GOING OFF WATCH
Well both of my wristwatches that I've talked about before are now
broken. My recreation watch, the mechanical self-winding one I
talked about in 2024-02-17At_One_with_the_ST6_Wristwatch.txt, had
one of the lugs that holds the watch band break off late last year.
I've been meaning to attempt some sort of repair using epoxy but
I'm not very confident. Then yesterday my everyday Casio calculator
watch, described in 2022-11-06Reviewing_the_Casio_CA-53W.txt,
finally went blank after a long time getting fainter. Granted
that's been going for well over ten years on the original battery
which the manual expects to last less than five.
Opening up the Casio, where the calculator buttons were getting
stuck with gunk and needed cleaning anyway, it turns out quite
unlike any other watch I've opened up. The battery is a large
CR2016 size, and held in a clip-in cradle where it seems impossible
to unhock the clip from the back. Since I needed to get through to
the keyboard anyway, I proceeded to pick apart all the clip/snap
fit components expecting to eventualy find a typical membrane style
keypad. This I did, except for water resistance the rubber button
pad is sandwiched in the case plastic with no apparant way to
separate it. So rather than simply washing it in the sink, I spent
the evening pushing out each button from behind with a small
screwdriver as far as it will go and trying to clean out all the
gunk that was revealed. How much good that does remains to be seen,
but really I'm less confident about getting all the bits back
together correctly and undamaged now anyway. I did at least make
sure to photograph it at every step of disassembly, so I _should_
be able to get things back in the order they came out, but how much
damage is done in the process remains to be seen.
Already it seems I've been beaten by this guy who figured out how
to release the battery clip without pulling the rest apart first:
https://idoneitmyself.com/2009/06/07/replacing-the-battery-on-your-casio-calculator-watch-and-resetting-the-watch/
Maybe I should have done a Web search and read that first, though I
probably would have only further convinced myself that the clip was
at the other end, because clearly that end was completely
impossible. That's the trouble when I try repairing things, I
always jump to the completely wrong conclusions. Anyway this time I
needed it all apart to get at the keypad from behind too.
The timing of the battery going dead is interesting. The day before
it was in the bottom of my bag at the beach, under everything else
I wear. I've noticed before that its display is dim when I put it
back on when leaving. Was a button getting pressed by the other
stuff on top, wearing the battery down? or was the salt in the air
somehow causing increased discharge? Either way maybe I should
leave it in the car in the future, since I do have the clock on my
fire brigade pager as well.
I looked through my collection of other watches, but they're all
either broken mechanical ones or more dead battery victims. I don't
have spare batteries for the latter, and this experience with
fixing a digital watch has dampened my already-weak confidence to
tackle repairing its clockwork ancestors.
Hopefully I'll be going near a place that sells obscure batteries
on the weekend, but until then (at least) I'm adrift without a
timepiece (or calculator). Well actually I take it off when I'm not
wearing clothes anyway, which has been most of the time in these
recent hot days, but somehow it's still strange being without it
entirely.
Oh, and on a completely different topic: DEATH TO ALL MOSQUITOES!
DIE DIE DIE DIE!!!!!
Somehow they've discovered a new way into my bedroom which I
thought I'd successfully mozzie-proofed years ago, and keep me
jumping around slapping the walls like a mad man on these warm
nights. Why is no problem ever truely solved?! Maybe I'll have to
get a net for the bed.
- The Free Thinker