5 Things You Should Know About Your Dive Watch - A Comprehensive Guide 2021

the dive watch probably the undisputed king when it comes to popularity and style of watches out there on the market but despite its popularity when contrasting it with the people that actually scuba dive in 2018 there was only 2.85 million people that did it in 2017 when looking at the actual amount of commercial divers out there 3 380 only you begin to ask the question or maybe just pose the idea that there's probably a lot of people out there that have a dime watch on their wrist that really don't know the specifics behind it really what goes into it and why were they maybe even created so in this video we're gonna be looking at the five key things that you need to know about your dive watch and maybe don't know about your dive watch and probably will further your appreciation of them the key aspects that we're gonna be looking at here are first looking at a brief synopsis of the history behind dive watches working under pressure that idea of being underwater and really what a dive watch needs to sustain other essential dive watch elements and just things that need to be there when constructing a dive watch the ever so popular and kind of loosely thrown around iso 6425 rating what does that mean what's the story behind it and finally do divers wear watches and where do dive watches currently sit in their actual use case and i certainly love dive watches however i think it's very important when doing a video like this to actually get some opinions from somebody who has done it many many times and thankfully one of our team members ben lowry who was actually a commercial diver prior to joining our team he was very helpful in putting together this list and providing some actual real world use cases uh actually diving with watches and he's a huge enthusiast as well so a quick shout out to him and know that you are going to get some nice first-hand experience about what it really takes to dive with the watch and before we jump into this video just to call out a few awesome dive watches on teddybaldustar.com starting at the affordable end these are non-iso dive watches but still fantastic ones and will do absolutely the job and that is looking at orients with say the canoe very legible high contrast things that we're going to certainly talk about a little bit later in this video as well as some really solid loom and then looking at a watch that has some true diver credit in the realm of actual divers out there looking at the marathon government search and rescue these watches are actively used by military personnel their use of tritium is fantastic in looking at underwater environments it is a really strong use case and application to using that material and if you're looking for watch with great pedigree as well as some real looks that match what a dive watch should be marathon is certainly a great one to look at teddy balduster.com full authorization of all the brands we carry full factory warranty so something goes wrong you're completely covered you don't have to pay the bill for it and finally nine out of every ten dollars that we generate is right back in the content we're creating so we can do more things like this now to begin i think it's very important to look at the history of dive watches and how they came to be and what really led to the natural progression of what we now see as a dive watch in the modern world dive watches as we know them today have existed in the mass market since the 1950s with rolex blancpain omega zodiac doxa and many others all being early adopters and designing pieces for the then new sport of scuba diving of course there were early attempts at waterproof watches such as the rolex oyster in 1926 and the omega marine in 1932 and we can't approach this topic without mentioning the panerai radio mirror watches built by rolex starting in the 1930s for frogmen of the italian navy however while these early panerai watches were indeed designed for diving they certainly weren't a mass-market item in the 1950s scuba diving having been in large part popularized by innovators in the space like jacques cousteau the world of scuba diving was a growing recreational sport around the world considering the life-saving importance of knowing the time underwater when scuba diving major watch brands stepped up and released watches specifically designed for diving establishing a design format which is much unchanged today and without getting too deep into the raging debate of who was first who invented what i think it's fair to say the blank pawn 50 fathoms rolex submariner omega seamaster and zodiac seawolf were all early entrants into this world of the new genre of watches it's also fair to say that most if not all people who bought these early dive watches purchased them for their intended purpose to go diving rather than the idea of some james bond like utility or the perception of luxury now over the years while much has changed in terms of watch technology diving watches are as a rule much unchanged all of these aforementioned watches are still around generally being easy to recognize when contrasting with the latest variations from the originals yet with this popularity of dive watches the idea that really just persists is you know what really makes a dive watch at the end of the day the most important and difficult thing a dive watch has to do is to simply survive the sometimes immense pressure inherent in the underwater environment is any watch with a decent water resistance really a dive watch it all sounds simple enough seal up a watch case with some gaskets maybe a little silicon lube and over the side to davey jones locker you go but engineering a water resistant watch is tougher than it seems it's a fact proven by the legions of flooded watches out there even from reputable brands so what gives simply put water resistance is no joke and increases quickly as a diver descends with their watch at 30 feet of sea water a watch is subject to just over 13 pounds per square inch of water pressure which for context is a little bit like having an average size bowling ball pressing down on every square inch of your watch at 100 feet you're talking about around 45 pounds of water for every square inch of your watch which is the weight for a standard men's olympic barbell per inch but it gets worse at the thousand foot mark to which many professional dive watches are rated you're looking at 445 psi which is about two average size refrigerators per square inch of a watch more than enough to squeeze water through even the slightest imperfection or area of less stout engineering this all considered diet watches have to be built to an incredibly high specification in terms of tolerance and most often depend on a screw-down surface creating pressure against a gasket as is the case with a screw-down crown case back and a lot of waterproof tech throughout every aquatic industry if a watch can't withstand this massive pressure day in and day out without fail it'll