kbh

Relax guys, it's only a short story. A little creative writing by an English teacher.

After reading this last week I put my UPO on one wrist and my Narikka 42 PO on the other and went for a swim today. After an hour in the pool I am happy to report they are both doing fine. Only thing I have done is made sure the backs, crown, and He valves were secure. Of course my wife thinks I'm crazy.

That is the standard 21j Asian movement.

Once you become a legend like Watchdog you should never change your name. Edit: Hey, that's not what I typed........... censorship!

It's not a diver's watch. It's a pilot's watch.

Maybe this will help soothe the pain, or maybe not: From Forbes Magazine: New Watchwords: Simple and dressy are back in style Pendulums have a way of swinging. It wasn't long ago that watches were going for baroque, in style and size, and brand prestige was a mirror for personal prestige. Watches were bonus babies and salary semaphores: To paraphrase the Duchess of Windsor, they couldn't be too rich and they shouldn't be too thin. Time has changed. Big watches, whether time-only or complicated, are starting to look like Elizabethan ruff collars in terms of contemporary taste. Now the watchword is, "If you've still got it, don't flaunt it." In watches, this means consumers and companies are tacking away from the oversized and the overstated. It's ironic, given who got us into the current economic morass, but this heralds the return of the "banker's watch." The term denotes a dressy, extra-flat, round wristwatch with a minimalist dial--sometimes even lacking a sweep seconds hand. The artistry of the extra-flat dress watch is like that of the sonnet--expressive within (and because of) the constraints of a narrowly defined form--and its Gary Cooper visage is shorthand for stability, security, and reliability. Classic examples are the Patek Philippe Calatrava and Vacheron Constantin Patrimony Contemporaine. For all its seeming simplicity, the extra-flat dress watch is a complex being, starting with the watchmaking itself. Getting a thick, heavily built mechanism to run accurately is relatively easy; getting comparable performance out of a mechanism that's no thicker than a couple of business cards is not. That's why new watch brands generally don't offer extra-flat watches. In fact, it's venerability that marks the two names that are most synonymous with extra-flat construction, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Piaget. Their flattest movements are whisker thin. Jaeger's Master Ultra Thin, the thinnest watch it currently makes, has a case 4.2 millimeters thick and a movement 1.85 millimeters thick, yet the watch contains 123 components and can run for 35 hours, accurately, on a single mainspring winding. Piaget's manual-wind Altiplano contains its caliber 430P movement, which comes in at 2.1 millimeters. Both watches slide under a French cuff like a cat slipping noiselessly past a barely open door. Which is important at a time when looking like a banker is also in comeback mode. According to Alan Flusser, author of Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion, "a classically fitted shirt cuff is tailored to fit the wrist, and should not change its position when the arm changes position." By gripping your wrist, the cuff maintains the line of the arm and is thus best suited for a flat dress watch. (Unless you have the sprezzatura of former Fiat ( FIA - news - people ) chairman Gianni Agnelli, who wore a heavy braceleted sports watch on the outside of his cuff.) "The dressier you get, the thinner the watch," says Flusser, who adds that with French cuffs you have a bit more room for a watch if you wear chain links rather than whaleback closures or ball returns. (He also has a bone to pick with thick watches: They will quickly fray a shirt cuff.) Ralph Lauren ( RL - news - people )'s new Slim Classique collection is as lovely a gathering of extra-flat dress watches as ever peeked out from under a French cuff. Although a newcomer to the haute horlogerie game, Lauren knew where to go for movements: Piaget and Jaeger-LeCoultre (via his friend Johann Rupert, chairman of Richemont). He matched them with cases and dials engraved using one of the few surviving rose engines, a machine that dates to the late 1890s. The swirling guilloche--the minute repetitive patterns on the dial created by craftsmen using the engine--strikes a lovely note of nostalgia. Being complicated doesn't mean looking complicated. One of the first wristwatch perpetual calendars ever made, the Patek Philippe 1526, which ceased production in the early 1950s with only 210 made, showed the day, month, date, and moonphase, and kept track internally of the differing lengths of the months and the passage of leap years. In the spirit of making complicated look clean is the Patek 3939H minute repeater tourbillon--if it weren't for the repeater slide in the case band and the almost invisible "tourbillon" on the dial, you probably wouldn't take it for a complicated watch at all. It's the ultimate stealth complication timepiece.New watchwor

