WatchTime New York, America’s luxury watch event, kicks off tomorrow at Gotham Hall! In addition to the 20-plus watch brands exhibiting their latest and greatest timepieces at the show, attendees will have a chance to check out watch winders from Wolf, a 182-year-old British purveyor of luxury leather goods.
Wolf watch winders — which are known for their fusion of leather, wood, glass, and steel — keep your automatic watches wound during extended periods when they’re not on your wrist. They work on a 24-hour cycle, with six-hour periods of intermittent activity followed by “sleep” periods that allow the tension in the watches’ mainsprings to ease. This system, the company says, means that a watch stored in a Wolf winder will never be over-wound. In all, an owner can choose 50 different cycles that combine various factors, including direction of rotation and number of turns per day, from 300 to 1,200. The winders also have a power-reserve function that allows a pause, from six up to 72 hours, before the start of the rotation cycles. All Wolf winders come with multi-country A/C plug adaptors and run on both alkaline and lithium batteries.
The technology inside the winders combines computer technology with an easy-to-use interface. The direct-drive gear box is sealed and quiet. The completed turns of the rotating drums are counted by a quartz eye. The drums themselves, along with their housings, are over 75 mm in diameter and thus can accommodate just about any watch size, while the lock-in cuffs prevents the timepieces from falling out. All the parts, except for the Japanese Mabuchi motor, are assembled in-house, and each winder is covered by a worldwide two-year limited liability warranty. Prices range from $179 for a single-watch winder to $3,000 for an eight-watch winder (pictured.)
