By Marc Montagne
Since the beginning of watchmaking, accuracy has always been the first thing to evaluate the overall quality of a mechanical watch. In fact, it is the easiest « thing » of a watch that you can monitor. The more precise the watch is, obviously the better it is. Although mechanical watches can’t (at least for the moment!) compete with quartz watches regarding accuracy, we are still expecting them to be precise and reliable. You might indeed want to know if the expensive mechanical watch you just acquired is actually keeping good time. And after a few months/years of wearing it, if it is still the case as many things can interfere with the accuracy like magnetism for example. It is also a good indication of when your watch should get serviced or repaired.
Those are the reasons behind Toolwatch. Toolwatch aims at being the most convenient way for measuring the accuracy of a mechanical watch. The concept is actually pretty simple : after a free sign-up, you synchronize your watch with the system then an automatic email will be sent to you after a day inviting you to come back and synchronize your watch for a second time, calculating then the actual precision of your watch. Toolwatch has also a dashboard where you can keep track of all your different watches at the same time.
Of course, you could do the maths on your own using an atomic clock for example, but Toolwatch gets rid of the maths, helps you remembering with the automatic emails and basically takes out the pain of doing the whole process manually. Moreover, the main difference with an instantaneous tool such as the traditional ones used by watchmakers is that you get an actual measure of the precision of your watch while actually wearing it. It is the accuracy of YOUR watch depending on how YOU wear it, not an instantaneous measure in a clinical lab with no context. This actually makes a great difference a mechanical watch will react differently depending on the lifestyle of its wearer.
Watchmakers compete with precision all the time. You can see it with the well-known COSC or the more recent METAS certification that Omega recently presented. It is a real marketing argument and every watch enthusiast should get an easy access to that measure.
The team behind Toolwatch released the website a few weeks ago as a side project on their leisure time while working in prestigious watch manufactures in Switzerland. As watch aficionados themselves, their main goal is to share and promote their love for fine watchmaking and precise timepieces.
For more info, please visit: toolwatch.io
MARC MONTAGNE – CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Passionate about entrepreneurship and digital, Marc decided to move to Switzerland to pursue his other passion for mechanical watches. This great interest started when he received his grandfather’s Jaeger-LeCoultre for his 20th birthday that he still wears to this day. Marc founded Toolwatch to help watch enthusiasts measuring the accuracy of their mechanical watches. You can follow Marc on Twitter and Instagram where he also shares his passion for watchmaking or the latest book he read (he can’t be caught out on Oscar Wilde).
