Rolex and Handgun Shooting

Old Dog said:

..... we now know that guns and watches go together just as well as guns and knives and mac and cheese ...

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And motorcycles. lol

Speedo66 said:

Thanks for posting that!

Curious what model yours is. If you happen to come across it, be interested to know if a Seiko 6139-6005. It would be stamped on the back if it is.

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If I see it, I will post it, if I remember. I don't plan on moving anytime soon, and it's in the spare bedroom that's got like 40 boxes piled up in it.

hemiram said:

If I see it, I will post it, if I remember. I don't plan on moving anytime soon, and it's in the spare bedroom that's got like 40 boxes piled up in it.

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Understood. When we moved from a house of 25 years we discovered boxes in the attic that had never been opened from our previous house. lol

S&W620 said:

As far as Rolex specifically, if you can afford the watch you can afford to have it serviced in the rare instance it’s needed.

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If we only bought things we could afford, that would be accurate.
But our society today has people buying things on credit to keep up with the Jones, so they have things they can't really afford. This "How much will it cost a month" mentality is a terrible thing.
I love watches, and would love to own a Rolex or a Breitling. One day I may, but until I can pull out the cash and buy it, I'll not have it. I could lay down the plastic and have one tomorrow if I wanted to pay 18% interest on it for the next 8-10 years. That don't seem real smart though.

For now, my kinetic Seiko will have to do.
I will say I have fired a lot of rounds, played drums a lot, and played many rounds of golf with it on my wrist. I've replaced the face twice, but the mechanics have never faltered. It was $300 well spent. I've had it for nearly 20 years now. My wife (who was my girlfriend at the time) paid for half of it for my birthday, so it has some sentimental value as well.

Arkansas Paul said:

If we only bought things we could afford, that would be accurate.
But our society today has people buying things on credit to keep up with the Jones, so they have things they can't really afford. This "How much will it cost a month" mentality is a terrible thing.
I love watches, and would love to own a Rolex or a Breitling. One day I may, but until I can pull out the cash and buy it, I'll not have it. I could lay down the plastic and have one tomorrow if I wanted to pay 18% interest on it for the next 8-10 years. That don't seem real smart though.

For now, my kinetic Seiko will have to do.
I will say I have fired a lot of rounds, played drums a lot, and played many rounds of golf with it on my wrist. I've replaced the face twice, but the mechanics have never faltered. It was $300 well spent. I've had it for nearly 20 years now. My wife (who was my girlfriend at the time) paid for half of it for my birthday, so it has some sentimental value as well.

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You’re not wrong about people spending money unwisely. I guess I just look at it like if you can shell out X thousands of dollars for a watch, X hundred for a service shouldn’t be an issue, especially when regular services are something you should be expecting from the time you purchase it. If not, the issue isn’t the watch.

Seiko’s are great though. Great value, in-house movements and are reliable and durable as heck.

Paul7 said:

If anybody here owns a Rolex, do you shoot with it, or with any other high end mechanical watch? Was wondering if the recoil shock would harm anything. I've seen Larry Vickers and others shooting on TV wearing a Rolex.
I posted this on the Rolex forum but some snowflake moderator took it down.

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Paul, I purchased my first Rolex in 1970. Since then Rolex has upgraded their models and I am now on my third Submariner. They are wonderfully rugged watches, and manage shooting with aplomb.

Sidebar I have learned to send my watch directly to the Rolex facility in Dallas when it requires servicing.

Duces Tecum said:

Paul, I purchased my first Rolex in 1970. Since then Rolex has upgraded their models and I am now on my third Submariner. They are wonderfully rugged watches, and manage shooting with aplomb.

Sidebar I have learned to send my watch directly to the Rolex facility in Dallas when it requires servicing.

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That’s when I got mine, too, 1970.

Only problem with sending it to Rolex is they will replace vintage parts with new, like say the hands if the lume is a little chipped, thus destroying any collector value. Some of the old ones have serious collector value, too, if in original condition.

HiDive said:

I understand where you are coming from but, there is a lot wrong here and this is not really a watch forum so I will not write a paper on diving watches here. Let me just say that I have been a professional commercial diver since getting my Associates degree in Marine diving technology in the early 1970's I have worked around the country and in South America on offshore oil platforms of various types and have Saturation Diving experience in up to 200 meters; as well as construction of piers and work in and around nuclear power plants. I have owned Rolex and other high end watches since the early 1970's and have since earned a degree in engineering with extra studies in fluid dynamics, presenting papers to the ASME on that subject. I still work as a diver today supervising divers at my company here in Hawaii. I doubt if many 30 meter rated watches will function at 30 meters even brand new.

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Apropos of nothing, a watch isn't very important to a diver circa 2020 is it? You would be the first pro diver I ever met that doesn't primarily rely on a diver computer. That's not a knock on any watch, I'm a watch guy. I suppose I could have bought a Rolex 25 years ago but even their budget models are beyond my budget. Really I don't much like the styling of them anyway but if I had an extra five grand I didn't need I could see getting a Tudor Black Bay. Yeah, a quasi-Rolex, I just prefer the styling of them. And honestly that's the point of a watch. Even the best mechanical watch is greatly inferior to quartz accuracy wise.

Still, I prefer automatics to anything else. If I had the extra money I'd love to have a Grand Seiko! Pretty much the pinnacle of mechanical engineering IMO.

My problem with watches is that I'm addicted to tritium. I have a modest watch collection but I really only ever wear my Deep Blue Tritium DAYNIGHT due to the fact that it has 13 x T100 flat tritium tubes. For knocking around I have a Bertucci field watch with a backlight but I generally still wear my DB.

