Is SeaMaster 300m bezel misalignment common? or Okay?

ducatiti

Have any pics? Should be aligned. AD should be able to get another one. Purchased one last month, clasp was difficult to close. You may want to check that too.

Annapolis

You mean you rotated it a bit and still couldn’t get it to line up? That’s not acceptable.

I second the clasp bit, having just had to replace the seized-up clasp on mine after less than one week of ownership. Open and close the clasp several times to make sure the action feels right. (So far so good with my new clasp.)

In my experience both visiting ADs and talking to others on the phone, these watches are in plentiful supply: you should not have to settle for one that’s out of alignment in any way.

C Cod Holliday

That's a defective watch and should not be accepted. Bezel should always align perfectly. I have rejected Rolexes for crooked rehaut and that to most is acceptable. I still don't know why.

Annapolis

It’s bound to happen. I grew up in a family that ran a tiny manufacturing company (25 employees) that had, at times, two dedicated QC managers, and still mistakes would slip through. According to publicly speculated figures, SWATCH is cranking out an Omega-branded watch every 20 seconds or so; Rolex is probably churning out watches at twice that rate. (I understand that doesn’t mean it takes 20 seconds to make a watch—to be clear—I’m just saying, these are mass-, rapidly-produced objects.) Considering the volume made, it’s actually impressive that mistakes aren’t more common. There was a pretty funny Rolex OP one shared a few months back at the Rolex Forum: the “4:20 watch,” as it came to be called, because of an error dial with double stick indices at 4.

It definitely pays to scrutinize the watch before forking over the cash!

Donn Chambers

Without pictures, it is hard to say for certain if this bezel was severely misaligned or not - some people have a very low tolerance for ANY misalignment on a $5000 watch, and they often don’t account for parallax when looking at the watch.

With that said, I have never owned a diver where the bezel marks line up perfectly all around the dial. I own 3 divers at the moment (a Seamaster, a quartz Certina, and a Formex Reef). All have some level of misalignment at some point. For example, on the Seamaster, when the bezel marks are lined up perfectly with the 15 minute and 45 minute markers on the dial, the bezel lume plot is aligned, but the 25-minute bezel mark is just slightly rotated CCW from the corresponding mark on the dial, and the 30-minute bezel counter is also slightly off center.

On the Certina, 20, 25, 30, and 35-minute markers are rotated about 1-click CCW from the dial marker.

I can show you pictures of Rolex Subs that have a similar issue, primarily at the 25-, 30-, and 35- minute markers.

You have to remember that the dial is a different diameter than the bezel and with small, reasonable tolerances for manufacture, there are likely to be some slight deviations somewhere on the bezel. By slight, I’m talking a 1 click offset. I believe in the QC-stage, they only focus on the bezel lume plot matching the 12 o’clock marker on the dial.

Dan S

I don't think that you can use the bezel to measure bottom time so precisely that a small misalignment like this would be dangerous. And anyway, these days I think you're better off using a dive computer to determine your bottom time since it accounts for your dive profile in a much more sophisticated way.

Dan S

I don't think that you can use the bezel to measure bottom time so precisely that a small misalignment like this would be dangerous. And anyway, these days I think you're better off using a dive computer to determine your bottom time since it accounts for your dive profile in a much more sophisticated way.

Dan S

Why would anyone care about such a minor thing? Just get it adjusted when you have it serviced.