Understanding the Parts and Terminology of a Pocket Watch!
Are you familiar with all parts of a pocket watch you keep? Your answer is probably “No”. Most often you know about watch dial. But do you know bezel? Or crown? Or Case?
Okay don’t worry. Most of the people in the world pick watch without knowing about the different parts of a watch.
Sometimes it is not necessary to keep knowledge about the parts of a watch. But when you are going to collect a new watch, knowledge about these parts will help you to understand its features, functions and material.
Besides, you would be able to discuss clearly with the retail guy or repairman if you have the knowledge about the parts of a pocket watch. On the other hand, if you are a watch seller or a watch repairman. Then you must familiar with all the basic parts of a timepiece.
A timepiece is a complex composition of more than hundred components. With designing and rearranging all these parts a craftsmen produce a masterpiece.
Anatomy of a Pocket Watch
For better efficiency, we would not be discussing about all the parts of pocket watch. We discuss only the basic parts. Which provide you a quality knowledge. Here we discuss about 12 basic terms and terminology you need to know about pocket watch. Most of these parts also present in a wrist watch.
Dial
Dial is the first thing that people notice when they hold a watch. It is the watch face that show time. This is a common part of both wrist watch and pocket watch.
In digital watch dial, you see time through decimal digit either 12 hour or 24 hour. On the other hand, analog watch display time with hour markers and hands. We will discuss more about hour markers and hands later of this article.
It is the most impressive parts of pocket watch. Craftsmen create different types of watch dial with different colors, materials, styles and textures.
Bezel
The watch bezel refers to the ring that encircles the watch dial. It ensures a safe place to crystal. Surely, you do not know about crystal. We will face it later.
Depending on styles watch bezel can be plain, decorative or functional. Also, bezel can be fixed or rotating.
Tachymeter, GMT (Common things about GMT Watch), Diving, Countdown, and Count-up are the most common watch bezel time.
Case
Case is another important parts of watch both for pocket and wrist watch. It is also known as the house of a watch. Producer use plastic, ceramic or metal as case material. Sometimes we also see to use gold, silver or stainless steel as case material in luxury watches.
Case holds the inner parts of watch just like our skin holds the inner parts of our body. Sometimes, craftsmen shows their skill one watch case to give a stylish look. Case of a watch can be matte, smooth, polished or among others.
Crystal
Do you remember that we have mentioned crystal in the dial part above? Okay, Crystal is another important part of a watch. It refers to the transparent material that covers the face of a watch. Crystal allows you to see time. Besides, showing time it also protect watch’s hands and hour marker. Crystal can be made of plastic, glass or synthetic sapphire. Uses of sapphire crystal are increasing day by day for its durability and scratch resistivity.
Crown
Crown is the tiny knob on the side of your watch. It is used for winding mechanical watch or to stop watch for battery saving in battery powered watched. You can also set your time using crown. You can find some sub crowns or pushers on your watch for more functional works.
Hands
Hands and hour markers of a watch do the actual job to show time in analog watch. In fact without hands there is no use of your analog watch. Hands look like a stick. Most often you can find three different hands in an analog watch. These three hands used to indicate hour, minute and second.
Hour indicating hand is smallest among them. It runs slowly. On the other hand second indicating hand is thinnest and longest.
Hour Markers
The actual labels from 1 to 12 or 12 indexes of analog watch are the hour markers. Craftsmen use different types of watch indices such as Arabic numbers, Roman numbers or simple dot or single line as hour marker.
Bow
Bow is different from all the above parts. Because all the above parts of watch are present in both wrist and pocket watch. But bow is the parts of pocket watch only. Bow is the part of pocket watch through which you can hang it with pocket or tied it to protect loss.
That’s all for today. I hope now your knowledge about parts of a pocket watch is more than the 90% people of the world. Craftsmen design different types of watches with the combination of these parts.