flood and require replacement or costly service not to mention not doing any good in the world of diving ask any watchmaker or diver who has lost a cherish watch to the salty sea and they'll tell you water pressure is nothing to mess around with now of course looking at water pressure and being able to stain itself underneath water when doing dives is certainly at the top of the list in terms of qualifications to be classified as a dive watch but there's much more involved in the equation in terms of a dive watch's general design the diving itself boats and the undersea world are anything but gentle on a watch so watch crystals must be tough to prevent scratching and bezels have to hold their position and remain legible despite knocks and scratches crowns should be screwed down be stout in their construction and protected by case architecture like crown guards whenever possible and while this might seem obvious dive watch dials must be highly legible perhaps more than almost any other genre watch simply because of the conditions underneath the water's surface if the water is murky as it usually is or the amount of light in general is low or both the highest contrast easy to read most loom rich dials tend to be the best and of course style counts but the signature watch designs which have withstood the test of time on diver's watches share a lot in common lots of loom high contrast almost always white indices and hands against a black or dark blue background or surface simple geometric shapes and low clutter overall a large minute hand which is also easy to distinguish from the hour hand is also nice as it aids and reading essentially the elapsed minutes on the bezel another important feature that we'll get to in a moment a great way to check a watch style design for diver cred is to compare it to designs used by military organizations as military divers and people who supply their equipment they really don't care about anything other than the real world utility durability service life and cost in addition to a solid design divers also require their watches to track their bottom time which is essentially the time from which they left the surface to when they intend to begin their ascent as this amount of time in addition to the maximum depth of water is crucial information for calculating how long a diver can stay down so if you're depending on your watch for your dive time or even using it as a backup to your dive computer as most often the case nowadays a diver must of course be completely confident in the ability for it to track time core sources automatic or cost certification doesn't matter nearly as much as being able to tell if a watch is reliably running as divers are often depending on knowing the elapsed time for their safety so to track the all-important affirmation bottom time most divers these days utilize a diving computer which conveniently automatically computes things like depth rate of ascent and the maximum time a diver can stay down but back in the day all a diver had was their watch depth gauge and some set of diving tables with calculated time limits and depth a diver watch quickly needed to be able to see the elapsed time and building a chronograph into a dive watch while awesome does make things more expensive and complicated and pushers certainly allow for more opportunities for watches to take on water enter the elapsed time bezel which makes for an easily executed external watch component that can track the diver's time underwater now a diver simply will just need to align the zero marker on the bezel with the minute hand wherever it may be and off you go and then you'll be able to see the corresponding time in which you are underwater of course you will see internal bezels among other things of tracking elapsed time and of course there are different orientations of using a bezel whether it's internally set or externally set but the external lapse time bezel is perhaps the most straightforward durable option out there for an analog watch in addition for non-divers it's a great way to measure short periods of time in your daily life and i actually find it more convenient than even a chronograph when i'm going about my day-to-day another important note is of course going to be the straps because a dive watch is only as good as the one that's going to be able to stay on your wrist now in terms of preferences usually bracelets as well as going for a traditional nato or a zulu style strap is going to be preferred anything that is susceptible for one spring bar failing is going to create more possibilities of that risk actually becoming true in an actual reality uh when going about this also you'll see some modifications with spring bars ones without shoulders and maybe even drilled into the actual case itself to offer that extra security now a lot of this in talks with actual divers seems to be very much inflated uh compared to the actual risks associated with it but it still is something that's certainly considered when looking at the world of dive watches but now i think we have a better idea of breaking down a dive watch to its respective components a water pressure resistant case overall style build robust movement legible dial and an elapsed time bezel but there is one more area that we probably should touch on here and that is the much misunderstood helium release valve or escape valve in contrast to scuba diving there is also commercial diving and here we're talking about divers wearing helmets supplied with breathing gas from the surface via a hose called a umbilical now these guys aren't taking any pictures of fish in the caribbean but more often are working underwater construction maintenance and in the oil industry and an even smaller subset of commercial divers engage in saturation diving where they're divers that are actually entering a pressurized dry living environment and remain at a pressure equivalent to the depth of water where they will be conducting their work at for an extended period of time the divers then take a daily ride in an also pressurized diving bell to their work site and back to the habitat where they finished in order to exist safely at this kind of pressure the divers breathe a special helium-rich gas mixture both in the habitat and in the water and this is where the watch-related trouble starts now helium molecules are very small like a lot smaller than say water molecules and as the divers exist in the dry environment of their living habitat while in sat helium molecules sneak past the gaskets of their watches even though water can't then the external pressure is reduced as the divers decompress the helium molecules inside the watch also expand which then can literally cause the watches to explode usually in the form of the crystal flying off to prevent this brands like rolex and doxa both were early in developing a special valve which allows for the safe escape of expanding helium gas from inside the watch case and while there are many keyboard saturation divers on the internet claim of the