Rolex Winding Method

[vesnyder]

When I first got into mechanical watches, I was taught there are two types of self-wind watches; 1) one you wind by just turning in the winding direction, and 2) one's that you can turn in both directions while winding. Not sure if there was any truth to the story of two types of self-winding movements, but when winding current automatic or self-winding movements, can you wind by turning the crown in both directions? All directions I have read says just turn in the winding direction - clockwise in the case of Rolex.

[SaintMickey]

I remember those older watches that one would wind "back and forth" and it would wind. When I wind modern Rolex I only wind "forward".

[Dirt]

When winding up a watch manually through the Winding crown, only one direction or the other will put power into the mainspring regardless of which way you are turning the Winding crown.
One can feel the resistance whilst turning in one direction thus there is power being loaded into the Mainspring, where as in the other direction it is only ratcheting.
This virtually applies to all wrist watches as far as I know.
As far as I know, Rolex watches can only be manually wound by turning the Winding crown forward(away from you) by the right hand as mentioned and this is most common.
But there is one slightly quirky modern Automatic winding movement that I know of which is made by IWC(calibre 82200) which is manually wound by turning the Winding crown backward(toward you).

If one is referring to the Automatic winding function, there are two types.
Those which can only wind the watch when the Automatic winding rotor is spinning in one direction and those which can wind the watch when the rotor is spinning in both directions commonly referred to as bi-directional winding. The later is naturally more efficient and is most common nowadays.
Also there are some Automatic watch movements which can't be manually wound up through the Winding crown but can only be wound through movement of the watch head itself, with some older Seiko's coming to mind and even as recently as the calibre 7S26.

I hope this clears that up somewhat