Welcome to another version of the "How To" videos here from SwissWatchExpo.
One thing that we're going to focus on today are the screw-down crowns and the screw-down
pushers on water-resistant watches like this Breitling SuperOcean Steelfish.
Now what you will notice at the very beginning is that you have a chronograph function on
this watch, meaning that this is a stopwatch, when you want it to be used as a tool.
That's why it has three different sub-dials on this particular watch.
Now, this particular watch also happens to be a day-date feature.
We'll go through a couple of different setting routines for this particular watch because
it is important.
But the first thing that I want to display to you, and to make this very easy before
you can set anything on this watch, everything screws down against the body of the watch,
every single one of these.
Each pusher, plus the center crown, screws down against the body of the watch and it
keeps it watertight.
That's because this is a diving watch.
It's meant to be used to swim with or to dive with.
We're going to want to unscrew this crown away from the body of the watch and when we
do, that's where we start setting the watch.
We're going to push on that and you're going to notice there's a little bit of springy
action.
That's also the winding position for this watch.
You're going to want to wind this watch and because it's a chronograph, it has a rather
large power reserve.
You're going to want to wind this watch, at least 55 to 65 times to get that power reserve
good and fully wound.
It's an automatic watch, so as long as you wear it every single day on your wrist, it's
going to continue to stay wound.
If you do not, and you set this watch down overnight, you're going to lose about eight
hours of power reserve each and every day that you set it down at night and don't have
it on your wrist.
That's why I always tell people, be sure to wind this watch every one and a half to two
weeks.
If you're setting it down off of your wrist for an extended period of time, and it may
not see enough activity throughout the day to fully rewind this watch.
The way that you'll notice that it needs to be rewound is if it starts losing time or
even if it starts gaining time.
Oftentimes, that means that it needs to be wound.
In fact, more often than not.
Now let's focus on a couple of other things because the point of me showing you this is
I wanted to make sure that you knew how to wind the watch quickly, every action that
we do requires the watch to be fully wound.
It's especially important on a chronograph, because if it's not fully wound, these pushers
will not act properly.
Why?
Because it's a mechanical watch and they have gears inside of them that turn.
In order for any of these functions to happen properly, those gears must be turning in a
smooth fluid manner.
Obviously there's little things inside that grab and grasp and click.
Every time one of those gears goes by, as you can imagine, if the teeth aren't lined
up properly inside the watch, then these things won't work properly either, and you'll be
frustrated.
We get a lot of questions about that, and that's why I want to make sure you understand
that process.
Let's go to the pushers real quick.
Now, in order to display to you how the chronograph is actually working inside the watch, I'm
going to take this, push in and turn down against the body of the watch, and screw that
crown back down against the body of the watch that keeps the watch watertight.
It always needs to be down against the body of the watch, especially for diving watches.
That's ultra important.
In order to keep the water out, these pushers also have screw-downs on them because this
is a very heavy duty watch.
You'll typically find screw-down pushers on very heavy duty, deep diving watches.
In order to operate these pushers, you'll notice I can't push on these because they're
actually screwed down and locked into position.
The reason for that is you don't want to push these pushers or any kind of any watch, any
chronograph, regardless of who makes it.
You don't want to push these underwater because that gives an area for water to escape and
go inside the watch and you'll see it inside your dial.
I always tell people, if you're not careful, you'll look down and there'll be fish swimming
in your dial.
We don't want that.
You're going to unscrew the start-stop feature button, and then you're going to unscrew the
reset button.
Now, you see that there's a gap you've noticed and it's flush at the ends, gives you a little
bit wider pushing areas a little bit more positive.
When you start now, you can push those and it starts the chronograph.
See how easy that is.
It gives you good, nice wide positive click.
Now this is the reset button.
When I push this button here, you're going to see everything reset.
That's true for this sub-dial and that sub-dial.
The reason for that is each one of these is a collector.
The one at the top collects the minutes.
Every time this big hand goes around one time that collects the minutes.
Every time that little hand goes or clicks over one time and then clears that entire
dial.
This is a 30 minute collector.
It must do that twice.
That that little hand goes around here twice.
Then this clicks over one time, because this is the hour collector, so 30 and 30 is 60,
one click here.
That makes sense.
This sub-dial was the sub-dial seconds hand for the entire watch.
This one will constantly move.
You should not be allowing this hand that I'm following right here to move all the time,
because it runs down the power reserve.
Because now you're using not only the watch's regular standard power, but also the chronograph
power.
You can run down the power reserve on the watch rather quickly, if this is always moving.
Many people think that that hand right there should be moving all the time.
That's not so.
It's just for the chronograph feature.
I'll stop it and then I'll reset it.
Now, if you were to go swimming in this watch, you would want to reset everything.
In other words, screw down these pushers, make sure they're tight.
They're only finger tight.
You don't have to get it really tight.
You don't have to really crank on them to get them down, but once you do as long as
it's locked down against the body of the watch, it's good and watertight.
You're in good shape there.
Now let's talk about setting the watch.
We picked up this watch.
We don't know if this is 10:00 AM or 10:00 PM at night.
What I always tell folks to do is go ahead, pull that crown out.
This one's got a good stiff crown on it.
You've got to really pull on it to get it all the way out.
Don't be afraid to pull that crown out because the first click is pretty stiff.
Then the second click is another stiff click.
This is a very durable watch.
It requires a little bit of effort.
Now, I'm going to go ahead and move this hour hand around the dial.
I want you to pay attention because this is Saturday the 10th.
If this hour hand passes the 12 and that date changes, we know that's midnight.
Let's go ahead and do that, and it changed.
You saw the day and the date flip.
Now it says Sunday the 11th.
Now that we know that was midnight, now we're going to go to the safety zone.
This is highly important on these watches.
I mean, excrutiatingly important.
Do not ever set the date when that hand is in the top half of the dial.
If you do like this and you see the hour hand and the top half of the dial, it's the danger
zone.
It only applies to the hour hand, not the minute hand.
If you see that top dial filled full of hour hand, don't set the date, make sure to set
that hour hand down in the bottom half of the dial.
But you also want to make sure that you set the date properly, because you may look down
at noon and see the date flip and think, why is it doing this at noon?
Well, it's because you actually didn't set the watch properly.
You need to go ahead and run that hand around the dial to make sure that it only flips at
midnight.
Okay, let's go ahead and show you now how to set the day in the date.
I pushed the crown all the way back down and then pull it out one click.
It's really easy to find on this watch, some are not so much.
If you turn this particular crown towards the 12, so in other words in this direction,
you'll notice that the date flips.
So it quickly sets, you can choose your date.
Now when you turn that same crown towards the 12th to set the date towards the 6th to
set the day.
Now you see that day flipping.
That's how you set the day and the date on this particular watch.
Now, once I've done that, then I go back and I set the time.
That way I know that everything is good and we're not going to jam any gears up or do
anything improper that would otherwise cause harm to the watch.
Final thing, push in and turn.
Push in and turn, that operation makes sure that it grabs the threads.
Once it grabs the threads, you can just go ahead and screw that crown down.
It'll lock against the body of the watch.
There again, it doesn't have to be cranked down, finger tight.
Just as soon as it stops, it's tight enough against the watch.
It makes it water resistance.
That's how you set the SuperOcean Steelfish.
By the way, this is an excellent watch.
They don't make that mercury silver dial anymore.
This is a really cool watch and a great watch to have in your collection.
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