Dear forumners,

I had an interesting experience last weekend after visiting a watch exhibition in a major European city.

Wandering around the shopping haunts and emporiums, I stumbled upon a 2nd hand dealer of watches. There was a minor complication watch model that I had rejected years ago in the window and looking good to the naked eye.

During my inspection, I raised the watch to my good ear and shook the watch that was grasped in my hand and using only my wrist action. The motion was a truncated version of that prescribed in the Seiko 5 handbook, where crown winding is impossible.

The salesman immediately rebuked me and told me never to perform that action with automatic watches because the rotor pivot stem was at great risk of "breaking". He said that my action would subject the watch to forces in excess of 3 - 5 G that could break the mechanism. He conceded that the micro-rotor in that PARTICULAR watch was possible less vulnerable than a model with big rotor but also that all such pivot breakages are due to human failure to follow this rule; because of that - all such repairs are chargeable and never covered by warranty. He claimed to have worked for after-sales department of famous brand before his current job, so I assume that brand had a lot of such breakages from such wrist action.

As I have never broken the rotor (big or micro) pivot on about a hundred automatic watches that I have owned, I asked him for clarification: "What G-forces do the manufacturers test their watches in impact tests?" 

He did not answer directly but asked me how I would feel if 3G of force was applied to myself. "Like on a roller coaster?" - I ventured.  "Yes" - he said.   I changed the subject to wearing watches to play golf like the Tag-Heure Golf watch that Tiger Woods used to promote.

Do I believe him?

ISO 1413 [Shock-resistant watches] specifies the minimum requirements.

Watches may have to withstand forces of 30 G for periods of several minutes in a centrifugal accelerator.

In a pendulum impact test, the watch is accelerated to 5,000 G in milliseconds, which simulates the effect of a free fall onto a hard wooden floor from a height of 1 metre.

Is it usual to have rotor pivots break from shaking a watch by flicking wrist action?

Does this salesman inspire confidence to buy a watch from him?

Regards,

MTF