Thanks, that's good advice.
It was strange. Last week I was in Waimea Bay and the swells were pretty nice... bad shore break but once you got out a ways you could just bob up and down like the world's biggest cork. So I set the bezel to mark when I left shore (don't want to keep the ever-patient Ms. Nanuq waiting overlong!) and out I went.
I was swimming wit da fishes, diving and bobbing like the world's biggest dork cork when I saw my hour was up. So I went back to shore, got SPANKED by the world's ugliest shore break, rinsed the sand out of my a$$, and crawled up to dry ground. I looked at the bezel to reset it to 12:00 and the hole where the pearl lives was oval shaped. Also the "4" had a divot out of its surface in the silver lettering. Weird.
Huh? Said I, eloquently.
After that the erosion progressed so last night I got out my tools and removed the insert, cleaned it thoroughly, and pressed in a Yuki pearl with some epoxy. That's when I saw it was cracked across.
I was all kinds of gentle (cough) when doing it, so I dunno. Right now it's snapped back into the bezel and seems solid, so tonight I'll warm up some 2-part epoxy and ease a drop in there beneath it. The Yuki pearl wouldn't stay in, the hole is too big.
How weird is that?! I thought these were a tough piece of sheet alloy cut with a die. It feels more like sintered alloy, formed under pressure.
Has anyone else seen this? It's a learning experience for me, for sure.