Hi,

I haven't really been following this thread but here are a couple of things I thought I might lob to see where they land...

Have folks with new watches fully wound the watch? With most automatics you can sense when the watch is wound because of the very slight occasional click when you've reached maximum. Maybe about 30-40 winds from scratch. A new watch that is just put on the wrist won't be fully wound and the rate will vary quite a bit. When fully wound, an automatic will regain the amount of winding it loses overnight pretty quickly next morning.

A second thing to check is whether you are consistent with how the watch rests overnight. Watchmakers refer to 6 positions: dial up, dial down, crown up, crown down, crown left (as it faces you) and crown right. Because of the deployant most will probably be leaving the watch crown up overnight. Position will typically only make a few seconds difference per day but it might be another source of variation.

If your watch spends much the same time off the wrist overnight and is worn throughout the day then you can track the rate more accurately. When I've done this I have tracked the time first thing each mornning before the watch has been worn much.

Mine was pretty constant around +8 seconds crown up or dial up for about a week. It dropped to +6 once or twice but it was actually very steady. I haven't bothered checking it lately.

Reading David's post above, I just realized a potentially critical difference in the way I have been storing my watch overnight.

A couple weeks ago I bought a new strap and since it had a normal buckle, I have been storing the watch dial up all that time. I just put a clasp on it last night though, so starting last night, it is back to crown up.

I will be interested to see if I go back to being slightly fast, rather than slightly slow.

When I pick my watch up in the morning I make sure to give it about 20 turns. I also store it DU in the presentation box for the lack of a better place. My watch has been very consistent at +8. I haven't yet attempted to adjust it.

One last report on mine. It has now been 34 days since I last synchronized it and I am 36 seconds slow. That is 1.06 secs/day slow...for the record.

That's pretty amazing! I guess it's largely luck whether a standard movement will have such spot-on regulation but quite a few ETA movements seem to have quite a constant rate even if they are a few seconds faster or slower. It seems that the folks here who have regulated their watches are getting pretty good results as well.

I once read a post suggesting that you should regulate with an ideal of 1-2 seconds fast to allow for inevitable changes over the months (seasons? temperatures? wear and tear? lubrication? does anyone know any more about this?).