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Has anyone ever had to deal with one of their watches being magnetized? What is the fix for this...Can a watch become unmagnatized all of a sudden?:think:
I know enough about this to be dangerous...but here goes. :-Sbleddrewsoe said:Has anyone ever had to deal with one of their watches being magnetized? What is the fix for this...Can a watch become unmagnatized all of a sudden?:think:
Ray, I had a Unitas watch for a few months that had been consistantly -8 secs per day that all of a sudden was running 1 hour fast per day which led me to believe that the watch got magnetized. It was like this for a week before mysteriosly going back to normal...Ray MacDonald said:I know enough about this to be dangerous...but here goes. :-S
Generally strong magnetic fields affect watches by magnetizing the balance spring. Most watches today have antimagnetic shielding to prevent this happening. Have you been wearing your watch while getting an MRI or working with one?
The balance spring getting magnetized usually results in poor timekeeping and you have to send the watch to a service center where they can take it apart and degauss it. It won't spontaneously demagnetize itself once magnetized.
But this hardly ever happens today. It was a big problem in the 1940s-1950s when railroad engineers had their old pocket watches and started driving diesels with huge electric motors.
Can you give a few more symptoms or reasons why you think your watch may be magnetized. Gold watches are a bit more susceptible to magnetizing.
Could be just a bit of dirt or sticky oil in the balance pivots that took the watch out of beat and then got rubbed away. Or maybe the balance spring got a little out of whack due to gravity. I have a Waltham wind-up that gains 15 minutes a day in the dial-up position but runs fine when I wear it. You could ask your watchmaker to check it out on a timing machine when you next get it serviced.bleddrewsoe said:Ray, I had a Unitas watch for a few months that had been consistantly -8 secs per day that all of a sudden was running 1 hour fast per day which led me to believe that the watch got magnetized. It was like this for a week before mysteriosly going back to normal...
I do not believe that the watch came into contact with any strong magnetic fields, but that was the only explanation that made sense to me...:think:
Thanks for the suggestion. I don't have one of those either but do have a de-magnetizer coming in the mailYou can use this kind of old soldering iron to demagnetise
Very unlikely.Can an airport x-ray magnetize a watch, since you have to put it through the machine?