# Khaki Field Mechanical and H-50 movement durability?



## ExMachina (Feb 9, 2013)

Serious question with no attempt at trolling or inciting an argument (good luck I know )

I really want a Khaki Field Mechanical with the H50 movement. However, I've now come across several reports of failures surrounding the winding mechanism on this watch. Since failures of this type effectively brick the watch, it's making me question what Hamilton might have done to the ETA 2801 to make it less robust?

While the ETA 2801 itself doesn't have any overwind protection, the folks reporting problems insist up-and-down that they absolutely didn't overwind the watch. Yeah yeah, it's the internet and all, but even if half are lying that still seems like problem in a hand wind field watch.

Would love to hear from all the H50 owners: how long have you had your watch and do you wear/wind it a lot? Any problems?

Thanks


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## MrDisco99 (Jul 5, 2018)

Interesting... this is the first I've heard, but I can see how using a thinner mainspring might lead to problems like this.


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## ReallyBored (Dec 19, 2018)

Yeah, this is the first I've heard about this too.

I don't think anybody has had this movement for more than a year or so, because it's new.

Fwiw, I have two watches with the H-50, and I have not had any problems.


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## NC_Hager626 (Sep 20, 2018)

In all fairness to the OP, there is a YouTube video of a YouTuber who bought a Hamilton Kakhi Field 80-hour Reserve Watch Limited Edition from Uncrate just as the H-50 movements were being rolled out. Unfortunately, this YouTuber had a terrible experience with the watch he received from Uncrate. My question is whether or not his problem occurred because:
1) the H-50 movement itself, 
2) Uncrate may have wanted their limited edition to be at a certain manufacture price point thereby compromising quality assurance, or 
3) the wearer errored on his part. 
The point is that we do not know what happened with this Uncrate Hamilton Limited Edtion Khahi mechanical watch. And, it is unfortunate his videos on his Uncrate Hamilton watch is out there on the domain.

What is important is that there are more satisfied customers who have had a positive experience with the H-50 movement than a negative experience with not only the movement itself but with the Hamilton's new Khaki mechanical watches.

For full disclosure, and to be objective, I will post Uncrate's Khaki mechanical limited edition sales page along with the YouTuber's review of Uncrate's Hamilton mechanical watch - just be warned, this guy is long-winded.

https://uncrate.com/hamilton-khaki-field-80-hour-reserve-watch/


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## ExMachina (Feb 9, 2013)

NC_Hager626 said:


> In all fairness to the OP, there is a YouTube video of a YouTuber who bought a Hamilton Kakhi Field 80-hour Reserve Watch Limited Edition from Uncrate just as the H-50 movements were being rolled out. Unfortunately, this YouTuber had a terrible experience with the watch he received from Uncrate. My question is whether or not his problem occurred because:
> 1) the H-50 movement itself,
> 2) Uncrate may have wanted their limited edition to be at a certain manufacture price point thereby compromising quality assurance, or
> 3) the wearer errored on his part.
> ...


Yes. Thank you for posting these links. That was the video that inspired me to start searching here.

First posts I found were regarding the original ETA movement: 
https://www.watchuseek.com/f357/khaki-mechanical-broken-mainspring-5037743.html
https://www.watchuseek.com/f2/weird...amilton-khaki-field-mechanical-4970723-2.html

Then I found another report of a problem with a H50 version: 



However, that case may be misleading as I then found a post here (can't find it now) speculating that there might have been something non-movement related that was causing the timegrapher to misread the tics (but I don't think that was ever confirmed)

So I guess now that I look at it, only the Uncrate watch was both a Khaki Field Mechanical AND H50 that had winding issues, the other two were ETA 2801's. So could there instead be a problem with the base movement?


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## NC_Hager626 (Sep 20, 2018)

All I can tell you about the H-50 movement are:
1) it is a proprietary movement by Hamilton,
2) Hamilton incorporated improvements to the ETA 2801-2 movement, such as a thinner hairspring thereby increasing the power reserve and the latest technology in metallurgy and silicon components. Note: As Hamilton's H movements are proprietary, there is little information to be found on what are the improvements to these movements.

As for hooking these H movements to a time graph, a time graph may provide misleading results because of the newer metallurgy and silicon components incorporated in these movements.

From what I have been verbally told is that H-50 is a robust movement and an improvement to the two 50-year-some-old movements (ETA 2801-2 and ETA 2804-2) it is replacing.


