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Datewheels? How the hell?


spider87

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Ok two questions...with sub-questions lol

1) Datewheels, how do they function? What about in February? How do they know just to goto 1 instead of 28? Or don't they? as well as Day/Date wheels? How do they always know which day matches with which date? Or do they have to be set at the beginning of each month?

2) The hands that run over semi-circle dials like for Sun-Sat dials... such as (bad example but this is what I could find)

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How do they function?

How do they reset?

How do they know where to point?

If you are watching when they go from Saturday to Sunday (On a half dial) can you see it swoop all the way back to Sunday?

These are all things I've been searching for answers for if anyone can point me to a topic which describes it I would be happy but I haven't found anything helpful in these areas...

EDIT: This came about while reading the innovations thread. I was considering posting stuff in there but I am amazed by the simplest things on watches still hearing all the crazy innovations on that thread made me realize I need to learn this stuff soon lol

Edited by spider87
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Pretty sure even on gens datewheels need resetting for leap years and such, yes. For a typical sub for example, has no idea what year or month it is!

Which is why some large complications that allow for the dates (IWC Da Vinci) are praised movements that only need setting once every how ever many years and such.

So on simple movements its quite simple.. the date changes when the hour hand has done 2 full rotations! The date sometimes comes out of synch with the real date, and you just reset them!

I don't know about hte other questions :) I'm sure others will add!

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An annual calendar will make the monthly adjustments as well I believe, but won't adjust for the correct year. A perpetual calendar will adjust for the correct year.

A regular watch like we get here in our reps will always max out to 31 and then back to 1, no matter what month it is. It's up to the wearer to catch up the difference.

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Yeah if you look at loose datewheels on Ebay or Ofrei, etc they're just metal disks with the numbers printed...unless it's digital or a annual/perpetual the movement is quite "dumb" and the mechanism is simply slaved to the hour hand.

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