I just got a T21 Clark crystal on eBay and certainly can't find anything wrong with it. Quite inexpensive also.

You're right. That "wreaks of insanity". Good luck with the project.

I would imagine if the AD asked to look at it and you were stupid enough to hand it to him, he could confiscate it.

I think he might be talking about buying a new movement to install in a rep. The tall cannon pin movements are hard to find. Standard ETA seems to be the short ones.

If you have to have a Jag, just make sure you have another car to drive while it's in the shop. Preferably Japanese.

Col, Never seen one of those around here. It looks more like a boat you'd find up in the cold weather North. Perfect for salmon or cod fishing in Alaska. Down here in S. Florida you'd need to air condition the cabin or you'd die in the summer. Of course with a/c that would be a sweet ride to travel the Bahamas and camp out on. Good looking boat, though. Loughs tough and solid.

DSSD is very uncomfortable to wear. I love Rolex's and hate that one...Get the UPO.

Here's a possibility. As the o-ring in the top of the crown gets older and more compressed, you are screwing the stem farther into the movement. Maybe this is binding up something inside the movement. If it all works properlywhen you unscrew it a half turn to a turn, I'd try replacing the o-ring.

Offshore, Seems this is backwards. You put the watch in the sun and it heats up and expands the air inside where it leaks out. As soon as it hits the cold water the air inside would shrink bringing in water. I've heard you heat up a glass of water and drop the watch in. As the air inside the case expands it would be forced out. I would imagine this wouldn't show up much more than a <1 atm pressure change, though. Have to be a pretty good leak to show up. EDIT: i see this was discussed and I missed it. Sorry.

Years ago I spent a couple of Christmas weeks working at Miami International loading planes for USPS. Pay was huge for long hours and hard work but only lasted about a week. Most of the packages were containerized but a lot went into the belly of the plane. Up a motorized ramp to the first guy who would throw them to the next guy in the back. You're so right about "FRAGILE" being a red flag. Anything that said fragile became a football.

I picked up a 14k solid tt for less than $200. It's been quite a while but I think it was closer to $150. I wear it quite a bit and it's been perfect. Unlike the rep the end links have lasted very well also.

Demps, give you 50,000 Yen for it. Actually 3,000,000Y is closer to $30,000. It looks like a gen to me. At least the movement.

Having just put a new BK crown and tube in a Noobmariner, I think it could be done. I noticed there was quite a bit of play between "tight" and "real tight" when screwing in the tube. I believe if you coated the tube with red Loc-Tite and then screwed it in with the crown installed until it started getting tight you could adjust it at least to one of the two "correct" positions and then let the Loc-Tite set up. Although I personally wouldn't care enough to worry about it. I also think that the crown posiition would slowly change as the O-ring at the top inside the crown became worn and crushed.

This isn't part of some sort of terrorist plot, is it?

It's a piece of cake. I both eyes worked on. One the first one I was scared. The second one I looked forward to. No pain whatsoever.

Is that the new one that T4D/Prestige Watch is selling that just came out? People referring to it as V4.

Put a dab of 2-part epoxy on the original stem and don't screw it in all the way. Just screw it in to the correct length. Let it harden and you're good to go.

The only gen Rolex I've seen that kept good time was my old OysterQuartz. The rest of the ones I've had intimate knowledge with such as friend's and wife's watches never kept as good time as most of my reps. This is only out of a total of 5 or so but I've never been impressed.