense of tightness (usually in mid-wind) complete the wind you are on and then stop. If the watch isnt faulty, this should last at least a day. Good luck, that's a pretty piece!
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Generally with pocket watches, you wind them once a day and at the same time so that the tightening of the mechanisms doesn't throw off it's time-keeping abilities.
I've never heard of pocket watches going awry if left unwound, but that seems like something that would happen to anything mechanical that's left unattended for an extended period.
At any rate, if it isn't worth the trouble to keep it in order, at least it's something pretty?
I also know, for the future, that pocket watches which run on batteries do exist. Not as authentic, but certainly less up-keep.
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My good mechanical watch can run for almost a week on one solid wind before stopping altogether (not to say it's particularly accurate after about 48 hours), so if your new watch is at all worth its salt, it should be able to run longer if wound sufficiently.
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A quick check of Wikipedia doesn't yield anything to support that concept - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainspring
Nor does a Google search for "under winding watch".
You might want to have the watch checked by a reputable service person, it probably needs to be cleaned and oiled.
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