1943 Ladies Perpetual stops running

[mcneguy]

My wife just purchsed a 1943 ladies perpetual in perfect condition. When she wakes up in the morning it looks like the watch has stopped and it the time has to be reset. Did the watches from then not have a reserve (or whatever it is called) so when you stop wearing it the thing keeps running?

If it should keep running, where can I send it to have it looked at?

[Tools]

All self-winding (perpetual) watches have a "power reserve".. It is simply the amount of time a fully wound watch will continue to run if left idle. You can test this yourself by fully winding the watch, setting it down, and noting how long it remains running.

On a very early ladies watch the mainspring will be small so the amount of power reserve may only be 20 to 30 hours. If your lady is not active enough throughout the day, there may not be enough "power" put into the watch by her movements to fully wind the watch each day. Or, over time, her lack of movement has caused the reserve to slowly degrade to the point where it only has in it the amount of wind she puts in each day with her movements...(in other words, there is not enough movement each day to top-it-off, and it slowly unwinds). Perhaps she wears the watch too loose and it hangs on the wrist, therefore not getting enough rotation for the self wind rotor to work efficiently.

This can be fixed by fully winding the watch manually once every couple of weeks or so.

The other possibility is that the mainspring is old and weak. It needs to be replaced to correct this..

You say that the watch is perfect, so....When was it last serviced, and do you know if the mainspring was ever replaced.... ?