In Part One, we went over the importance of winding a watch, how the mainspring worked, and the basics of the internal components of a mechanical watch.  Remember, cheap watches and expensive watches alike have the same internal components, it is only the quality of said components that separates the two categories of watches from each other.

As you can recall, the mainspring is stored with a lot of potential energy from the winding of the watch, and it slowly releases kinetic energy in order to make the watch function.  However, without further control, there would be no stable rate of release and the watch would be completely useless.  That is why a device known as a “motion works” is necessary in all mechanical watches.

A motion works essentially interprets the energy being released by the mainspring and converts it in to something that you can visually interpret, which is represented via the hands on a watch.  The motion works is set up so that for every twelve revolutions of the minute hand, there is one revolution of the hour hand.  This makes sense, because it takes twelve hours for the hour hand to get all the way around the clock.  In addition, the motion works is actually what makes the hour and minute hands move.  The precise control is managed by the gearing of the motion works and by another part called the escapement.

The escapement is an important part of managing the energy flow of the mainspring.  It consists of an escape wheel, pallet and fork, and balance assembly, which includes a number of small parts including a balance wheel.  Altogether, the escapement ensures the accuracy of the watch, and a properly adjusted escapement can keep time very accurately, only going off a second or two per day.  Of course, this adds up and over a month or two the watch may be behind by a minute, which is why it is important to adjust the time on your watch occasionally to counter this imperfection.

This only takes in to account some of the mechanisms needed for keeping time.  If the watch has other features added, such as a calendar, then there are other parts that are necessary to make this function as well.  As watches become more and more complex, so will the internal machinery, which means watchmakers will have a continuous amount of new information to learn if they want to keep up with the industry.

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