stevensfo wrote:I have my late father's Seiko Kinetic.
The mechanism relies on movement of the wrist. Something that occurs less now that everyone is sitting in front of a computer.
If you haven't used it for a while, then you have to rock the watch from side to side for about 5 minutes to charge the spring. You can hear and feel the mechanism moving. Rather as if something is loose inside.
I believe these types of watch use a swinging 'pendulum' in the form of a metal disc with a sector cut out to make it unbalanced.
stevensfo wrote:There may be a small button to press that uses the second hand to show how much power is left in the spring.
My EcoDrive uses the second hand to indicate low battery charge by 'hitching', that is jumping two seconds at a time instead of one second. Only every seen this once in twenty years after I had become accustomed for years to it just going every day and had grown used to simply putting it aside at night and wearing it every day without any consideration of how it was to keeping going.
Now I leave it on the window ledge every day when not wearing it - one issue with that is in summer, when I have more than once forgotten to rescue it from the direct sun and it has been cooked much too hot!
Cost me just under £50 twenty years ago and has been ticking away ever since (apart from time adjustments), keeps time as well as a Rolex costing thousands.
