Credits: Article and images by Zen Love @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/the-anatomy-of-a-sports-watch/
A new kind of gasket in the 1940s called an O-ring led to more robust watches and the kind of dive watch we know today. Rolex, Blanc and Zodiac all debuted products in 1953 that would be recognizable to us as dive watches, all boasting ratings of around 100m. Dive watches today should usually be rated to about 200m (the equivalent of 20 bar, 20 atm or around 600 feet) or more.
For swimming, you want around 100m, and anything less probably shouldn’t call itself a sports watch. A rating of 50m promises reasonable versatility above water, and you can wash your hands with a 30m “splash resistant” dress watch, but you’ll generally want to baby it more. Watches leave the factory with these ratings, but time and use will erode components like rubber gaskets. Regular servicing is always wise, and assuming vintage dive watches can perform like when they were young is probably unwise.
Today, with advanced machining and tolerances measured by the micron, screwed components such as the crown and caseback have also contributed to ever more extreme products. You can buy and wear watches that are rated to depths which are all but preposterous. Omega holds the record with its 2019 Ultra Deep Professional which was tested to 10,935m and is rated to no less than 15,000m. The commercial version, the Ultra Deep, is rated to a still bonkers 6,000m. It exists among a class of dive watches with extreme water resistance which serve to prove what’s possible and that your watch can survive more that you can possibly subject it to.
A sports watch should be shock resistant
Water resistance in watches is a relatively sexy topic. Shock resistance, on the other hand, can get a bit technical and harder to quantify. But it’s at least equally important and perhaps even more fundamental to a sports watch. At minimum, a sports watch shouldn’t be fragile, right?
Materials and other features contribute to a watch’s overall durability, but when a watch gets knocked around there’s a lot that can go wrong. You might cherish the character and patina of all those little dings on the case, but the movement inside is also under strain. Of all the tiny components that function together precisely, from wheels to springs and even the hands, the most susceptible to shock are the balance’s pivots.
The balance is a mechanical watch’s regulating mechanism. It’s the oscillating wheel with a spring in the middle which provides the characteristic ticking sound and can often be observed through a watch’s caseback window. The famous watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet’s pare-chute shock protection dates all the way back to the 1700s, and it was a precursor to the basic system that nearly every mechanical watch uses to protect the balance today.
That system is represented by Incabloc, a spring-loaded mounting for the synthetic jewels which form the balance’s pivot point. Although it was developed in 1934, some watches had essentially no shock protection as late as the 1950s. This system is still used in many watches today, but some brands have also developed their own shock absorption systems such as Rolex with its Paraflex or Seiko with its Diashock. Some brands have taken alternative approaches to further increase shock protection, like Formex with its Case Suspension System in which the case itself moves on springs.
Credits: Article and images by Zen Love @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/the-anatomy-of-a-sports-watch/