Hey, HODINKEE!: Why Are People So Obsessed With Reference Numbers?

I wear my automatic watch every day. Is there any degradation to the winding mechanism if I rarely, if ever, wind the watch with the crown? Should I wind it occasionally as a form of preventative maintenance? This sort of underscores just how mysterious watches are to a lot of us. Yes, there are certainly situations where prolonged inactivity isn’t good for a machine – a car left garaged for too long, for instance – but in general wear and tear in a mechanism comes from use , not disuse. Automatic winding movements can and do run for months without the owner needing to touch the crown for anything except re-setting the date and time. Not only will not winding your watch do the hand-winding system no harm, it will save wear and tear on the hand-winding gears, as well as the stem and stem tube. Wear it carefree and leave it alone. Use – not disuse – is the enemy of longevity in watch components. Let's talk about Tropic Sport straps - specifically the ones with the big holes. What's the story with big holes? Aside from looking cool, what's their purpose?! Keeping cool? I suppose you could make an argument that they’re more comfortable to wear in hot weather as your wrist has some breathing space. Tropic straps came along in the 1960s at a time when recreational diving was really starting to take off, and they were (and I guess still are) a lighter and more comfortable alternative to a metal bracelet, albeit steel bracelets have come a long way in the last 40 or 50 years. I’ve never heard a solid origin story for the name, but I’d imagine it was meant to suggest the exotic tropics where recreational scuba diving often takes place, and where wrists sweat briskly away in the afternoon heat. The perforations may have been meant to help water drain away after a dip in the drink. Nowadays, though, given how few dive watch owners actually dive, the primary purpose probably is to look cool – not unlike dive watches themselves, come to think of it. The caliber 1861 is about as classic and robust a chronograph movement as any you'll find in a modern watch. I recently purchased an Omega Speedmaster 1861. It's my first chronograph and I get a ton of enjoyment out of using the chrono function to time anything from how long I've been on my lunch break to how long my French Press has been steeping. (I'm a bit far from timing re-entry burns unfortunately.) My question is: Does using the chrono function sap extra energy from movement and decrease the power reserve? It does. Sometimes you’ll actually see two different specs for a chronograph watch – one for when the chrono’s on, and one for when it’s off. That said, under normal use you won’t notice that the complication draws additional power – even if you keep the chrono constantly switched on (which is probably not a super hot idea with the cal. 1861 , it wasn’t really designed for it) as long as you wind it up every day. If you’re really curious, you can try an experiment. Wind up the watch all the way, switch on the chrono, and let it run until it stops. When you switch the chrono off, the watch should start running again. The mainspring barrel doesn’t turn any faster when the chrono is on, but the extra friction from the chronograph train means that as the spring torque lessens, it’s apt to come to a stop sooner. One of the basic tasks when adjusting a classic lateral clutch chronograph is actually making sure the balance amplitude doesn’t drop too much when the chrono is switched on. The chronograph train’s driven off the main timekeeping train, from which it “steals” energy and in a chrono that’s out of adjustment, or close to the end of its power reserve, the balance amplitude can drop enough to adversely affect accuracy. The Rolex GMT-Master is a perfect travel watch ... unless you live in a one of a few very special timezones. As a watch lover from India, which is GMT+5:30, I cannot use any of the typical GMT watches. What options do I have? Are dual-time watches, with two sets of dials and hands, my only option? Unfortunately, I’m afraid something like a Reverso Duo is your best bet. There are a very few world time watches that show all 37 time zones, including those with a non-hour offset from GMT, but they tend to be really expensive. (Vacheron’s, in an Overseas case , will run you $37,000 right now.) By the same token, most GMT/dual time zone watches have local time hour hands that jump in one-hour increments, which means that if, like you, you’re in a time zone that’s not a full hour offset from GMT, you’re in a bit of a pickle. I have often wondered why we don’t see updates to better-known GMT watch movements which would allow the local time hour hand to be set independently of the 24-hour hand, although that would also mean figuring out how to keep the minute hand in the game. Surely somebody with a huge R&D budget and a long standing history of making GMT watches could manage it though. Rolex, say. Hey, we might even get it in two-tone. For some watches, such at the Patek Philippe ref. 1518, you've got no choice but to learn the reference numbers. Why are people obsessed with reference numbers? Surely, there’s an easier way to talk about that Double Red Sub. Full disclosure: With relatively few exceptions I have never been able to keep track of reference numbers. Sure, I can commit a few to memory (the Patek 1518, the Speedmaster CK 2998, the Submariner 6208) but when I’m at any sort of watch get-together and someone comes up to me and says, “Hey, guess what I got?? A Ref. Xxxxxxx dash xxxxxxx long alphanumeric string!! … my blood runs cold. When my kids were young, I was a full time stay-at-home dad for about four years (and I would do it again without hesitation), and there were a couple of parents I used to see in our local playground for years , whose names I forgot and whom I couldn’t ask, for obvious reasons. My block with reference numbers is really bad, though. For a guy who’s spent 20 years trying to build cred as a watch nerd’s watch nerd it’s just embarrassing. I think the reason so many people get a little obsessive about reference numbers is that a kind of insider’s lingo is part of the fun. It’s probably not the noblest impulse that enthusiast communities have but human beings have been defiling their communities by who they exclude at least as much as who they include since … well, since before there were human beings. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m no angel. I may not be able to be smug about remembering reference numbers but I still have, at least when it comes to watches, innumerable opportunities to be unbearably smug about something else. Got a question for HODINKEE? Submit it to  hey@hodinkee.com .The latest installment of our mailbag column, where we answer common (and uncommon) watch questions without judgment.h