Seiko Kinetic

I’ve just had a Seiko Kinetic gents watch brought to me because of “erratic” performance. The owner has included a note that he puts it on a watch winder when he’s not wearing it. I checked the capacitor immediately. It showed 0.56 volts. I put it on my capacitor charger for an hour, after which it indicated 1.65 volts. Conclusion? It appears the capacitor is not the problem. Does anyone have success running a Seiko Kinetic on a watch winder? I doubt the capacitor will charge adequately using a watch winder. I’d welcome your experience.

I’ve owned a few winders in the past. The ones I had could be programmed to run intermittently, as in a certain number of clockwise and counterclockwise turns each hour.

And the one capacitor Seiko that I picked up along the way was also weak. The only way I could get the watch going for an acceptable period of time was by shaking the watch almost continuously during a 3 hour football game (on TV).

So based on my limited knowledge and experience, the winder will not do the job unless it can be programmed to run non stop for several hours.

I just “Googled” my question, and the answer appears to be that Kinetic watches don’t operate on watch winders! I had come to that conclusion, but this confirms it.

There are winders designed for the kinetic movements but a regular winder doesn't work.
The kinetic winders use a rapid pendulum movement that simulates what Steve was doing while watching football.
They work by rotating the watch holder up to 0º or just a bit past TDC and then releasing it, the watch holder swings quickly around to almost 90º and then oscillates in a pendulum movement until the winder catches up at approximately 180º and the "rotate/release" cycle is repeated.

This explains it much better than me.