You can tell people to change their seals regularly, especially people that are in salt water at the beach on a daily basis but that doesn't mean they will, even when they're family. This watch was take off its owner's wrist as it was full of water and put into a box which was then lost for a year before turning up this week. Before taking it to my watchmaker to see him shake his head disapprovingly and tally up the parts list I figured I'd take some high resolution shots of the watch as it is. All of these are 2560x resolution so you can click in the image to view the full size version. Photos were taken on a Nikon D600 + Micro-Nikkor F/2.8 105mm VR + Nikon TC-17E II 1.7 Teleconverter
The movement/insides not toooo bad, right? But yeah, no watch deserves such neglect, even if a TagH ... Hey Ash, you still in punishment? How long till you don't have to write about the train?
Na just practicing cursive handwriting with a fountain pen, a few joins I weren't happy with so I was using words that feature those joins.
That one was too far gone to save the movement, so I ordered in a new movement. I used the case, dial, and some other parts again, so it was not a total write off. Cheers, Al
I'm hoping this one will be economically salvageable, the hands and dial oddly don't have any actual corrosion by the looks but rather tried salt crystals stuck to them, which I'm guessing means they're white gold / rhodium plated but what surprised me was how the salt seems to accumulate only on the white gold parts and spare the dial itself. I'm assuming it'll probably be able to be cleaned off those parts leaving them fine underneath. In the movement the balance wheel is really the part that seems to have nearly all the corrosion, the rest seems to have almost none and the watch actually does run and auto winds quite easily. The rotor wear is from it rubbing the caseback in what I'm guessing is a separate issue, the rotor has a huge amount of play back and forth from the caseback to the winding bridge, probably 3mm or more at the outer edge of the rotor and rattles but seems secure still.
I took a look on both the TAG Heuer and Omega websites the other day for their official view on how often you had to change seals...both say every 12 months. I reckon 90% of watch buyers would be stunned by this and have no understanding that their new "waterproof" watch had to be checked every 12 months.
Every now and then you see someone complaining about a Rolex or Omega or something leaking and the first thing they go to is how much money they paid for the watch, "I paid $10,000 for this Submariner and it turns out you can't get a Rolex wet or it leaks", when the realty is the seals are 5-6 years old and were well past it. You're right too in that people don't read the manual that comes with their watch (doesn't help that they can be an inch thick in 16 languages) and an AD telling them the service and seal change schedule at point of sale could be an immensely helpful thing.
My solution to this problem is to buy cheap "hundred dollar divers" for swimming..... if they drown, scrap 'em.... that way your heart's not broken because you buggered your Seamaster! The Bulova was $100 (NOS!) and the Seiko $125 (lightly used, in the box with all the papers)
Scary rusty thread.. I mean in reality how often should we change the seals on a watch? Recently had a omega from 2007 and a poljot from around the same period pressure tested to 5bar and both passed?
As Al often writes on this forum - the seals work right up to the time that they fail. Prevention is far cheaper than the cure.
Seals wear, dry out and shrink or crack...replacing them is part of regular maintenance. If you pressure tested it today, there's no way of telling if it will still be good a week from now, or a month, or a year...you pressure test in the hopes that if it has failed you catch it before you get the watch wet. If you get your watch wet regularly, then testing it regularly, and replacing the seals regularly (at each service, so probably 6-8 years) is the way to go. Cheers, Al
