Sealing / waterproofness control frequency

Most manufacturers (Omega for example) suggest that you have your watch pressure tested at least one per year. Most people don't do this frankly, and many would consider it overkill. It comes down to your personal tolerance for risk, and willingness to pay for whatever damage may occur if the watch is flooded.

Here is the latest watch with water ingress to hit my bench about a week and a half ago...Panerai 118, last serviced by Richemont in August of 2016 (less than 4 years ago) and the owner doesn't swim with the watch at all. Only water exposure is from hand washing. Not flooded, but fogs pretty heavily when worn:





It had leaked through the crown - there are two seals in this area - one goes on the crown itself, and is compressed when the crown lock in engaged (note the rust on the stem):



The other goes into a groove inside the case tube, and is in constant contact with the post of the crown, even with the crown lock disengaged and with the crown pulled out to the time setting position:



No real damage done to the movement, and only some water marks on the hands from condensation on them. Overall he was lucky that he doesn't swim with the watch, as that would have been much worse than this small amount of water from hand washing.

I show this example to illustrate that the depth rating of the watch really means little in daily wear situations. Here we have a 300m watch that leaked from washing hands, less than 4 years after having all the seals replaced at the brand service center. There is a belief with people that having a watch with a high depth rating somehow means it gives them some extra protection from water ingress, but really it doesn't.

So a pressure test on a regular basis is always a good idea, but it only gives you a snapshot of the condition - it won't tell you how close the seals are to failing, so regular replacement of seals is required to ensure water resistance going forward.

Water resistance is not a permanent feature - it must be maintained.

Cheers, Al

Most people don't - that's why I posted this to make people aware that this can happen.


The absolute best thing is to get the watch open and dried somehow. But if you are not able to do it yourself, or don't have access to a watchmaker right away, then you could certainly try the rice trick. I have no idea if it would actually work in a substantial way, but that may depend on how much water is in the watch. if it's flooded and has liquid water inside, the only thing that will help is getting it dried.


There are very few watchmaking "emergencies" but water in a watch is one. My procedure is to basically drop everything as soon as I get the watch, get the movement out, get the movement disassembled and into the cleaning machine as soon as possible. This is particularly important if there is a lot of water inside - water in significant liquid form rather than just a fogged crystal so more like this:



This Panerai was fully serviced, all seals were replaced (2 in the crown and one case back seal), and it is in final testing right now. These are simple movements so I quickly moved on from salvage mode to finish the job. As I said there are some water marks on the black parts of the hand that can be seen under magnification, but my attempts to remove them didn't work, so they will be left as is. The dial didn't have any marks on it.

Cheers, Al