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Posted (edited)

I'm looking at buying a box of flat rubber watch gaskets and looking at Cousins they have their own brand and ISO Swiss gaskets.

The Swiss gaskets are 8 times more expensive than the Cousins gaskets.

Are they really 8 times better?

Reading between the lines I think the Swiss gaskets are Nitrile rubber, whilst the Cousins ones aren't.

Are the Swiss ones really worth the extra cost? I don't mind paying more if I am getting a better product, but don't want to pay more just for the name 'Swiss' on the box.

I will add hopefully next year I will be starting to service other peoples watches, so will be using the gaskets for not just my watches buy for paying customers too, so don't want to save myself a few dollars now that could come back and bite me if the cheap gaskets fail in customers watches.

Edited by Tmuir
Posted

They are better but not 8 times better. Nonetheless it's up to you if you wish for a more durable product or a not as durable one. :)

Posted (edited)

That's a tough one, I have every confidence with my battery replacement reseals in cousins gaskets, and the servicing i do on mechanical watches at this stage of my career tends to be on old watches that are splash proof at best anyway, so I don't think about that much.

If you're working on modern expensive modern autos that are 50m and up, and you're promising them resealed then it might just be worth the extra expense, (If its quartz it will need to be resealed with the next battery change in a couple of years anyway, so dont worry) I dont think anything would come back to you in any time frame that you could take responsibility for, but given that some of these watches go a decade without anyone looking at them, the customer might find 8 years after the service they jump into a pool and it floods, now obviously thats not really your fault or responsibility, even if it could have been theoretically prevented with an expensive gasket that would degrade more slowly, you cant promise people that their watch will be waterproof for a decade without maintenance. so it shouldn't cause you any problems, but perhaps more of an ethical consideration for the owners of the watches and what they might face way off down the line and whether that hypothetical situation would cause you to lose any sleep. 

To answer more directly, as chopin says they're a bit better, but not 8 times better. 

Edited by Ishima
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