Watches2u

Why are jewels used in watch movements?
Synthetic jewels (rubies) are used between the moving parts in automatic and manual winding watch movements. This is because they allow moving parts to move with as little friction as possible, this in turn allows the many moving parts to operate with less stress and heat. Therefore they last longer, and are more reliable as a result. The use of jewels also helps to maintain timekeeping much more accurately.

Is a watch with a 25 jewel movement, better than a watch with a 5 jewel movement?
Simply put the answer is no. The amount of jewels in a watch movement will vary, depending on how complicated a watch movement is (and assuming all jewels are functional! See next paragraph).

Automatic Watches that state just the time will require fewer jewels, this is because they have far less moving parts. The more complicated a watch movement is, the more jewels it will require. A high quality chronograph with, day, date and moonphase funtion could use as many as 44 jewels.

It gets more complicated, because back in the 1930′s and 40′s, many watch movements started to appear with 80 and 100 jewels. The watch movements did have that many jewels in them, but only a portion of the jewels were actually functional jewels, meaning only 17 or so of those jewels were actually aiding the movement. The rest of the jewels were simply for decorative purposes, and were a marketing ploy.

Today it will be very hard to find a watch maker, that simply states a jewel count, that is not a true functional jewel count. Howvever their are probably many old and vintage watches out there still, with exagerated jewel counts.