zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

agreements, disagreements and others

Posted By: georges zaslavsky

Date: 5/31/06 09:37 GMT

In Response To: Omega (OVI) says Golfing isn't a problem… However… (Chicagoland Chuck Maddox)

Hi chuck

Good Morning/Afternoon Georges.

Good article but you didn't cover some points like the ball bearing rotor mechanism, the jeweled pivot mechanism and the modular chrono question.

Hmmm.... That's right, you weren't around at the conception of that document were you...

That document isn't really so much "an article", but perhaps the best phrase for it is "Damon and Chuck's Science/Social document building experiment"...

The story is that the TZ Omega Forum needed a FAQ. The moderator at the time (Ross Feinberg) was dead set against having one. [This was long before Bill and Damon became moderators over at TZ] So Damon or I suggested that we create a "Do-It yourself FAQ"... The idea being a participant over at TZ would pose a question for the FAQ and either a) Answer it themselves or b others in the forum would answer it... The Questions would be gathered and a FAQ created out of the threads.

I do not remember who's idea it was, it may have been Damon's, it may have been mine. I don't remember, in any case Damon volunteered to gather up all of the threads and create the first draft of the FAQ. Which Damon did. The end result was an HTML document that didn't look all that dissimilar from one of my post/replies in a forum... A query in Bold Italic text with a reply in plain text intented jast as you see here...

That's where my involvment came in in force... I took the document, added a Table of Contents, anchor points at every question and navigation buttons at every question to go to the next, previous and index. Then I went through and added, deleted and modified the questions and answers to better suit the needs of the document. I also added some of the tables, and large passages of the text.

Thus, this document was not the creation of one person, nor was it created with any great level of continuity.

The ball bearing winding rotor system is always more fragile than the jeweled pivot system which offers an absolute resistance to violent sports like tennis or golf or even shooting with very big bore guns.

Hmmm... Makes sense.

I have heard problems with v7750 movements when playing golf or tennis and same for the eta 2824 and 2892-a2 movements.

Ok, you've heard those things...

A guy who owned a chronomat from breitling and who used to play golf,has seen his watch stopping brutally,he went to the watchmaker, the watchmaker said him that the rotor went lose, unscrewed itself and fall in the movement. Another case like this happened to a friend of mine who wasplaying tennis with a superocean, after 6 months,the watch stopped, same problem than described above, the rotor went lose, unscrewed itself and has fallen in the movement.

Ok.

About modular chronos,a guy that I knew who owned a navitimer cal 11 and who used to play golf with a strong swing, has seen his watch stopping after some months and the same thing happened to one of my friends who was playing with his tag heuer monza powered by an eta 2894-a2.

Ok.

I was said by many watchmakers that playing sports with a modular chrono was not recommended.

Ok. I don't recall recommending modular chronographs for these activities... In fact I believe the FAQ stated (and this is one of the portions that I wrote:

For automatics an additional concern to the above are activities that generate a great deal of torque or inertia at the wrist/hands... Activities such as Golf, Tennis, Polo, Baseball, Jai-Lai, Lacrosse, and the like are likely to cause the rotor to spin rapidly which is generally not a good idea... Sort of like running your car close to it's red-line at full throttle.

Many mechanical and automatic movement watches have endured long stints in extreme active use and survived no worse for wear. A number of movements are renowned for their toughness. These include the Omega c.321, c.861, Lemania c.1341 (Omega c.1040 and c.1041), c.5100 (Omega c.1045), Valjoux c.72 and c.7750, movements. There are probably others. In all instances in these cases the watches in question were: quality made, robust movements (not a lot of delicate complications), and in good mechanical condition and well serviced.

However, it is not advisable to wear an automatic for the "high torque" activities mentioned above, a more robust manual wind or a quartz would be better choices. I would be more concerned about wearing an Automatic watch when shooting than I would be a manual wind, not only because of the rotor but also because there is more to go wrong typically.

Thus, I don't recommend wearing any Automatic watch for Golf or Tennis.

However, I did include/share John Diethelm's quote on the topic.

The only selfwinding movements than resist to very severe shocks are jeweled pivot self winding movements like the vintage inhouse omega cal 55x-56x-75x-100x-101x-102x and all the rolex calibres from the early 30's till this day.Rolex movements are far more robust than etas and they don't know the problems that eta movements know on the short term-medium term after very severe repeated shocks.

I'll take your word on this without agreeing or disagreeing.

My points of agreements with you hcuk are about the handwound movements you quoted which are bullet proof,

Actually, in reading the passage above, I would revise it in that the Valjoux 72 often does include complications which would potentially have a greater possibility of being stressed to the point of failure when used in the activities we are discussing. I would have to either a) figure out an easy to remember way of expressing "Daytona's and Non Day-Date-Month Carrera's are probably ok, and other Valjoux 72's without any complications are probably fine, but avoid the GMT's, Day-Date-Month's etc." or just say "leave the watch locked up in the glovebox of your car when you go and play these sports".

I will also agree about the lemania 1340-1341 and 5100 and not on the v7750 because of the many cases of fallen rotors.

Again, I'll note that I recommended against the wearing any automatic for the "high torque" activities mentioned above.

The 5100 being the only jeweled pivot self winding movement chrono as far as I can remember which explains its incredible robustness.

Well, that certainly is one of the reasons, anyway.

regards

georges

Cheers!

-- Chuck