Waterproof or not?: Guide to helping your reps survive water

[DarthAlex]

Should I remove the gasket, put the silicone grease on, and replace, or can I just put the grease on the gasket while it's in place? If it's the latter I'll have to get a tool to get the gasket out.

Depends on which gasket, watchdoc. (And the watch I suppose) But on Rolex replicas for example, what I do is remove the gasket from the case back (Case back tool required), it just pops out, and coat it in silicon grease, then reinstall the gasket in the groove. I remove the stem (Case back tool and small jewelers screw driver required to remove the stem) , and use a small brush to apply grease to the gasket in the crown that seats onto the tube, I also apply grease to the gasket inside the tube and the one on the tube. That said, I can see where it would be better to remove all the gaskets and grease them before inserting them to insure that ll sides of the gaskets have grease.

The crown barrel (where the winding stem screws into) on a rolex triploc will seat inside the tube gasket sealing it there while the gasket in the crown seats to the top of the tube, and the little gasket on the outside of the tube seats inside the crown.

I also grease the threads too, helps the crown screw down with less friction and adds just that much more grease to serve as a barrier agaist water intrusion.

 

[rychastings]

excellent tutorial, I think I will have to get to waterproofing my watch soon.

 

[dan1437]

very informative!! this is a damn good tutorial!!
keep the hard work mate!

 

[tagman26]

Great post. I have a question regarding watchsmiths. How do I approach a local watchsmith with a replica Rolex and ask them to water test it? How do you seek Replica friendly repair shops? I read a thread that mentioned two repair shop chains that are not in my local market.

I want to waterproof my new GMTIIc but most of the watch repair shops are advertising how they can test to authenticate and service gen Rolex watches. Any suggestions without sending my watch away for 4-7 weeks?

 

[tommy_boy]

Great post. I have a question regarding watchsmiths. How do I approach a local watchsmith with a replica Rolex and ask them to water test it? How do you seek Replica friendly repair shops? I read a thread that mentioned two repair shop chains that are not in my local market.

I want to waterproof my new GMTIIc but most of the watch repair shops are advertising how they can test to authenticate and service gen Rolex watches. Any suggestions without sending my watch away for 4-7 weeks?

You may want to read this, compliments of levelmanroger: http://forum.replica-watch.info/vb/...50448?t=50448&highlight=find+local+watchsmith

 

[tagman26]

Thank you for the link. I will try and contact local WS's tomorrow. Really like to test this beautiful watch.

 

[Robt]

good write up, but im scared to do this myself haha

 

[SmqSub]

Brilliant stuff Gio!
10ATM is deep


Blue is the colour!

 

[elephantriter]

thanks

this was a GREAT read. very interesting and pertinent stuff. thank you so much for this post and the work necessary to do it all...
e'riter

 

[mrs1986]

Very nice, i'm waiting for a sub-c, so i think i might do this procedure, cause it is a litlle funny to have a "submariner" and can't take a shower with it

Thanks a lot!

 

[mayorofcats]

Very informative, great guide. +1 for sharing knowledge, thank you :cheers:

 

[melsman]

Re: Waterproof or not?: Guide to helping your reps survive the d

WOW.

Water proofing 101 !!

Thanks a heap.

Have always bought waterproof watches ( don't like taking them off), never been told I was to grease the gaskets.
Been pretty lucky that none of my gens have leaked ,,,,, yet.

Thank you so much.
Well written, easy to follow, and very informative.

Guess I'm off to buy some grease

:canuck:

 

[Whit27]

Is there any places that will do the waterproofing for a fee? I don't have the tools or the time to do this?

Thanks
Whit

 

[tanknz]

This is a fantastic post!!! I followed the instructions to a T and have had great results. I thought I would share them with you. I picked up a beautifully modded 45.5 PO from excell, Which I am still in the process of fully frankening. I have waterproofed the watch as per this post, with two exceptions. The crown and tube are gen, so maybe that has helped a bit. The second difference is that the o-ring for the case back sat quite low in its seat. I replaced this with a slightly thicker o-ring from an hydrolic hose supplier. It was the perfect diameter, but slightly thicker and more sturdy. Once I had swapped this out I waterproofed as per this post. I am a commercial diver working salvage dives internationally and pearl diving for Paspaley here in Aus. I thought I should give this a road test. So, I have dived with this watch about 22 times now down to a depth of 37m (122ft). Down below 20m(66ft) about 20 times. The thing though that has me the most excited is that yesterday on a Salvage dive off the South African coast I took my PO down to 128m(422ft). Now I don't know how many of you are divers out there, but most commercial dives where you are working anywhere near this or below are in dry suits and wearing a watch is not an option. So as far as reps go and having a swim, if you follow this excellent tutorial you can rest assured you'll never have to take your rep dive watch off when you jump into a pool again!!!

 

[MySharona]

Thanks for this!

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

 

[watchnerd18]

when waterproofing the SMP Chrono did you just do it the standard method by greasing everything or did you use a marine epoxy

 

[watchnerd18]

This is a fantastic post!!! I followed the instructions to a T and have had great results. I thought I would share them with you. I picked up a beautifully modded 45.5 PO from excell, Which I am still in the process of fully frankening. I have waterproofed the watch as per this post, with two exceptions. The crown and tube are gen, so maybe that has helped a bit. The second difference is that the o-ring for the case back sat quite low in its seat. I replaced this with a slightly thicker o-ring from an hydrolic hose supplier. It was the perfect diameter, but slightly thicker and more sturdy. Once I had swapped this out I waterproofed as per this post. I am a commercial diver working salvage dives internationally and pearl diving for Paspaley here in Aus. I thought I should give this a road test. So, I have dived with this watch about 22 times now down to a depth of 37m (122ft). Down below 20m(66ft) about 20 times. The thing though that has me the most excited is that yesterday on a Salvage dive off the South African coast I took my PO down to 128m(422ft). Now I don't know how many of you are divers out there, but most commercial dives where you are working anywhere near this or below are in dry suits and wearing a watch is not an option. So as far as reps go and having a swim, if you follow this excellent tutorial you can rest assured you'll never have to take your rep dive watch off when you jump into a pool again!!!

when you did your waterproofing for your po did you use the marine epoxy for anything or did you just grease thanks

 

[watchnerd18]

anyone with a working link viewtopic.php?f=5&t=51221

 

[xquisitor]

So the crystal gasket doesn't need to have anything done to it...on any reps?

How about the crown tubes? I read somewhere that the Chinese use cheap glue when they assemble the watches and can eventually leak there?

Sorry, I just saw this--there is a translucent ribbed plastic gasket wedged between the outside edges of the crystal and the inside of the rehaut. Yes, the crystal gaskets on these are usually as tight as Tom Thumb's leather-cheerio. I've yet to see any rep leak from the crystal.

 

[vincentvega01]

I have a GMT IIc and a JLC NSD that both have a few (~5) bubbles that excape from around the edge of the crystal when I test to 6atm. This isn't a steady stream just approximately 5 bubbles leaking out. This happens during the initial pressure bleed off for the first few seconds after releasing chamber pressure. Is this something I should be worried about? There were no other bubbles coming from any part of the watch other than the crystal.