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## MrDisco99 (Jul 5, 2018)

NC_Hager626 said:


> All I can tell you about the H-50 movement are:
> 1) it is a proprietary movement by Hamilton,
> 2) Hamilton incorporated improvements to the ETA 2801-2 movement, such as a thinner hairspring thereby increasing the power reserve and the latest technology in metallurgy and silicon components. Note: As Hamilton's H movements are proprietary, there is little information to be found on what are the improvements to these movements.
> 
> ...


Just to be pedantic... these are not proprietary to Hamilton, but they are proprietary to ETA.

The real name for the Hamilton H-50 movement is the ETA C07.701. Just like the 2801 is the manual wind version of the 2824, this is the manual wind version of the C07.6XX series movement which uses a traditional escapement (not the synthetic escapement from the C07.111 that Tissot uses), but does have the slower beat rate, thinner mainspring, and free sprung balance found throughout the ETA C07 series. The C07 range is used throughout the Swatch Group brands.

In addition to the H-50, there's also...

H-10 = ETA C07.611 (2824-2 replacement)
H-30 = ETA C07.621 (2836-2 replacement)
H-40 = ETA C07.641 (2834-2 replacement)

Among many others.

Hamilton does very little these days when it comes to R&D or physical manufacture. They're a bit like a microbrand. They do product design and marketing, but the physical stuff is handled by other parts of Swatch Group or contractors.


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## Dan T. (May 24, 2018)

I bought a 'gently used' white dial KFM and it arrived DOA. Winding didn't do anything to start the watch. It was as if the winder wasn't connected to the movement. Thankfully I bought it from Topper Jewelers (the best in the biz, IMO), who promptly replaced it with a new one (!). The new one arrived and works flawlessly, just like the older ETA KFMs.

So I'm guessing my original was either 'bricked' by the person who owned it before me, or THEY received it in 'bricked' condition. Regardless, I have four (almost five) Hamiltons and never once has this happened except the one time I bought 'gently used.' All of the new Hamiltons I've purchased were in perfect running condition, and still are.

No need to fear the new H movement. Just as robust as ever. Only drawbacks for me are a) I don't like the longer power reserve, but what I've done to adapt is only wind up my watch half way (about 10 to 20 cranks), and b) bps is lower than the ETA, but on a watch this small, it's barely noticeable.

My reason for not liking the long power reserve I've mentioned elsewhere, but it's purely a personal thing that is odd by most standards. Reason is because with the 40 hour reserve in the ETA, I could confidently wind the watch all the way up each day knowing the time it would take before it winds all the way down was soon, and for whatever reason, I like to let my mechanical watches 'rest' when they're left alone for a while (I know this is hotly debated, and I don't care). The 80 reserve is a long time before that rest period arrives, and often after a full winding I would struggle to remember the last time I wound the watch, and then during the day, look down and it was stopped. So with daily winding that goes just a wee bit beyond 24 hours, I can form a habit of daily winding in the morning when I put it on, and know that throughout that day, my watch will be ticking just fine.

Weird, I know, but it's just me.


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## Dan T. (May 24, 2018)

Double your pleasure, double your post.


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## ExMachina (Feb 9, 2013)

Dan T. said:


> My reason for not liking the long power reserve I've mentioned elsewhere, but it's purely a personal thing that is odd by most standards. Reason is because with the 40 hour reserve in the ETA, I could confidently wind the watch all the way up each day knowing the time it would take before it winds all the way down was soon, and for whatever reason, I like to let my mechanical watches 'rest' when they're left alone for a while (I know this is hotly debated, and I don't care). The 80 reserve is a long time before that rest period arrives, and often after a full winding I would struggle to remember the last time I wound the watch, and then during the day, look down and it was stopped. So with daily winding that goes just a wee bit beyond 24 hours, I can form a habit of daily winding in the morning when I put it on, and know that throughout that day, my watch will be ticking just fine.
> 
> Weird, I know, but it's just me.


Thanks for sharing and I totally see your point. To me, I guess I feel that "topping up" an 80-hr power reserve mechanical watch everyday is really nothing different from keeping an unworn auto on a winder (though with the added risk of overwinding). I think I would be more comfortable keeping it running at around 90% full capacity--that way I don't need to worry about overwinding it and I like the security of being able to forget about it for 3 days and come back to still-running watch.


