I'm looking for a device that can test for water resistance of my watches. Not looking to make a business or habit of it. Just want to provide reasonable assurance that a watch remains resistant after a battery change or in normal operation in between servicing.
The Petri dish sits on a thick foam rubber mat. Dip the watch in dish soap and put it in the middle of the rubber mat. Moisten the rim of the Petri dish and place it lip down on the rubber map, and hold down tight. Depress the lever on the side of the tester and that causes the rubber mat to dish down, creating low air pressure under the Petri dish. Watch for bubbles if air escapes from the watch case. I don’t recommend this thing, and few folks in the trade would either! I acknowledge no responsibility whatsoever if you pick one up and use it, and encounter water damage to your watches.
I would but the nearest watchmaker to me is about an hour away and does not want to accept small jobs like this on a routine basis. I don't have a lot of options unfortunately in my area.
What is your budget for the equipment? It looks like you can buy an entry level professional quality tester for something on the order of $1k USD (depending on capacity, features, etc.) or something Chinese for about a quarter of that.
How often do you think you need to check water resistance and for which watches? For example, I never check for my dive watches, but all of them are mechanical Omega, so no battery changes. I get being concerned, I do. But knowing the parameters might help give you better advice.
I wear my watches. I already have a vintage Speedmaster that I don't wear because I'm afraid of getting it wet. I just want to be sure that I can wash my hands, get rained on, go the beeach without worrying. Removing a case back for a battery change or obtaining a movement number, picture, whatever, inserts a point for failure. My testing wouldn't eliminate the risk but would provide me some assurance. These would be modern watches, 1990 and much newer, a few times a year or more.
Plus, I'll admit it. I'm a tinkerer and I like learning how things work. I like doing some things myself.
I wear watches with zero water resistance in the rain. I wear watches with zero water resistance washing my hands or doing the dishes. These are watches more than a hundred years old.
There is caution and there is paranoia. You have nothing to worry about, just don't submerge them and don't wash them in the sink like I do. If you have to wash the dog, OK, take it off.
The one time I wore that Speedmaster in the rain, it was fogged for three days. Another time, I wore it on a high-speed catamaran ferry and some sea spray - spray, not waves of water coming over the bow or anything - wetted us and it was fogged for almost a week. This was immediately after it was serviced. Of course, fogging has atmospheric causes also but I know that watch has issues and I thought I was being careful enough.
A Bulova Marine Star quartz showed full-on water ingress after I changed the battery recently. The only thing I had done with that is wash my hands and maybe a dish or two. It was back at Bulova about four years ago.
That's a very recent and one very disheartening occurrence regarding my watches and water but there are others. Maybe I'm unlucky or just suck.
Haha, yeah, must be. This desire did make me finally put serious time into finding a "local" watchmaker. They're a couple hours away but they do service Omega, Rolex, and Tudor watches so that's good.
