Reducing Humidity Inside The Watch

[steven]

Customer of mine brought in a watch because of fogging under the crystal whenever cold air from the car air-cond blows on the watch.

I cleaned up the inside and also pressure tested the watch after applying silicone grease. No leakage was found. But when he was in his air-conditioned car, mist appeared under the watch crystal again.

I understand this is due to humidity of the air trap inside the watch, which is the cause of high humidity atmosphere when casing up. Humidity in my area is 80%.

Does anyone have a good method to reduce humidity when casing up a watch?

Edited January 19, 2016 by steven

[jdm]

Does anyone have a good method to reduce humidity when casing up a watch?

 

Just keep it a minute under the hairdryer before closing caseback.

[stroppy]

It's a pity no one markets a small round and thin pocket of powdered silica gel to fit into the caseback without fouling the works of a watch.  Whenever I buy shoes or medications packed with silica gel packs I save them to pack into my camera equipment, especially lens bags.  They do a fantastic job of keeping mould out of the inside of SLR lenses.  Mould spells death for lenses and it can develop quickly in even the most expensive lenses if you are in a high humidity area.

[canthus]

I read somewhere that top end watch makers flush out the watch with argon gas.  Doubt this is available in small amounts for the small user, but could another inert gas be equally effective?

[stroppy]

Harking back to the silica gel.  Crystalised kitty litter is the same stuff.  Perhaps you could wrap the watch in some tissue paper and just bury it under a bowl of silica kitty litter (covered tightly with Saran [Gladwrap] wrap) for a day or so.  It will remove any moisture for sure.

[steven]

I've tried the hairdryer method but still the same. A suggestion from a friend is to put the uncased watch in a plastic bag with tiny holes and buried it in rice. But when casing up the watch will still expose it to the damp atmosphere.

So I came up with an idea by using a moisture absorbing paper, those found in Seiko capacitor packages. Sticking it inside the caseback is able to absorb the moisture after cased up. Similar to Stroppy's idea.

No condensation inside the watch after blowing it with cold air. But as you can see this method is only applicable for stainless steel caseback.

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Edited January 20, 2016 by steven

[stroppy]

What a great idea, Steven!  Can you buy this "capacitor paper" retail?

[steven]

Quote from breitling.com

"The performances of a watch product partially depend on the quality of the air in the premises where it was cased up. To ensure the smooth operation of its chronometers in even the most testing conditions, Breitling has equipped its production building with a sophisticated system enabling constant regulation and monitoring of the humidity rate and temperature in each area. This avoids the risk of watches showing traces of condensation when exposed to lower temperatures, such as would occur if they were cased up in an overly damp atmosphere.

The temperature in the casing-up areas ranges from 20 to 23° C; the relative humidity rate is kept below 50%; the air is entirely renewed six times an hour. An air filter system eliminates any dust that might clog up the movement. All these are common enough measures in high-tech medical or electronic industries, but are resolutely pioneering in watchmaking."

I've set up a humidity controlled system for casing up watches. Experiment is on going since yesterday. Today I'll know whether it will be successful or not.

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Edited January 21, 2016 by steven

[SSTEEL]

I have found in some instances, cleaning the underside of the crystal has helped.  Without knowing the underside of the crystal must of been contaminated at some point with some kind of invisible grime/film, and its this that was causing fogging in my examples.

[steven]

It's a successful experiment. Humidity was brought down to 28%. Cased up the watch and no condensation found under the crystal when exposed directly to cold air. Cheers!

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[rogart63]

Interesting topic this. I think you can use something called calcium chloride to reduce humidity?