There are 2 situations where the term over-winding might be used:

1. Over-wind a watch so you force and break the watch (most likely the mainspring)

2. The watch is fully wound but it doesn’t run. It’s impossible to wind it any further so it must be over-wound.

1. Break a watch by winding it too far

Hand wound

The mainspring in a manual wound watch is secured on both ends. One end is secured to the barrel arbor and the other end is secured to the barrel. The mainspring has a hook or an extensions spring, that locks in a groove in the barrel wall. This hook or extension spring is also called the bridle.

When you wind a manual watch you’ll slowly start to feel the mainspring building up resistance. It’s best to slow down when you start to feel resistance and gently continue to wind until you can’t wind it any further.

Some hand wound watches do have some sort of protection against over-winding.

Rolex, for example, uses a system in some of their watches that uses 3 bigger notches inside the barrel wall. The spring clings to one of those notches until the pressure gets too high. Then it will simply “jump” to the next notch and so on.

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