IF ONLY WALLS COULD SPEAK - Blancpain

using the watch. It is uniformly the case
with calendar watches that the manual will
contain very specific warnings against
changing the calendar settings (using the
correctors) when the watch is set between
certain times of day. Why is that? What is
the reason that for certain times using the
correctors is forbidden?
This is because of the way calendar
mechanisms are constructed. Changes
in day, date, month and moon phase occur
over a period of several hours generally
grouped around midnight. Be careful!
Depending on the calendar mechanism
design, sometimes indications, such as the
moon phase, occur near noon; read the
manual for your watch! Because the
change of an indication absorbs power
from the movement, the changes do not
take place all at once, but instead take
place one at a time. As well, again to minimize
power drain, each change takes place
over a span of time, sometimes a period of
many minutes. Thus, the warning period as
given in the owner’s manual cautions
against making changes with the correctors
for several hours. During the time
changes are occurring, gears, cams or
levers of the movement are engaged to
move an indication to the next day. If a
corrector is pushed during the time of a
change, that is to say when a gear, cam or
lever is engaged, there is a danger that
these components may be damaged with
the force of a corrector push. For similar
reasons, adjusting the time of the watch
backwards during the change cycle risks
damaging engaged components for many
watch designs (this is not the case for the
perpetual calendar mechanism used in the
Blancpain Villeret Perpetual With Correctors
Under the Lugs; it uses a calendar
plate that is tolerant of backwards time
changes. However, other Blancpain perpetual
calendars do not permit backwards
time corrections around the midnight date
change time. The universal rule, Read the
Manual, applies!). ■
This section of the case
shows how the corrector
is installed. The finger
actuates the movement
38 | 39