helium release valve is an essential part of a real diver's watch it's absolutely categorically only necessary for those that are saturation divers working in a helium saturated environment in a commercial saturation diving system so we were talking about a very limited set few people that are using this now opinions aside getting into the objective realities of what constitutes a dive watch the best way of going about it and navigating it is looking at the iso 6425 standard and you probably have heard iso get thrown around quite a bit maybe you don't know what it means so let's take a closer look at what it does actually mean so iso or the international organization for standardization does pretty much exactly what it sounds like it would do pulling together specifications from standardization organizations in 165 member nations to create a singular source for standards for everything from medical devices to information security to what constitutes a real dive watch first published in 1982 and last updated in 2018 iso 6425 states quote a dive watch should be designed to withstand water depths of at least 100 meters and needs to be equipped with a secured measure system to indicate diving time which is visible in darkness if you're interested the documentation of 6425 is many pages long full of legal language of what defines the minimum standards for qualification as a diving watch in incredible detail suffice to say you need at least 100 meters of water resistance resistance to shock resistance to temperature and both high and low visibility and complete darkness from 25 centimeters away and of course a way to track elapsed time such as a bezel or integrated stopwatch feature and while many watches that are not iso certified still make for solid dive watches such as many entry-level orient watches like the kamasu the canoe or the mako and rays iso 6425 is a great place to start for really understanding what traits are important for a dive watch so now that we've looked at pretty much almost everything in regards to dive watches i think it's important now to see where dive watches sit currently in the world of diving and are they actually used by divers today when looking at early dive watches they were designed as a direct response to the market where a new entrance to the world of scuba diving required watches to track their time underwater to avoid life-threatening issues like running out of air or risking decompression related problems at the time all a diver really needed to track was their maximum depth and bottom time which is accomplished by the use of a diving wash capable of measuring elapsed time as well as a depth gauge both of which were typically worn on the wrist now from the very beginning of scuba diving all the way to the 1980s this pretty much was how diving was done with a watch depth gauge and set of diving tables to calculate how long a diver could remain at a great depth yes back in the day divers did math however as times changed in the influence of the digital computer tech pervaded nearly all aspects of daily life diving also changed ultimately becoming safer thanks to the now ubiquitous diving computer released to the mass market in the 1980s digital diving computers revolutionized scuba diving with wearing a diving computer all a diver really has to do is enter the water and the computer does everything else calculating and informing the diver of when to ascend how much breathing gas remains their depth and other risks effectively spelling the end to the dive watches practical scooby use these days the chance of seeing a watch on a dive boat is actually relatively slim though some divers wear them as backup to their computer or simply for nostalgic value the military though still often makes divers wear watches and many commercial divers wear watches not because they have to but simply to track the time of day of their particular workplace so simply put dive watches aren't required or needed as much as they once were and most divers in fact don't actually use them in their intended purpose but when looking at the standards as well as the specifications required of a dive watch it makes total sense why they're so popular if they're good enough for these incredible depths imagine what they could do on the wrist of somebody in an everyday environment and despite this world kind of navigating away from the world of divers in some aspects in terms of their intended purpose in regards to what they mean for pop culture as well as what they were able to do for expeditions below the water surface cannot be overstated and with all the benefits that come with the dive watch and the great looks that typically are associated with them there's little secret to why these watches have essentially become the king in terms of popularity in the world of horology alright guys well if you enjoyed this video thumbs up subscribe and hit the bell icon really would appreciate that this video took quite a bit of time to put together and a lot of different thoughts kind of brought to the table here to really provide a nice overview of what goes into a dive watch and hopefully you have some more further appreciation for your dive watch the next time you grab it try to put it on your wrist also would let us see comments down below what is the deepest depth that you have went with your dive watch i think there probably should be some funny comments as well maybe some cool comments definitely share your experiences down below pull floaties and all want to hear all the stories also guys definitely check out the awesome list of dive watches that we have on our site at teddybaldust.com you can actually filter by divers not all of them are going to be meeting that iso6425 and now you know what that means so definitely go check it out on teddybolts.com full authorized dealer of all the brands we carry full factory warranty quick and fast fulfillment dedicated customer support here in the united states and nine out of every ten dollars that we generate is right back in this content that we're creating also be sure to follow my instagram as well as the second review channel we're releasing another three to seven videos on that channel every single week so it's a great way to get even more watch content sent right to you but guys thank you again so much for watching be well and i will see you all very soon

Channel: Teddy Baldassarre

Views: 80,333

Rating: 4.9489741 out of 5

Keywords: teddy baldassarre, teddy baldassarre list, watch collecting, affordable watches, luxury watches, watches that look expensive, hodinkee, talking watches, watch guide, orient watches, teddy baldassarre educational, dive watches, divers watch, scuba watch, helium release valve, rolex, doxa, seiko, orient, best dive watches, marathon watch, commercial diver, scuba, 5 things to know about your dive watch, how to dive watches work, tudor black bay 58, spb183, watch education, citizen

Id: vGOiMziz3VQ

Length: 17min 3sec (1023 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021