Let's take a short break from the Gandhi watch. It's currently being cranky--or at least its keyless works are. (Just so you know, the keyless works are the parts that enable the watch stem to wind the watch and adjust the time. They're nasty complicated and vary in design possibly more than any other part of old watches.)
Today's question is: What do I really want out of a watch? And let me be specific, a watch that I would use, particularly during my summer hobby of astrophotography.
I already have a quartz wristwatch and a cell phone. Both are great at giving me the time with wonderful accuracy. The phone is kind of clunky for that, though; the quartz watch is small and nice to look at during daylight but lacks the charm of a wrist-winding timepiece.
Mechanical watches of course have their own shortcomings. Accuracy isn't quartz-like; A modern hand-winder will probably have time errors of up to 10 seconds or so each day. I know, how horrible--in a week's time it may be off by a whole minute! You also won't get anything fancy like an electroluminescent display or Bluetooth compatibility, nor will it accept your calls or fetch email.
What I want from a watch is readability at night and the ability to tell me when a certain time interval has passed. Accuracy is not terribly important because I want it to indicate approximately when an interval of only ten or twenty minutes has passed; an error of even a few seconds is acceptable. The timing error I mentioned above, 10 seconds per day, is equivalent to about 0.07 seconds per ten minutes. That's far better than I need!
I hit the wonderful age of 70 this summer (chocolate cake is preferred if you absolutely must get one) and my eyes are not what they used to be. I have some difficulty with visual acuity when using monochrome red light. So a big watch face with large numerals is a plus. And those numerals should have good contrast with the dial face. The same applies to the hour and minute hands.
Chance and the cyclic nature of fads have combined to stage a rebirth of large watch movements with equally large faces. There are a wide variety of designer watch faces for these, so it's easy to find a face with large, luminous numbers. For the same reason wide luminous hands are readily available.
You may be wondering why I care so little about accuracy. Most astrophotography is highly automated now even for those of us who haul our gear to remote sites. Best Practice is to sit and watch over it, much like keeping your hands on the steering wheel of a Tesla in Autopilot mode because you just never know when it's going to do something bad. And if you image, you know something bad will happen because it always does. Granted, not driving off the road bad, but bad enough. So you want to be there when it happens, ready to jump in and start mashing keys and flinging the mouse cursor around in a mad attempt to get it all running again.
The reality is that this "Best Practice" stuff is not Fun. Actually, it's more like mind-numbing. There are other things to do that at least resemble fun, if fun can be had sitting around in the dark at 2 A.M. Allow me to suggest alternatives to Best Practice...
Usually there are other imagers around who you can talk to, even if it's only an excuse to eyeball their gear and incoming light frames of some obscure NGC object. You can tell them you also imaged NGC-whatever years ago and while their image will probably be "nice," it will look "better" after 40 or so hours of intense processing with whatever expensive software you use and they don't have.
Also, god forbid, there may be some visual people around looking at stuff with their eyes. You might grow nostalgic for your pre-imaging days when all galaxies were fuzzy little balls of lint barely brighter than the background sky. You might even be moved to ask for a peek at what they've got in the eyepiece. They will, of course, oblige, since it gives them the opportunity to comment on how they once considered imaging but decided it was too much work (true) and that wow, your laptop is kind of bright (not true, but that's visual people for you). At which point you are free to amble off and bother someone else.
It's also possible some of the non-imaging, non-observing public is wandering around. Because you're experienced you know how to say "Sorry, I'm Imaging" with a tone of voice both condescending and full of menace. By those three simple words you'll convey to them that they can't possibly understand what you're doing and that if they touch your very expensive imaging rig it's likely you'll have to hurt them badly. Remember that in the the dark they can't see what you look like, so try to sound like you're six foot eleven and can bench press their entire family. This almost always convinces them they are free to amble off and bother someone else. If they fail to take the hint you should simply direct them to the visual people who earlier slandered your laptop.
But you can't just wander away from your imaging gear for hours of Fun unless you want hours of worthless data. You need to make periodic glances back at all that technological stuff to see if it's still working. I usually do this every ten or so minutes, so that's what the watch tells me. I suppose I could have a timer that dings when ten minutes have passed, but that would be annoying and deprive me of the chance to flash my oversized, easy to read watch for all to see and admire.
OK now, let's look at this admirable watch. It's not the same exact one I made as part of the watchmaking class I attended, but it's close. The background color on the face of mine is a darker blue; like this one it has nice big luminous numbers and hands. (The face diameter is almost 40mm, compared to the 30mm of my quartz wrist watch.) Under red light the face appears black and the contrast is superb.
There's even a second hand should I ever need to time something with a little precision.
Note that this is a wrist watch style case. If you prefer a pocket watch to one that sits on your wrist it's possible to wrap the movement in something called a Hunter case. This provides protection for the crystal if you want to keep other things in your pocket like coins, keys, hex wrenches, bottle openers, etc.
Open Face Case
Hunter cases usually have at least two hinged covers (front and back); notice that the stem is at the 3 o'clock position. The open face case has one hinged cover on the back to protect the movement and the stem is at 12 o'clock. (Bonus factoid: o'clock is short for "of the clock.")
Hunter cases are usually opened by slightly depressing a button on the end of the stem. And unlike how every old movie shows someone closing a hunter-style pocket watch with a loud snap that is not how it's done. You should press the little button again, close the case, and release the button. Snapping it shut causes the cover latch to wear quickly; too soon you've got a case that won't stay closed.
My preference is for the open face version--it's easy to use! Ease of use is important when it's 2 A.M. and you're feeling a little tired, believe me.The wrist watch form is easy, too, but those are designed for right-handed people. If you're a "righty" and doubt that, try doing what a "lefty" does. Wear your watch on your right arm and try to wind it (or adjust the time) using your left hand. See?
