Types of Watch Hands

Identifying Watch Hand Styles On Affordable Watches

Watchmakers, the watch press, and high-end watch collectors have standard names for the many different styles of watch hands. Some of these same watch hand styles are used on the more commonplace watches that we all wear. Learning about these watch hand styles enriches everyone's watch wearing experience.

Alpha Hands

Alpha Hands are shaped like lances with a narrow base that widens and then has an extended taper to a very narrow point. This style of watch hand is very common. Caribbean Joe uses them to great effect on this rich-looking casual $20 watch.

Alpha Hands on a Caribbean Joe Watch

For more information on this Caribbean Joe watch, check out my review here on this blog.

Arrow Hands

Hands that end in an arrow head are called arrow hands. Sophisticated, huh? On this Nautica N/83, you can see that the hour hand and the second hand are both arrow hands. The minute hand is another story. In some cases, watch hand styles can very on the same watch.

Arrow Hands on a Nautica N/83 Sports Watch

For a full-sized photo of this Nautica watch, check out this Watch Wearing Wednesday post.

Baton Hands

When watch hands are simple narrow rectangles, they are called baton hands. When the hands are very narrow, they are sometimes called stick hands.  Guess what the French word for stick is? Baton.

Baton Hands on the Vintage Buler Automatic

Baton hands can sometimes have a bit of taper to them, but they generally don't end in a point. The hands of my minimalist Fossil watch provide a great example. 

Baton Hands on a Fossil Watch

I've noticed baton hands working well on Timex Easy Reader models.  For example, they make this gold-tone Timex Easy Reader even more readable.

Timex Easy Reader with Baton Hands (Amazon photo)

If you are looking for an affordable addition to your watch collection, this Timex Easy Reader is a steal here on Amazon.

Cathedral Hands

When a watch has an ornate hand that reminds you of a stained glass window, it could be a classic cathedral hand watch. This Tactical Frog Militado D12 definitely has a cathedral hand for the hours, but the minute hand is more like a sword hand.

That's the thing with watch companies: they get to decide what kinds of hands to use and when. If you'd like to take a closer look at this Tactical Frog Militado D12, check it out here on Amazon.

Dauphine Hands

When watch hands have a taper to points on either side of the pinion (the axis around which they rotate), they are considered to be Dauphine hands. My Citizen Eco-Drive dress watch has them and, now, I'm very proud of this timepiece. It's far more sophisticated now than it was last week!

Dauphine Watch Hands on a Citizen Eco-Drive Dress Watch

Sword Hands

If you are going on an adventure, you might check to see if your watch has sword hands. Sword hands widen like a sword and then taper down to a point.  This Nautica watch has a good example of them.

A Nautica Watch with Sword Hands

Syringe Hands

Finally, this Adee Kaye timepiece has syringe hands.  They are wide for most of their length for readability at a glance, but then taper to a needle point for timekeeping precision.

Syringe Hands on an Adee Kaye

There are more types of watch hands so I'll update this post as I come across them in my collection and online. It's fun to know more about watch design considerations and hunt for different hand styles on our watches.