If you've ever wondered how many jewels a watch movement needs to keep ticking, I'm here to tell you that it depends on the watch. Jewelry can be made from a variety of materials—including precious metals like gold and silver, plus more affordable options such as steel or brass. Jewelry must also be cut in just the right way to prevent scratching or chipping, so each piece is unique in its construction.
[Note: The number of jewels used in a watch will depend on the manufacturer's design.]
However, there are some instances where other functions may be served by a jewel (in addition to reducing friction). For example:
A cylinder with no teeth can be used as a bearing surface if it's made from an alloy that has low coefficient of thermal expansion. This is why most watches use cylinders with circular cross sections instead of rectangular ones (the latter would expand more as they heat up).
Jewel cups with mostly flat surfaces (like those found in most mechanical clocks) can also function as bearings if their outer diameter is small enough relative to their inner diameter; however this requires special manufacturing techniques that aren't used for ordinary watches
The use of jewels in pocket watches is usually associated with high-grade movements in fine watches, but there are many inexpensive movements that contain jewels as well.
As you may have guessed, jeweled movements are used to reduce friction and wear. They do this by providing additional lubrication between the parts of the watch's mechanism.
Jewelled watches can be more accurate than those without jewels because they have greater precision in their gears and plates, which helps them accurately calculate time. However, it's not always necessary for a watch with fewer than 60 jewels to be as accurate or precise as one with more than 60 jewels; many inexpensive pocket watches contain just one or two additional sets of wheels (called "carriage"), so even though these contain fewer than 60 individual pieces altogether, their overall design makes up for it by using optimal materials for each part—which means that even though there are fewer overall parts moving around inside your pocket watch movement when compared with an expensive grande complication movement from Rolex or Patek Philippe , your average person probably won't notice any difference between them anyway!
How many jewels does a watch movement need?
The number of jewels in a watch movement depends on the type of watch and its quality. Watch movements with more than 80 to 100 parts are usually made with 18-jewels, while those with less than 20 parts may have only 13 or fewer.
A higher quality timepiece will have more jewels than a cheaper one. For example, if you were shopping for an expensive Rolex Submariner with ceramic bezel and sapphire crystal glass then it would have a 15-jewel movement with approximately 892 parts (or about 1/6th) solid gold content in total.
The higher the quality and precision, the more jewels you can count in your watch.
Fewer jewels is not better than more, nor is more better than fewer. It all depends on the intended purpose of the watch.
A movement can be designed to have a minimum number of jewels in order to reduce friction and wear between each gear and its ratchet (the part that allows it to rotate). However, this also means that there are less parts for an error to occur—and thus less room for problems like broken parts or other mechanical issues that could potentially affect your timepiece's accuracy.*
In general, most watches use at least three wheels: one main wheel which provides power from winding up through a bridge pinion; another smaller driving wheel; and finally an escape wheel which drives off any remaining energy from either of these two earlier-mentioned components before sending it back into our mainspring (which we will discuss later). Most likely these wheels will spin freely around their axes without much resistance due to their low number of teeth per inch (TPI) ratio--but this doesn't mean they'll last forever!
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to know how many jewels your watch movement needs. If you have any questions or comments about the content of this article, please feel free to leave a comment below!
