Minute hands and second hands are usually de-coupled (or is it a friction fit? Archer would know) when you pull the crown into the setting position, right? So all you'd have to do is align your minute hand properly when you re-sync the watch (or pull it up to the minute with a watch that doesn't hack). I created a topic about this quite a number of weeks ago...

The inaccurate minute for an accurate minute | WatchUSeek Watch Forums

That being said, if you're talking about 'minute hands and hour hands', that's a totally different scenario. Those are generally linked all the time, and the only way to get them to sync up is to have a watchmaker take them off the pinions and reposition them correctly. Then you also have to deal with specific movements having 'play' between the wheels. Then you have to deal with dials that are not perfectly executed (vintage has this problem a lot); in this scenario, even if the gearing is perfect, the dial isn't so sometimes the hand will land directly on a plot and in other sections of the dial it'll be early or late.

Did you mean 'hour' hands?

 

Minute hands and second hands are usually de-coupled when you pull the crown into the setting position, right? So all you'd have to do is align your minute hand properly when you re-sync the watch (or pull it up to the minute with a watch that doesn't hack). I created a topic about this quite a number of weeks ago...

The inaccurate minute for an accurate minute | WatchUSeek Watch Forums

That being said, if you're talking about 'minute hands and hour hands', that's a totally different scenario. Those are generally linked, and the only way to get them to sync up is to have a watchmaker take them off the pinions and reposition them.

Did you mean 'hour' hands?

Thanks for the link to your post. I guess my search words were misaligned as well.

I did mean minutes hands.

Many thanks.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

You need to manually align the minute and seconds hands when you set the time. They aren't rigidly tied together like the minute and hour hand are.

Ever notice how when you set the time, the minute and hour hands move, but seconds hand doesn't fly around in circles like a helicopter rotor as the minute hand is rapidly move ahead or backwards? That's because the cannon pinion is a friction fit and acts like a sort of clutch between the wheel that drives the minute and hour hands and the wheel that drives the seconds hand.

 

A pet peeve of mine ... On a couple of high end watches as well .

 

I will echo the statements above that minute-second hand alignment is up to the person setting the time on the watch, not a defect. It’s misaligned because you are not aligning them when setting the time.

 

Sounds like I need to work on my aligning technique.

Once aligned, any idea on how long they should stay aligned?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

As long as I can get my seconds hand within +/- 5 seconds of perfect alignment when setting the time, then I'm happy. It can be difficult to get it smack dab perfect, especially if there's noticable gear slack. Also, if the minutes hand doesn't come to a sharp point, or doesn't extend all the way to the minutes markers, that can make it more challenging to eyeball the alignment properly.

 

It's been said. You set the seconds hand by pushing the crown in at the right time. If your watch is slow or fast, that seconds had will need re-setting.

 

Once the crown is pushed in, the seconds and minutes hands are slaved together in a fixed gear ratio. Any drift will be due to whatever small errors there may be due to tolerances, which will be so small that it will take months to be enough to notice. Doesn't matter if your watch runs fast or slow.

 

Funny story, when I first bought my Snowflake, I was really upset when I noticed that the seconds and minute hand were misaligned on such a nice quality timepiece, how dare Grand Seiko get that wrong!

I later realized that the SA who set the time did it “wrong”, now that I set it myself, everything aligns perfectly.

To your question about how long it will last… I think I went 90 days and everything remained exactly in place. Though the GS is a lot more “positive” in locking feeling than other watches.

My Speedmaster Auto is the worst, it’s got a lot of play, the minute hand can be “backed down” or “pushed forward” into position, and one is more likely to line up than the other, sometimes I set it again a few times until I get it right… I’m mildly obsessive about these little details.

 

Thank you all for commenting.

I just reset the UN Dual Time. Stopped the watch when the seconds hand was straight up 00:00. Then moved the minute hand to point to the appropriate minute marker. Pushed in the crown and voila!

Now 20 minutes in and the hands are synchronized better than an Olympic Synchronized Swim team.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Now 20 minutes in and the hands are synchronized better than an Olympic Synchronized Swim team.

That's not aligned!
The bezel and markers are off, and your minute hand is even further. Needs more practice!

 

Never heard of seconds hand drifting out of sequence to the minute hand. Could be an issue with the canon pinion but I thought that was only with older watches.

