What Kills Watches Quickest

This instructable is being base on the fact that I have broken many watches from various mis-uses.

My watch is a cheap, basic watch but it says it is water resistant to 30M

I will show you the things and the time it took to break the watch.

My topics are:

1. Next to 40c heat and then out in the cool night around 18c.
2. Diving with no buttons pressed
3. washing up in hot soapy water for two weeks straight
4. diving (again) this time I pressed a button
5. dropping the watch and losing it on the floor for a few days
6. showering with the watch each day

So, My hypothesis is that getting water in the watch will kill it sooner that anything else, I vote option 4.

Lets get on with the testing!

Next to 40c heat and then out in the cool night around 18c.

I like being warm, I also stand next to a lot of fireplaces in winter to keep warm.

I must say that it is very dangerous to try this yourself as I manged to get two quarter sized burns from it...

Any way, I only id this for 20 days an my watch would not keep time past 3:30AM.

Method 1 resulted in the watch lasting only 20 days, an me getting burned twice.

Diving with no buttons pressed.

I like fishing, I was invited to go spearfishing a few times and one of those times I managed to forget about my watch.

The water was cold, about 4M deep, it was about a 40 minute dive and I was very careful not to press any buttons on my watch during the dive.

The watch fared well, nothing happened to it at all so diving with your watch - while it might be best to stay shallow, I suggest you don't do it at all!

So, Method 2 result: watch did not die.

washing up in hot soapy water for two weeks straight.

This was my choice to do this.

I washed with my watch on in a glove the first tie and noticed hat the mode kept changing due to dishes bumping it.

I was careful and washed for the two weeks making sure that no dishes bumped it at all, my watch stayed good until the end, the steam from the water got into it and destroyed it :(

So method 3 result: It is OK to do it once, don't do it on purpose though.

diving (again) this time I pressed a button.

OK, this was the last to be tested, I dove under a ledge where it was darker than normal and I pressed the light button, light was supplied for about half a second an then the watch completely died.

We dismantled the watch carefully an dried it out and it worked like normal again!

Method 3 result: Don't press any buttons while diving unless you are confident you can pull a watch apart and put it back together!

dropping the watch and losing it on the floor for a few days.

Everyone has lost something during their lifetime and this time I lost my watch.

It was gone for about 5 days an then it re appeared on the floor of our hallway.

It had been stood on a fair bit and the watch still worked but the pin holing the band broke so it was not wearable.

So I recommend that you do not drop the watch on the floor unless it has a good warranty...

I almost never take my watch off, I have even showered with it on.

After only a few days of pressing buttons in the shower (like the timer) my watch died.

It had a lot o steam inside the casing and we had to dry it out for a few days to get it working again.

The lesson learned there was not to press the buttons i steamy environments.

OK, I killed my watch a few times and got it working a few times.

The stuff I did with my watch I advise you NOT to do with yours...

Now, the results:

My topics are:

1. Next to 40c heat and then out in the cool night around 18c.
2. Diving with no buttons pressed.
3. washing up in hot soapy water for two weeks straight.
4. diving (again) this time I pressed a button.
5. dropping the watch and losing it on the floor for a few days.
6. showering with the watch each day.

So, My hypothesis was that getting water in the watch will kill it sooner that anything else, I voted option 4.

The order that they killed the watch is:

4. diving (again) this time I pressed a button. Instantaneously died

6. showering with the watch each day died in four days because I pressed the buttons. (I do it now an I don't press the buttons and my watch is over a year old:)

5. dropping on the floor, this only took 5 days to break the watch but the time was still kept.

3. If I ha pressed any buttons during washing the watch would have died instantly, the steam got in about halfway and the watch died.

1. The fireplace... it killed the watch (and nearly me) in 20 days, I advise you to keep a long way away from any source of heat like that and not to replicate what I did...

2. Diving with the watch, only once does not kill the watch! I would not do it again, but because we were only free-diving and could only get about 4M down (the depth restricted us) the watch was not affected by the pressure.

My hypothesis was correct! If you get water in a watch it will die very quickly.

Thanks for viewing and please don't forget to vote!