I've had this watch for 2 years nearly.

I've been wearing it all day and just noticed the power reserve hand is reducing in power not increasing and I'm fairly sure I can't hear the rotor move.

After a day's constant use I always liked to see how the PR was being 'topped up' throughout the day.

I fear the rotor is stuck! An email to CW in the morning I think. Urrrghh!! This will be the second time it's been back if I believe there is a fault. The first time it just stopped altogether and was repaired under warranty.

I am sure someone who owns these watches will chime in but a couple of questions.

Where did the power level start? How much are you really moving?

The way I would test this would be to wind it up to full by hand and then wear it to see if it still loses power. The reason I would do this is because in these twin barrel movements there is a tendency for the autowinding system to not be as efficient as it should be. They are completely adequate to keep the watch topped up but not efficient enough to wind it from 0 unless you are exceedingly active (way beyond normal wear). The Oris cal 400 suffers from this too. People were taking the watch off after wearing it all day and not getting 5 days of PR out of it. The reason is that the winding system isn't efficient enough to top it off from a low wind level. There is a good video by a watchmaker explaining what happens (PROWATCHES on YouTube).

On the movement question I only ask because this will make a huge difference. The rotor probably needs to make 2000 complete revolutions to fully wind it if not more. That is a whole lot of movement.

Not saying there isn't an issue but testing it using the method above will tell you for certain.

Thank you for the detailed reply. I'll run your test and see what happens.

I think what I notice it's a change to what I'd been used to with the power reserve and that I can't hear the rotor.

You're right for me run it as you suggest and I'll report back

Good luck! That will tell you for certain. It should stay topped up if everything is running as it should.

I am actually wearing a watch with a PR (not CW). I have been wearing it for about 2.5 days, and the PR is now at about half of the standard 38-40hrs. I've been fairly sedentary over the time, and I'm not surprised. It's now lost 4secs in total, but I know it would lose more as the PR drops, so I just rewound it. On that basis it would probably have got to 5 days or so before stopping.

Sorry to hear you've got an issue with your SH21 Rich; if I may chime in (sorry, wrong watch ) with a few pointers.

Since noticing that the PR is not increasing as you expect with daily wear, have you undone the crown and tried to wind it?

The reason I ask, is that it is possible (on rare occasions) for the Click Spring to fail, which can happen on any Automatic watch, and it will not then power up with the rotor. The tell tale for Click Spring failure is, once you've unscrewed the crown, if you let go of it the watch will unwind itself with the crown rotating anti-clockwise of its own accord.

May I stress this is rare and can happen to any automatic, but it is possible.

PS> Basic replacement time for a Click Spring is about 15 minutes.


As to the winding habits of the lesser spotted SH21 Automatic, I own / have owned five different models over the years; I currently have two.

Early on I had two C60 Trident Mk2 SH21, one being the white dial / black bezel LE the other a black dial / red bezel, 1 of 32 parts bin special. They didn't have a PR dial but I could wear them for a single reasonably active day and they would charge up to four and a bit days worth of power (tested by then seeing when they stopped sat in a watch box).

I then had a C60 Apex, bought new a few years ago and sold a couple of months back. This was always slow to charge up with power, generally getting +1 day's PR per 1 day's wear i.e. I'd need to wear it for five days to reach full PR. By the way, I don't like hand winding Automatic watches, preferring to wear them from stopped until they are running, then setting the day/date/time.

A C60 Concept entered my collection just on a year ago. This, somewhat like my Apex has been slow, but not as slow, to wind, generally taking two and a half to three days to reach full PR; seen by how tightly the main springs in the barrels are wound.

Last up, I was fortunate to acquire a C65 SH21 LE, like yours, from Steve / @Welshlad a couple of months ago. This, like my C60 Trident Mk2s, will power up to full in a day and a bit of wear, then remain fully powered at 5-days with continued wear.


My final point & suggestion, albeit with no scientific evidence of being valid, is to let the watch run down and stop. Then wear it, avoiding hand winding, for as long as is necessary to power it up to 5 days. Kind of like resetting a computer.

Guy

^^^ Thank you for the information.

Here's a picture taken just before 11am this morning showing the power running down (from 3 days) overnight as I would have expected. I've wound it by hand to full power now and will wear it to see if it remains there or starts to run down and then I'll take it off to let it run out of power and see what happens next weekend.

I've pulled the (non screw down) out and it didn't unwind so there doesn't appear to be a fault there.

My belief is that the rotor isn't winding and the tests suggested here will help to show that. The watch is keeping good time at least! It doesn't have an exhibition caseback either so it's not a quick look to see if that rotor is moving or not.

I hand-wound the watch to full power a few minutes after 11 this morning and have worn it ever since and you'll see the power hand now showing a lower power reserve consistent with the 4 hours since I wound it.

I would have expected it to remain absolutely fully charged leading me to think as suspected the auto-wind is at fault.

On the plus side I still have over 4 days of power in what is effectively now a hand-wound watch!

RichM wrote: ↑Fri Nov 11, 2022 4:54 pm I hand-wound the watch to full power a few minutes after 11 this morning and have worn it ever since and you'll see the power hand now showing a lower power reserve consistent with the 4 hours since I wound it.

I would have expected it to remain absolutely fully charged leading me to think as suspected the auto-wind is at fault.

On the plus side I still have over 4 days of power in what is effectively now a hand-wound watch!



20221111_154833.jpg

I would also expect it to still be topped up. Does appear that something has gone amiss with the auto winding system.

^^^ Yeah, I really think the rotor is stuck. I've compared it with a couple of other autos and you can hear reasonably clearly the rotor swinging and there's nothing to hear with the C65.

With this test over the past 24 hours I'm sure that's the problem.

Gutted to hear this Rich especially as it was repaired before mate.
It does sound like the automatic winding system has failed

^^^ Thanks MiniMpi. I've just checked and it was June last year when it just stopped.

That was repaired under warranty and I'm hoping that will be the case again.

Seems mine is one of the more fragile SH21 movements. I still love it though!

RichM wrote: ↑Fri Nov 11, 2022 7:16 pm ^^^ Thanks MiniMpi. I've just checked and it was June last year when it just stopped.

That was repaired under warranty and I'm hoping that will be the case again.

Seems mine is one of the more fragile SH21 movements. I still love it though!

There is also warranty on the repair done before too so hopefully either way it will be fixed for good this time.

Sorry to hear this seems like a winding rotor issue… hopefully it can be resolved under warranty

I noticed mine does take a fair while to wind, even when wearing all day. For the last year, I’ve kept it on a Barrington watch winder, having given it a full wind. It winds for 12 hours (few minutes followed by rest then repeats) then rests for 12 hours. Doing this it remains fully wound

Good luck with the repair…

Out of curiosity what do you have the TPD set to? The Barrington website lists the C60 Abyss SH21 as 750 tpd and that seems low to me.