You have nothing to worry about, the reason they say don't change the date after 9pm is because the Date wheel might not change over around midnight. But doing that will not have an adverse effect on your watch working properly as far as keeping time.

 

That is not quite true, and sometimes you can do damage ...

 

if your date and day are changing on their own, I'm sure everything is OK.

 

Agreed, the concern is that the date mechanism gets messed up. This is a good practice on almost any automatic watch. Had a Breitling AD trash a new $4000 watch because they set the date at 8:30 at night when I bought it without cycling it around. The date did not change after they did this. Luckily they took it back and replaced it with a new watch. This proved to me you can really mess things up by not doing this and that it is not an urban legend. If everything is working correctly on your watch consider yourself lucky. :-!

 

Thanks, all, for putting my mind at ease. :-!

 

What if the watch is digital?

 

o|

 

It sounds silly and anal, but my method of setting my watches is this, usually starting with a stopped (wound down) watch:

1.Pull the crown and advance the watch a full day, passing midnight and stopping at noon.
2. Adjust the day and date to "yesterday"
3. Advance the watch through midnight, changing the day and date to "today"
4. Set correct time.
5. Shake gently in hand a couple minutes to start running
6. Wear!


Seems silly (even typing it), but it assures that the watch is set correctly, both AM/PM and with no damage to the mechanism.

 

It sounds silly and anal, but my method of setting my watches is this, usually starting with a stopped (wound down) watch:

1.Pull the crown and advance the watch a full day, passing midnight and stopping at noon.
2. Adjust the day and date to "yesterday"
3. Advance the watch through midnight, changing the day and date to "today"
4. Set correct time.
5. Shake gently in hand a couple minutes to start running
6. Wear!

Seems silly (even typing it), but it assures that the watch is set correctly, both AM/PM and with no damage to the mechanism.

Sounds like a good plan, Mr. BarnStormer! That's what I do, too! Except I set it at 9 a.m. and adjust the day/date to yesterday.

 

9pm-4am is where the both date/day wheel gets engage with the 12midnight wheel. I heard it is fine if one accidentally changes the date or day once of twice but if it is done often within 9-4 range,one of the wheels or mechanism will get damage and require to replace and recalibrate again. Just my 2cts... ...

 

I've accidentaly done it before and felt a nice, loud grind

 

This thread got to be a sticky! Being a noob, I didn't know this & I am not sure if I've already messed up any of my new possessions. They are working good, so far so I might be safe.

However I've got a question.
How does one know that the time showing in on a NEW watch is PM or AM? What if it is showing 9:30hrs and you think it's 9:30PM on the watch & therefore the date will change in 3.5hours but it then doesn't because it infact was 9:30AM in the watch?

So a safe interpretation is that the date on any watch should not be changed IF the time shown is between 9:00 & 4:00...AM or PM doesn't matter......ofcourse if you know for SURE what cycle the watch is running and it's not the date changing cycle then it's cool to change.

 

If you don't know, just wind the minutes/hours forward through 12 o'clock instead of changing the date directly.

 

It's a Seiko...it'll live.

 

I guess the conventional thinking is, if you are going to be setting a watch, you are probably doing it in the morning or during the day, outside of 9pm-3am. And generally that if you are going out between 9pm-3am the watch would already be running. I mean it makes sense on some levels. But we like to tinker. I'm usually awake for 9pm-3am (I'm usually going to bed around 3am) so I find myself wanting to maybe set a watch at night and wear it to bed to get it winding. But the 'conventional wisdom' takes over, and I really don't NEED to set and wear it til the morning anyway. We're weird people, watch people.

 

9-4, lol a total of 7 hours to change date and day, i have a graham, and it was 10-2 and i thought that was bad

 

I'm a bit more respectful of my Seikos that I own now as opposed to the Fossils I owned 5 years ago... but I know when I used to change the date arbitrarily on those Fossils (all battery op, of course), I would occasionally hear a couple pretty audible clicks/clunks/tinks when mucking with the date around midnight. I would do this at night, say before going to bed, on those nights at the end of the month when you adjust for 28/30/31 days. Nothing ever broke, but you could definitely hear something going on.

