About Timeless Ticks

Timeless Ticks exists because most of what is written about watches falls into one of two piles. There is marketing copy dressed as journalism, and there is forum lore repeated until it sounds like fact. Both are confident. Neither is checkable.

We wanted a third thing: a reference you can argue with. Every guide names its sources, its author and the date it was last read back against those sources. Every glossary entry names the desk that checked it and the date. Every page on the site, including this one and the legal ones, carries the date it was last updated and a route to tell us it is wrong.

What we publish

Five kinds of page, and nothing else.

Answers are single questions with the answer in the first two sentences and the evidence underneath. They exist because that is how people actually arrive: with one thing they need to know before they get in the water, hand over money, or stop worrying about a watch that gains eight seconds a day.

Guides are long-form explanations of how something works or how to decide something. They are written to be read once, properly, rather than skimmed. Where a subject has a governing standard (ISO 22810 for water resistance, ISO 6425 for divers' watches, ISO 1413 for shock resistance, the COSC and METAS certification schemes for rate) we go to the standard rather than to the second-hand summary.

Comparisons put two or three options side by side with a specification table, explain why each difference exists, and end with a recommendation for each kind of buyer rather than a single winner.

Tools are small calculators for the arithmetic that comes up in ownership: case size for a wrist, seconds per day, beat rate, strap width, cost of ownership. They run entirely in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.

Glossary entries are short, precise definitions of the terms the other pages use. They exist because horology has an unusually large vocabulary and because half of it is used loosely in shop windows. The site links them automatically the first time a page uses one.

We do not publish news, rumors, release round-ups, "best watches under X" lists, or anything with a countdown timer on it. Those things go stale, and a reference that goes stale is worse than no reference.

Who this is for

Someone who has just been given a mechanical watch and does not know whether they can shower in it. Someone about to spend real money and wanting to understand what the specification sheet is actually claiming. Someone who has owned watches for twenty years and wants to check a figure before repeating it. We try to serve all three on the same page by putting the direct answer near the top and the detail underneath.

How a page gets made

The process is set out in full in how we research and in our editorial standards, but the short version is:

1. We scope the question and list what a reader actually needs to walk away knowing.
2. We gather sources, preferring published standards, patents, manufacturer technical documentation and established bench references over blogs and retail copy.
3. The editorial desk drafts the page.
4. Standards Review checks every number against the source it came from and rejects anything that cannot be traced.
5. The page is published with its author, its publication date, its review date and its sources visible.
6. It goes onto a review cycle, and it is corrected in public when we get something wrong.

What we will not do

• No page written to please a brand, a retailer or a marketplace, and no company sees a page before you do.
• Nothing on this site is for sale: not a mention, not a link, not a kind adjective, not a place in a comparison, not the removal of anything already published.
• No review units, loans, free servicing, discounts, travel, hospitality or gifts from anyone with an interest in what we write.
• No guest posts, no brand-commissioned articles, no reviews written for payment.
• No figure we cannot trace to a document, and no assembled explanation dressed up as personal experience.
• No fake urgency, no fake scarcity, no fabricated test results.
• No investment advice. A watch is not an investment and we will keep saying so.

Timeless Ticks is independently owned and self-funded. The publisher pays for it, and that is the whole list: no watch brand, retailer, marketplace, auction house or industry body puts money into this site, and none of them has a say in what it says. Our editorial decisions are not for sale at any price. Nobody can buy a mention, a link, a kind word or sight of a page before it goes up, no brand has ever paid for a word here, and every request to buy one of those things is declined. What the site does with data is set out on the cookies page and in the privacy policy. Who owns this, who does not, and what we are not yet able to tell you are all on the ownership and funding page, in plain terms.

Accuracy, and the limits of it

We are careful, and we are still going to be wrong sometimes. Standards get revised. Manufacturers change specifications quietly. A figure that was true of a 2015 caliber is not true of its 2024 replacement. Where the record is genuinely contested (the "first wristwatch", for instance) we say it is contested rather than picking the tidier story.

So: nothing here is a substitute for the manufacturer's own documentation for your specific watch, and nothing here is professional advice about your specific watch. If a page and your watchmaker disagree, believe your watchmaker, then tell us.

Who is responsible for this

Timeless Ticks is an independently owned publication. It is not owned by, funded by or run on behalf of any watch brand, retailer, marketplace or industry body, and the ownership and funding page sets out what that does and does not mean, including what we are not currently able to tell you.

Editorially, the buck stops with the editorial desk, which is a named function with a published remit rather than an anonymous "team". Everything published here is its responsibility, however the draft was produced.

Getting in touch

Corrections, questions, rights inquiries and everything else go through the contact page, which is a single monitored email address. There is no contact form, because a form would need a server to receive it and this site deliberately has none. We read everything. We answer most things.

Where to start

If you are new here, the six pillar guides cover most of what people come looking for:

• How a mechanical watch works
• Watch complications explained
• Watch accuracy and chronometer standards
• Water resistance ratings, decoded
• Watch sizing and fit
• Buying your first mechanical watch

Or browse every guide, the glossary, or by topic.