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## rwbenjey (Mar 26, 2011)

I started a more recent thread about this with mine. It went back twice (consecutively). I have owned various other manual wind watches and have never run into an issue with overwind. For awhile, the Hamilton worked just like the others; it was wound until I could detect a definitive stop. Then one day, "Pop!" Perhaps the H-50 isn't designed to be wound in this manner, but that doesn't really make any sense. The service center returned the watch with the "old parts" - the ratchet wheel and dial rest (no idea regarding the latter). It's working again as it did when new, but time will tell.


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## fbshapiro (Mar 19, 2021)

Funny, I had the exact same problem as you did! Like you, I'm pretty careful not to overwind. But, when I was winding my Khaki mechanical recently, I felt the tension increasing as usual, but then there was a "pop" and the watch stopped functioning. In my case, the head of the screw holding the barrel broke right off. I don't know yet whether the winding spring is also damaged because I stopped playing with it as it is still under warranty. When the watch was working, it ran beautifully without any issues and was also very accurate -- approx 4 sec per day.

Anybody else experience this new, undocumented "feature" with their new Khaki Mechanical w/ H50 movement?


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## rwbenjey (Mar 26, 2011)

Heh, yeah. I wish they had tested the updates further, left the previous gen alone, or used the Peseux 7001. After the repair saga, it's been behaving itself (knock on wood).


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## pbubsy (Nov 21, 2008)

Nothing to add on mine except thst I got it 6 months ago and it's still running just fine. +1.5 SPD on average.


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## spydie fanatic (Dec 24, 2009)

This is exactly what I experienced with my pvd black hamilton khaki H50. I had it for 10 months and babied it, it sat in my room and never left the house. Never knocked around or dropped. It ran excellent and never had any issues winding it...it was so obvious when it was near being fully wound. Around the 10 month period, while winding it, it felt "off", but not too bad...until I heard a pop. I was not near fully winding it, so I definitely did not overwind it. I will admit, I was winding it a little fast, but not super fast. I normally never wind a watch fast as many manuals for watches state not to do so, even on automatic manual winding. I remember thinking that is what killed it, but then I took my hamilton ETA 2801 WWII commemorative 1 of 3333 and wound it up very fast several times over a few weeks time and no problems at all...even intentionally "going at it" to see what it could take and it took it like a champ! I do know from looking at the internals on both watches, there is a difference...I think the older hamilton is of higher quality components potentially. Funny thing is the older one has never been serviced and has been running since sometime in the early 2000's when it was a new piece and it still hasn't had any issues...I really think the issue at hand is related to some newer cheapened parts, lack of quality control on parts or related to and modification made specifically to the H50 caliber in itself...essentially an H50 is an ETA (marked right on the movement) and modified by Hamilton and Hamilton and Swatch are literally all in the same family. All I do know is I've had 3 faulty ETA F06 quartz movements in marathons (steel gp, tsar and sapphire model navigator) and this ranges from 2015 - 2021, so I think ETA has QC issues. Not even cheapo walmart quartz watches give me so much trouble! lol I took the watch and threw it in the garbage. I do not bother with issues like this, not worth the aggravation. I do now have a thing against any watch with an ETA movement, whether quartz or mechanical...which is sad because I like them so much. The limited edition khaki I have is one of my favorites. All my watches with Sellita movements and NH35 have not had any issues, only in the ETA. Hmmmmm? 



fbshapiro said:


> Funny, I had the exact same problem as you did! Like you, I'm pretty careful not to overwind. But, when I was winding my Khaki mechanical recently, I felt the tension increasing as usual, but then there was a "pop" and the watch stopped functioning. In my case, the head of the screw holding the barrel broke right off. I don't know yet whether the winding spring is also damaged because I stopped playing with it as it is still under warranty. When the watch was working, it ran beautifully without any issues and was also very accurate -- approx 4 sec per day.
> 
> Anybody else experience this new, undocumented "feature" with their new Khaki Mechanical w/ H50 movement?


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## nikola0406 (Jun 17, 2010)

Hi guys, can you please explain to me how you can overwind the manual wind watch. I have a Speedmaster Pro for 11 years and wind it every other day, and I wind it until crown stops. And that's it. I would have to use so much force to overwind it, and I am not sure that I would be able to do it only with my fingers. 
Does Hamilton H50 crown never stops and you have to count turns or what? That would be strange. Never had one, that is why I am asking.


