Here at SwissWatchExpo, we do a couple of different things for our customers.
The one thing that we want to know more about for all of our customers is how you interact
with your watch.
Oftentimes, you give us a call and ask us how do we set the GMT function on any watch.
I’ve picked the Rolex explorer because this is the most historical piece, and as you can
see I picked the Rolex book with the original Rolex Explorer and the orange hour hand.
Now I've also picked the same similar modern version from our case.
This is the Rolex Explorer II, 42 millimeter.
Now, what do we want to do with this watch today?
We want to set the time.
So, one of the things that I always want folks to see is that this crown screws in and down
against the watch to keep it water-resistant.
In order to set the time, wind the watch, or any other function, simply unscrew the
crown towards you this way towards the six, that unscrews that crown.
You will know that it's in the winding position because when you push on this crown, it's
got a little bit of a springiness, and if you notice there's a little just the slightest
amount of springiness on that.
That’s the winding position.
In order to do the winding properly, you simply turn that towards the 12.
Some people elect to turn it like this, I elect to run the crown just along my finger.
There's a good callus there from over the years of winding watches.
You can see it looks like a train dragged down my finger.
It's faster, it's easier.
When you wind this watch fully you want to turn that crown towards the 12, a good solid
55 to 60 times on this watch, and pretty much on any watch, to get it fully wound from a
dead stop.
That’s because most people when they turn this crown, it doesn't go around one full
revolution, it only goes around probably half to three-quarters of a turn.
Therefore you're only actually turning this crown about 30 times.
You cannot overwind an automatic watch.
This is not a manual wind watch.
So a manual wind watch does not have a clutch, it can be overwhelmed and it can break the
spring.
This is not one of those watches.
Now one of the other things that you should notice, is the orange hand is the GMT hand,
that’s the second hour hand.
So you've got your primary hour hand and your secondary hour hand.
Primary, secondary.
The orange hand only goes around this bezel one time per day - 24 hours in a day, orange
hand around the bezel one time per day.
This is important because when you set the time for your secondary time zone, you’re
observing the outside of the bezel, not what's on the inside of the watch.
So when you want to set that second time zone, you have to think to yourself, “what time
is it in the time zone in which I want to be?”
Well, let’s assume for a second that we want to set a daily time zone.
Well let’s say it's 12 o'clock in California but in your time zone it's going to be 3 o’clock.
Well, that's 1500 hours, because 12, 13, 14, 15.
Okay, and that might be confusing for a lot of people because 12 hours is noon, 3 o'clock
local time is here, why?
Because we're setting the small hand to the local time which goes around twice per day.
we're setting the secondary hand to the other time zone we want to monitor, one time per
day.
Why?
Because if you’re doing this for foreign countries, not in the USA; or if you're in
another country and you're wanting to monitor the USA's time zone, you want to make sure
that you know whether it's day or night.
On this side of the dial, you’re talking about morning to noon, noon to midnight, noon
to evening, light to dark, dark to light.
That may make sense to some people, some people have to learn it a little bit more.
It's not the easiest concept to learn until you actually start using it.
So here's what we're gonna do, let's go ahead, let's move this - I want to move this orange
hand around the dial because I want you to observe exactly what happens when we go to
set the GMT time.
Now you'll notice the date.
We don’t know right now, based on any evidence on this dial, whether it's day or night.
Let’s check and see if the date is going to change, if the date changes we know it's
midnight.
So let’s do that.
Again, we're monitoring the hour - local, not the orange - in order to change the day.
So this, that's the local hour hand, it’s 11 o'clock now it's getting ready to pass
the 12.
Does that change?
Yes it does, changes to the 16.
Now we know that that's midnight local time.
We want to set this hour hand to noon in the time zone which we want to monitor.
Great, let's do that.
That's noon.
Hour hand pointing at 12:00 on the bezel, minute hand pointing at 12:00 on the local
time dial.
Now that might seem a little confusing because now that hour hand here is out of whack.
We'll fix that really quickly.
Push that crown back in, pull it out just a little bit one notch - it’s a little bit
finicky to find, don't worry about it.
You do it a couple times you'll figure it out.
You can feel this small click, it’s a very slight click.
When you do that, you can notice now all your moving is your local hour hand.
One other thing to note, if you want to change that 16 to 15 because you've gone past it
just simply roll it back around the dial.
Maybe it’s the 14th where you want, or the 15th.
You see that?
That’s how you change the date.
But let's say it's the 16th.
That’s midnight, went back past midnight, now it's 16.
Now, noon Pacific time, we want local time to be Eastern Standard Time.
So it's 3 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, so we're moving this hour hand past noon.
See when I passed the 12:00 no date change, that’s how you know it's noon, local time.
You're gonna simply point that hour hand at the 3.
Your orange hand still indicates Pacific Standard Time which is in 12:00.
I hope that makes it a little bit more clear.
Easy to understand for any GMT watch.
Now to be clear, we want this watch to stay water-resistant.
Push this crown all the way back in, all the way back in, and then turn it towards the
12:00 - one single motion - in towards the 12, lock the crown down.
It’s set.
Now you're monitoring three o’clock local time and noon Pacific Standard Time.
That's how you set virtually any GMT with an outside bezel like this, but especially
a Rolex Explorer GMT or any other GMT similarly.
SwissWatchExpo.com for any further information.