 

I made the same mistake on my SPB001. Didn't hear any grinding/clunking noises. The date/day work fine. I won't be making that mistake again though.

 

I used to observe the 10-2 o'clock limit on day/date changes on my watches Until I did a day/date change on 9:30 on a watch that was newly serviced. Apparently, the day/date changeover was moved a bit earlier by my watchmaker and ka-pow, i ruined my day/date change mech.

I now do it the long way as described earlier.

 

Out of curiosity I must ask this: my watch is set currently to U. S. time (eastern standard), but I'm traveling to Asia where it's ahead by 13 hours. In other words, 9pm becomes 10am and 4am becomes 5pm. So does the 9 to 4 rule in this case eastern standard time or Asian time?

 

Think about that for a moment...

Your watch has no idea what time zone it's in. It is set and running on it's own internal 24 hour cycle, unless you change it.

 

If I'm wearing a watch that has run down to dead, I:
1. Unscrew the crown to the time setting position
2: Advance the time until the date changes over to the next day
3: Set the correct time (usually between 6am and 7am as I'm getting ready to leave)
4: Set the correct date

I've never had a problem

 

after been bitten by the seiko bug, i am fortunate to have a lot of seiko automatics now... i don't have a winder so keeping them all wound is quite difficult:-d
so when adjusting the time, i do what has already been posted...
1. unscrew the crown
2. adjust the date to "yesterday"
3. adjust the hour/minutes till it becomes "today"
4. adjust the time
5. give it a good shake ;-)
no problems so far... ;-)

 

How would you know what 'cycle' is, am/pm?

 

Pull out your crown and move it forward until you see the date/day change...then you're in the am. The danger is not so much with setting the time forward, but rather with setting the day date using the quick-set method once the gears for the day/date mechanism have been engaged in the changing process. That will grind and break the mechanism.

 

I always use the quick day/date and set everything to "yesterday".
Then just roll the time around so everything changes to "today" and then just set the time accordingly.
Been using this method for years on every watch I've ever had with no issues.

If the day/date are going through their changes, then I just roll the whole time forward a few hours first to force them to change, then set correct day/date/time as above.

 

I always use the quick day/date and set everything to "yesterday".
Then just roll the time around so everything changes to "today" and then just set the time accordingly.
Been using this method for years on every watch I've ever had with no issues.

If the day/date are going through their changes, then I just roll the whole time forward a few hours first to force them to change, then set correct day/date/time as above.

It's correct to do the opposite. Roll the time forward first and set the time to one where you are certain that it's not during "the forbidden time", and then use the quick set. Reason being, using your method, if you happen to pick the watch up at 10:00 not knowing whether it's am/pm (when it's not yet evident that the date change is engaged, although it in fact is) and just quick set the date before checking, you may ruin your date change mechanism. Before anything, the time should be rolled forward past 12 to see whether you're in the am or pm. I've seen and replaced many a movement that's messed up by improper setting. The most common effect being that the date will change regularly during most of the calendar month, and then get stuck up on one date..where the error was made.

 

It's curious as I have an old Omega, '75 model, and since I did not know about this issue, I changed a million times the date/time, in any hour the watch was... It;'s an automatic with no more than 30-35h power reserve, so this occured quite often... And it works perfectly (ok.. maybe 30s-1min faster/day) with no service or regulation at all, all these years.

My father received it when he got married, and he passed it to me 5-6 years ago... I have plans to refurbish it, service, etc, but since it is very small for todays standards, I think my wife will be glad to have it, on some black croc or something..

But I never took special care for changing de date, and nothing happened.

 

Either you just got away being plain lucky or they made better quality mechanisms in the yester years ;-)

 

Don't know if this has been covered here but I've heard and practice changing the date, quartz or automatic, between 08:00 and 12 noon.

 

I've changed the date on a variety of quartz watches at all hours of the day. Never a single issue or problem with the quartz watches.