WatchTech

I’ve been hanging around the house trying to shake a sore throat, and decided to clean up my Watch Factory (my wife’s term for it). I thought perhaps this could generate a few posts. The first two that came to mind were ADHESIVES and LUBRICANTS which are actually mortal enemies, but have to get along in a watch. A third player in this party is GASKETS who are more likely to be friendly with ADHESIVES than they are with LUBRICANTS. I propose to discuss these a bit, sharing what I find littering my workbench and my photo library.

If we leave aside composite watches which are mostly fibres held together with epoxy, we know that most watches are made of metal or ceramic materials. The watch needs to have a crystal, a case, some kind of removable aperture through which the movement can be inserted, and one or more openings through which the winding & setting are accomplished. Unless the watch was made for dress use only, before modern era, it needs some kind of water resistance to protect the movement and dial, unlike this ladies Movado example:

Here’s a Grand Seiko watch that has multiple case pieces sandwiching a nylon seal, and a unscrewing caseback with neoprene gasket.

We unscrewed the front bezel and the hard white Nylon seal (spaghetti) was broken. Oops! No wonder there was some moisture inside the crystal.

What to do?  I turned to my Adhesives (fishing tackle) box. Note that this was irritatingly sticky inside and it (and the tubes) got washed prior to the photo:

Plus instructions.




There was nothing in this kit that could help me. I wondered what to do. I couldn’t make it out of spaghetti though that’s what the broken piece looked like. Through some miracle we managed to get this part from a Seiko parts list and it didn’t quite seem to fit which taught me another lesson about adhesives. My friendly watchmaker/mentor asked around and came back with “Thermal Adhesion”.

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