My most interesting watch is maybe my Bulova Precisionist. It's mesmerizing watching the high frequency quartz! The second had is smoother than any of my autos, maybe any auto short of the Grand Seiko. There are a few high beat movements that come close though.

When I started diving as a Commercial Diver in the 1970's there was no such thing as a Dive computer so we did rely on watches & clocks. Actually more on clocks and stopwatches in the control room or on deck. So I suppose this is where my thing for mechanical watches and watches in gemeral came from. I have others besides Rolex and others besides mechanicals including a Grand Seiko and a couple of other high end Japanese market Seikos all the way to solar powered Citizens. So, accuracy to within seconds is not important to me so a Mechanical that is within a few seconds a day is fine.

Yeah, I understand that dive computers are a modern thing. I don't really know why I prefer mechanical watches. Guess it's mostly because I prefer hands to digits and if you're going to have hands you might as well have gears. There are a few electronic watches I'd still like to have (and I'll love to find an old Accutron! What a piece of history that is) but mostly I'm drawn to automatics. A few second per day is fine for a beater watch (or really any normal day to day application) but I admire the incredible accuracy of the best watches. After all, a watch has literally no other reason to exist than to tell time! A watch that won't tell time is like a gun that won't fire ammo or won't shoot accurately enough to keep the shots on paper. Obviously within that range practical accuracy of a few seconds here or there is plenty for most folk's daily life.

Phaedrus/69 said:

Yeah, I understand that dive computers are a modern thing. I don't really know why I prefer mechanical watches. Guess it's mostly because I prefer hands to digits and if you're going to have hands you might as well have gears. There are a few electronic watches I'd still like to have (and I'll love to find an old Accutron! What a piece of history that is) but mostly I'm drawn to automatics. A few second per day is fine for a beater watch (or really any normal day to day application) but I admire the incredible accuracy of the best watches. After all, a watch has literally no other reason to exist than to tell time! A watch that won't tell time is like a gun that won't fire ammo or won't shoot accurately enough to keep the shots on paper. Obviously within that range practical accuracy of a few seconds here or there is plenty for most folk's daily life.

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There is, of course, a certain panache to fine things, be they guns, automobiles, or watches. Sometimes it's just nice to have a nice thing and use it. When I bought my Submariner back in '70, there weren't many truly waterproof watches that could stay dry at even amateur diving depths.

Most quartz watches are considered throwaways, whereas a decent mechanical watch can be repaired and passed on. Same for collector value, very few electronic watches have any.

I get a kick out of interesting watches, have a small collection, all mechanical. Also get into modding watches, i.e., changing faces, hands, etc., sort of like personalizing firearms.

To get back to the original topic, none of them have been harmed by firing a gun.

Bertucci watches use a metal movement that can be repaired. Quartz was a really brilliant technology and allowed near-lab accuracy for not a lot of money, something that we take for granted today but really an amazing human achievement! But while quartz and be cheap and accurate not all the movements out there are cheap and disposable. Of course, back in the day Timex made mechanical movements that were so cheap as to be disposable.

All in all, quartz is pretty shockproof as well.

Most Quartz movements are replacement rather than repair. I had a new movement put in this Citizen Solar powered watch recently for about $100 which I thought was reasonable in a $600 to $700 watch. I believe this watch was made in 1998 so that movement lasted about 20 years.

Yeah, most are cheap enough to replace, too. But again some can be repaired. Still I doubt many quartz movements will still be running in 50 years. Mechanical movements won't last that long either without maintenance but there are plenty of 50 year old mechanical watches that still run fine. I'm not sure I could bring myself to pay $700 for a quartz watch but if I did it would maybe be a JSAR or something. That pesky tritium addiction again!

How long did the original movement in that Citizen last? I'm kind of curious!

My 1970 Rolex Sub ran for 40 years without servicing. Toward the end of that time it started to run a little slow, my son expressed interest and I gave it to him. He had a major service done, I expect it to run for another 40 years.

My outlay of $127 in 1970 is now worth about $8K on the collector's market.

My sole tritium watch was a Luminox quartz, but the movement died before the lume expired. I wouldn't mind a Ball watch with tritium.

Luminox are kind of overhyped junk IMO. I would love to get a Ball watch! They're not what they used to be (ie an American high end timepiece) but they still seem to be excellent. I could definitely see getting a Ball in the near future.

I own a couple of Ball mechanical watches because I’m a tritium junkie. I’ve never hesitated to shoot while wearing them, but I generally wear a quartz watch if some sort of I know in advance I’m going to be doing something active.

Here is the watch the Boss bought me 20 years ago that I run through the dishwasher when I get it grunged up:


-mike

I can't believe that I am still watching this thread...

Pun intended...

And one other observation, none of the watches posted have any movement... They all broke? Time to go to the Watch Maker /Jeweler ?

Sorry, just couldn't help myself.............

Time to go...............LOL

I really have to just say...what a dilemma, oh my god, do I wear my Rolex...while shooting my 'Gucci' gun, lol. Some people.

Makes me think of the armed couple on TV 'defending' their home with their 'rolexes and gucci guns' out for all to see...what a riot! LOL!!

Ok, look, no offense intended here...just poking fun. Wish I could afford a Rolex actually.

Of course. Just my sense of humor, I guess.

Here is an interesting story of a restoration on a Tudor / Rolex that was hit by a bullet while being worn by a Marine in Vietnam.

https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/the-long-return-part-2?mc_cid=74b9ff7ba3&mc_eid=c25efef67d