BASIC WATCH COMPONENTS

(A) Crown – This is the knob used to set and wind a watch. It is located at 3 O’clock on a normal watch, but it is most often at 12 O’clock on Vortic’s watches because they are powered by pocket watch movements.

(B) Lugs – Lugs come in many shapes and sizes, but they are always what the strap is attached to on the case.

(C) Case – The case houses the watch mechanism and is almost always made from metal. Vortic’s watch cases are 3D printed from metal.

(D) Dial – The face of the watch. This is the physical piece that we see from the front of the watch, usually having numerals or markers that the hands point to.

(E) Crystal – A watch crystal is the glass on the front or back of the watch that allows us to see inside the case. All of Vortic’s watches have Gorilla Glass crystals, but most watch crystals are made from mineral glass or sapphire.

(F) Hands – Watch hands point to features on the dial. They come in many shapes, sizes, and materials.

(G) Sub-Seconds Dial or Small Seconds – Many mechanical watches have a small subdial for the second hand. This is referred to as a “sub-seconds” dial or “small seconds” by many. These subdials can be located anywhere on the main dial, but Vortic’s sub-seconds dials are almost always at 6 O’clock.

(H) Strap – The band that holds the watch case to your wrist.

(I) Movement – This is the mechanism that powers the watch and regulates time. 

MECHANICAL WATCHES

A mechanical watch is powered by gears and springs. It uses calibrated motion to regulate time. The basic principle behind a mechanical watch is as follows; the user turns the crown of the watch to wind a spring (called the mainspring), and this spring puts force on the first gear in a train of gears. Similar to a transmission, this gear train uses leverage to reduce the force significantly and apply a small amount of pressure to a mechanism called the escapement. This escapement does exactly what the name suggests; it allows the energy stored in the mainspring to escape very slowly, and it regulates the release of this energy in order to turn the hands of the watch at the correct speed to keep time.

If quartz watches perform similarly to mechanical watches, then why can mechanical watches be so much more expensive? 

Mechanical watches were the only way to keep time without a clock nearby before quartz watches were invented. Mechanical watch mechanisms were some of the most advanced technology of their time, and mechanical pocket watches were in such high demand in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s that a massive industry emerged. As a result, many mechanical watches have held their value through pure historical and heritage related factors.

The major functional benefits of mechanical watches are that they never run out of battery and they are not disposable. Quality mechanical watches are made to last forever if taken care of.

There is an overwhelming variety of quality, decoration, and function that distinguishes some watches from other watches in addition to the heritage, tradition, and branding of companies responsible for building those watches. The level of precision, engineering, and detail that goes into fabricating some of the world’s most complicated mechanical watches is difficult to comprehend.