Nice to see someone else having a go at this, the Omega looks great. I did the same with a few watches about 3 years ago now, and I still have two of the watches, still filled, and they have run (almost) faultlessly.
My first experiment was on this Zodiac, which worked out quite well.
Once I'd proved that it worked, I then filled this Seiko Tuna.
In in the interests of experimentation I 'punished' the case a bit with temperature extremes to see what would happen. Here's the result of a night in the freezer, the bubble shows how much the liquid has contracted.
And here it is at 60 degrees C...
The crystal gasket failed at 62 degrees, but I'd say that's enough, I suspect the movement wouldn't be too happy at that temp anyway. Also, the amount of liquid inside is much more without the movement so the pressure would be more.
The Zodiac I use as a bit of desk ornament these days, but I've been wearing the Tuna regularly since I filled it. What I've found is that with the constant heating and cooling on and off the wrist, the caseback tends to loosen over time, and so needs tightening back up every 3 months or so. I also find that when it's been worn in the summer and gets particularly warm or I wear the watch in the shower, if you unscrew the crown, it shoots out to the time setting position immediately. Other than that, it's been fine with no issues to the timekeeping.
I've changed the battery in both watches in that time, they lasted about 2 years. I suspect that is shorter than they would have lasted without the liquid as the movement has to deal with the extra friction of driving the hands through the liquid, but 2 years is still pretty good.
The ideal scenario would be to fill a solar powered watch, and I tried it with this Citizen Orca.
The end result was great, especially with the high domed crystal, but I found that the movement was only just strong enough to drive the hands through the fluid. It did work but it looked laboured, so after a few weeks I drained it again. I didn't much care for the style of the watch anyway - I can't help thinking of a clown every time I see one - but it worked, and charged just like a normal eco-drive.
A note to the OP, if you do drain your watch, you shouldn't need to replace the dial and hands as the liquid should just evaporate off, leaving no detectable residue. As you've probably discovered, the evaporation rate of the liquid is fierce, so ensure that your container is well sealed as at £100/kg, you'd be pretty chiffed if your 5kg disappeared over night.
I know some people question the point of filling watches. Theoretically, it increases the depth rating massively; as you can't compress a liquid, the only crushable component inside would be the air in the quartz crystal tube and you'd have to be pretty deep to do that. Another benefit, is that you'll never get any moisture inside.
At the end of the day, there is no real practical purpose, it just looks cool. In fact, when I drained the fluid out of my Tuna to change the battery, it just look odd, and I couldn't wait to get it refilled.
Edit: To answer the question above about expansion, I too tried the closed cell foam and also a single bubble from some bubble wrap - the bubble eventually popped leaving me with an air bubble. The closed cell foam did work, but didn't seem to compress that much and the stem still shot out of the tuna when hot. I worked out that the liquid would expand 12%, so you'd need quite a lot of foam to compensate for that.
I've got other ideas for handling the expansion to try, but I don't have enough time to mess about with these things these days. Consequently, when I replaced the battery in the Seiko last year, I just opted to leave a small air bubble in the watch - it won't please the purists, but it seems to have stopped the caseback from unscrewing, and people that have seen it are pretty fascinated that I have a watch with a bubble in it.
Rich.
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Originally Posted by Manxdiver