 

Do you wait for the seconds hand to hit zero and align the minute hand at an exact minute when you push in the crown?

 

I let the seconds hand align with 00:00 and pulled out the crown. Then aligned the minutes hand with 00:00. Now all aligned .. pushed in the crown.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I heard once that, when setting the time, going beyond the desired time by approx. 5 minutes and then going backwards to the desired time would more accurately align the seconds and minutes hand when the crown was pushed back in. Mechanically it makes sense, the gearing is working "backwards" when advancing the time via the crown, so gear backlash would tend to misalign the hands. More importantly, it's worked setting all my watches, so it passes the real world test too.

 

Hacking watch?

I pull the crown when the second hand is at 12, put the minute hand on the appropriate marker, and at the hack, push the crown in. If I’m sloppy about it (I.e. a slight turn of the crown as I push), I can get some misalignment, but otherwise this always seems to go pretty well.

 

Getting the minute and second hand perfectly synced can be challenging, but what makes it almost impossible is if you are dealing with a movement with a lot of slop in the geartrain. My Grand Seiko is head and shoulders the best watch I've ever set in this regard. The crown/hands action in terms of its steadiness and rock-solid feel is 100% spot on. Zero slop. This makes the GS trivial to set up correctly.

With watches like the Seiko Astron, you don't need to synchronise the second/minute hand because those are already locked and driven by separate motors.

 

I haven’t seen any posts on this topic. So here goes:

I have several automatic watches (e.g. Ulysse Nardin, VC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, etc.) whose minutes and seconds hands are misaligned. What I mean is when the minutes hand is straight up at 12, I would expect the seconds hand to reach straight up 12 at the same time.

The seconds hands all seem to reach anywhere from 10 seconds to 15 seconds past straight up 12. All are less than 4 years old. The two that are closest to being aligned are a Yachtmaster and a Sinn 857.

Maybe this is being too picky and is in the same realm as being within +\- 2 seconds per day accuracy.

Anyone else notice this?

Thanks in advance.

Somehow I don't understand the problem. You can determine the alignment of the minute hand yourself via the crown. If, due to the inevitable manufacturing tolerances, the seconds and minute hands are not perfectly aligned, then this "problem" can easily be solved by allowing the minute hand to "overshoot" a bit when setting the watch and then turning it back to the desired time.
Example: You want to set the watch to 10:45 and pull the crown to the setting position when the second hand is exactly at 12. Then turn the crown until the minute hand is at approximately 10:50. Then turn the crown backwards until you have set the desired time 10:45 and the minute hand is correctly positioned. When your reference watch now shows 10:45, you push the crown in and your watch starts and should have no offset between the seconds and minute hands because the gears are aligned. By the way, I've been setting my watches this way for decades and have yet to find any misalignment between the minute and second hands.

… but maybe I'm too dumb to grasp the original problem.

 

I'm reading all this and think "You guys have never heard of hacking a watch?"

I have noticed that my ETA based watches are sometimes up to a half minute despite my best efforts. My Sub has been perfect, despite having to hack it only a few times in the three months of ownership (Mon, I put five seconds back on after a week and a half's running).

 

Nothing to worry about, I don't stare at my watch and only look at it to tell the time, watching the hands progress around the dial is only for as long as what serves to make sure it is still running and not whether the gear trains are totally synchronised. However I do expect at say midday that hour and minute hands both point at 12.

 

I think it’s important not only that the watch keeps accurate time, but that the dial, hands and markers display the time accurately and legibly as well. A precise gear train setting mechanism helps enormously with this, too.

I’ve been shocked at how many expensive watches fail at this task. To me, those items are the basics of good timekeeping.

 

Sorry, what are you "shocked" about? That some watches are less legible - in your opinion - than others?

This thread was quite a read. It drifted from cannon pinion discussions to hacking to accuracy, and now legibility. The possibilities are endless

 

Never had this problem and I honestly don't even understand how it is possible, once you set the time having perfectly aligned the hands it has to stay perfectly aligned period, there are gears under the hood, it's not like there's any chance that they can jump granted they're not broken or something like that.

 

I have to adjust some of mine on rare occasions, but unless it is really noticeable, I can live with it as long as the time is correct.

 

I had this in purchasing a new watch - it required removing the minute hand and realigning with both hands at 12, plus tightening in case that caused the issue. Second hands you can fix yourself while setting hours and minutes!