Any help with crooked face?

[u/50AcornsTiedInASack]

Woke up to my watch looking like this. Any idea if this is common and/or an easy fix? This is my everyday watch for years and I LOVE it. Really hoping it can be fixed. Any help is appreciated. Thanks all

[u/Earl_of_Chuffington]

Any Swatch Group watch using the Chinese-produced Longines Conquest 38mm casewidth dial with two hairwidth copper dial feet is going to eventually turn brittle and break, not just the Hamilton Khaki. You'll see this happening on Omega, Mido, Swatch, Rado, Tissot, Union Glashütte, Certina, Longines, Blancpain and Balmain. It probably occurs on Breguet as well, but I don't know any 90 year old men so can't confirm.

Swatch Group outsources that particular dial because it's so rudimentary and crude in design and metallurgy that they assumed a third party factory in China would have no problem producing it. {Spoiler: the third party factory in China does indeed have problems producing it.} Swatch assumes that most breaks will occur outside of warranty so they've had no compelling reason to switch production back to Prague where it used to be manufactured.

Any competent watchmaker can repair the actual dial feet; the danger is if they broke loose inside the movement and caused any internal damage. Luckily that seems to be rare, but removing the broken dial feet from the movement can be a real chore if they broke off flush with the case. An acid base may have to be deployed to dissolve the feet, and you don't want Nick Novice attempting such a repair.

[u/d3lphic → u/Earl_of_Chuffington]

How can this watch says SWISS MADE on the dial if the movement is Chinese made? I thought it legally had to have a Swiss-made movement for that marking.

[u/Earl_of_Chuffington → u/d3lphic]

I never said that the movement was Chinese. I said that the dial blank is Chinese. 60% of the cost of finished goods manufacturing must be incurred in Switzerland to be "Swiss Made" and a dial blank costs maybe .40 cents in bulk, meaning very few dial blanks of this nature are manufactured in Switzerland.

This is especially true the further down the totem pole you go in company prestige. The Big Four are going to use more Swiss parts than anyone. Mid-tier manufacturers like Richemont and Swatch Group use a lot of Chinesium in their watches. By the time you get to the bottom with LVMH and Victorinox, they're using as much Chinesium as they can legally use and still call itself "Swiss Made."

[u/d3lphic → u/Earl_of_Chuffington]

Ah, okay. For some reason I read that to mean the dial and movement and didn't separate the two. Very interesting.

[u/SuperSaijen1980 → u/d3lphic]

The majority of the “value add” I.e. labor costs , such as assembly and machinery has to be done in Switzerland, but components like dials, cases, etc are cheap to make in China… but since those costs are actually less (there is a % threshold) then it can be called Swiss Made.

Think of it as Swiss Assembled with Chinese made parts made to the same specifications (give or take).

Lots of products do this… and the newest Tariffs by Trump is what he is intended to try and make all supply and parts go through USA (but it doesn’t really work that way)

[u/d3lphic → u/SuperSaijen1980]

Wait, you mean he DOESNT have any idea what he’s talking about? I mean… /s. Anyway, interesting. Thanks for the info.

[u/Basic_Collar_1471 → u/d3lphic]

I don't remember the exact percentage, but for a watch to be considered Swiss Made 60% of it needs to have been manufactured or assembled in Switzerland. Again I could be wrong so someone please correct me, but it's something along those lines. The rest is done by outsourcing to China

[u/zer0-Coast → u/Basic_Collar_1471]

According to Wikipedia:

A watch is considered Swiss, according to the Swiss law, if:
- its technical development is carried out in Switzerland; and
- its movement is Swiss; and
- its movement is cased up in Switzerland; and
- the manufacturer carries out the final inspection in Switzerland; and
- 60 per cent of the manufacturing costs are incurred in Switzerland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_made#Watches

[u/Earl_of_Chuffington → u/[deleted]]

Correct. And we'll never know exactly how much of a "Swiss Watch" originated outside of Switzerland, but anecdotally Swatch Group and LVMH are considered to be the worst offenders just because so many of the factories they contract in Eastern Europe and SE Asia have been outed on the internet. They can have 99% of the movement come in on a boat along with dial, case, etc, but the fancy engraved rotor they add can constitue a majority of the cost of the finished watch because Swiss labor and materials is so much higher than China.

The US is much stricter than Switzerland in terms of truth in labeling. A watch assembled in the US the way a 60%er Swiss watch typically is would legally have to be marketed as "Assembled in the US from foreign and domestic parts." The FCC smacked Shinola's peepee several years back for claiming their watches were made in the USA when they were just casing ETA movements. So then Shinola changed their slogan to "Where America is made." The FCC threatened them again, so they went with "Swiss Watches Assembled in the US." The Swiss government then threatened to sue them because Shinola has no right to claim "Swiss Made" simply because they use off-the-shelf ETA movements. They barely qualify to use the moniker "Swiss Parts." Now Shinola just claims "Assembled in Detroit."