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## rwbenjey (Mar 26, 2011)

@nikola: That is part of the confusion. It did normally stop when wound, but one day...POP! My Speedmaster and vintage Seiko both felt like only a machine could crank them hard enough to break anything. Whatever inherent flaws exist for the 2801 coupled with whatever changes Hamilton made in the H50 somehow produced this issue.


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## nikola0406 (Jun 17, 2010)

Aha, ok, so there is a stop. Then you should not be able to overwind it. Then this is a flaw.


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## rwbenjey (Mar 26, 2011)

Agreed. Mine has been fine since it was fixed under warranty, but I don't fully trust it.


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## ETA2824-2 (Aug 22, 2019)

rwbenjey said:


> Agreed. Mine has been fine since it was fixed under warranty, but I don't fully trust it.


This is a psycholgical and not a technical issue.


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## tortugoala (Jun 15, 2018)

fbshapiro said:


> Funny, I had the exact same problem as you did! Like you, I'm pretty careful not to overwind. But, when I was winding my Khaki mechanical recently, I felt the tension increasing as usual, but then there was a "pop" and the watch stopped functioning. In my case, the head of the screw holding the barrel broke right off. I don't know yet whether the winding spring is also damaged because I stopped playing with it as it is still under warranty. When the watch was working, it ran beautifully without any issues and was also very accurate -- approx 4 sec per day.
> 
> Anybody else experience this new, undocumented "feature" with their new Khaki Mechanical w/ H50 movement?


Just happened to me yesterday. Exact same scenario - winding in the morning as usual and then a pop sound. Further winding makes a pop every few turns. Checked it this morning and it was dead. Winding does not start the movement.


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## rwbenjey (Mar 26, 2011)

Sorry to hear that!


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## Dja123 (Dec 22, 2021)

rwbenjey said:


> @nikola: .... Whatever inherent flaws exist for the 2801 coupled with whatever changes Hamilton made in the H50 somehow produced this issue.


I realize this is an older discussion, but I just want to point out there is no reason to believe, or claim, there are "inherent flaws" in ETA-2801 movements. In fact, based on its long service life, exactly the opposite is true. This has proven itself over nearly 40 years to be a robust movement. 

No product has 100% flawless performance -- perfection doesn't exist. The same is true for the H-50 update. If 1% of millions of movements have a problem, that's still potentially 10s of thousands of problem reports. If those reports are repeated in multiple places, that's an exponential spread of "inherent flaws" claims. The long-winded point here is that the internet will amplify problems in EVERY product made by man, and even baseless claims are given equal weight. 

FWIW, my Khaki 2804 (date version), which I wear most often, has been as reliable as a hammer for just about 10 years. 

Here's some scary math: Even if my 2804 ran for only half that time, that's 5 years x 365 days x 24 hrs x 28,800 bph = over 1 billion reliable "ticks". As of the time I'm typing this, it's still running +/-5 spd -- without ever being serviced. 

Wonderful little machine.


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## Dirty Red (Feb 5, 2020)

I never wind my watches first thing in the morning for fear of over winding and breaking the mainspring. I wait until I am awake for at least a half hour or so. Fingers work better and I can feel the back pressure much better. 

I bet 9 out 10 mainsprings are broke in the morning.


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## Dja123 (Dec 22, 2021)

Dirty Red said:


> I never wind my watches first thing in the morning for fear of over winding and breaking the mainspring. I wait until I am awake for at least a half hour or so. Fingers work better and I can feel the back pressure much better.
> 
> I bet 9 out 10 mainsprings are broke in the morning.


This is a good reason to wind your watch everyday at the same time. From experience, I know it takes approx 13 turns to fully wind if I do so at the same time every day. I become more careful and focused on resistance at around 11 turns.


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## fallingtitan (Mar 19, 2018)

tortugoala said:


> Just happened to me yesterday. Exact same scenario - winding in the morning as usual and then a pop sound. Further winding makes a pop every few turns. Checked it this morning and it was dead. Winding does not start the movement.


This happened to me as well. Did you find a replacement screw?


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## tortugoala (Jun 15, 2018)

fallingtitan said:


> This happened to me as well. Did you find a replacement screw?


It was within 30 days of when I bought it on Amazon so I just returned it for a refund. Not worth trying to fix.


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