You have probably discovered a nice vintage mecanical HEUER stopwatch in a drawer, or bought your first one after having a crush on it, spending time in an antique dealer, watchmaker or some online shop. Now you’d like to use it and ask how to. Winding it up is the very first step and this page is here to explain you this simple operation.
The crown
To provide required energy to make a mecanical HEUER stopwatch run, just turn (normally clockwise) the big central pusher called the crown. You should listen to a little metalic sound. Stop when you feel a resistance (number of rotations varies depending on the stopwatch). Note it also works with stopwatches from another manufactures like Omega, Breitling, Hanhart …
Barrel and mainspring
Doing this, the mainspring, a spiral spring, is wound up, stolling up energy. The mainspring is enclosed in the barrel, a circular box with gears on its edge. When running the mainspring is unwound, giving energy to let the barrel rotate, transmitting movement to the whole mecanism trought its external gears.
Advice
To preserve the mecanism of your HEUER stopwatch, it is recommended to fully unwound it before a long time not using it. Just leave it run until it naturally stops.
Video summary
Crédits
“Going barrel of a watch, opened” photo by HNH under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modifications : addition of legends.
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