Have you ever bought a diver’s watch and wondered as to the exact purpose of that exclusively left-turning ring doohickey surrounding the dial of your watch?

Well let me just say, if you feel stupid because you don’t know how to operate this thing, that’s because you probably are.

Seriously, even a monkey can do this:

Seiko Men’s “Black Monster” Automatic Dive Watch #SKX779K3

IS A MONKEY SMARTER THAT YOU?!?!

If you don’t know what I am talking about I’ll show you what I mean using my Seiko Black Monster:

Seiko Men’s “Black Monster” Automatic Dive Watch #SKX779K3

This is a typical dive watch, and if you’ve read some of my earlier posts you know that I love this watch even though it does weigh a ton. It’s got everything that a typical dive watch has got. It has luminous hands and markers, great depth rating, tough steel case and bracelet, rugged looks, and most importantly of all for the purposes of this tutorial, it has a diving bezel.

If you still don’t know what I’m going on about I have singled out the diving bezel just for you:

Seiko Men’s “Black Monster” Automatic Dive Watch #SKX779K3

Now as you see the bezel has minute (or seconds if you will) increments that goes up to the number 60. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that because there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in a hour, and the fact that a diving bezel is on a bloody WATCH, probably means that its purpose has got something to do with measuring time.

Well you guessed right genius, a diving bezel is used to measure time, and its purpose, diving of course.

I won’t bore you with the details of diving but the purpose of a diving bezel is typically for divers to time their decompression stops. You see, when a diver goes deep underwater they have to endure a great deal of pressure. Going down to great depths, however, is not quite the same as coming back up. A diver can get down to great depths relatively fast, but when coming back they can’t do it too fast or they might get sick or even die.

To overcome this, divers have to come up in carefully-timed stages, and in this situation a watch becomes as important a diving tool as a wet suit and a scuba tank. You ever notice how the increments on a diving bezel are different from the 0-15 minute position as opposed to the rest of a bezel? That is because the typical decompression stop for most diving situations is 15 minutes. Ever wonder why you can only turn the darn thing counterclockwise? That is because it is safer for the diver not to perceive a shorter elapsed time if the bezel should accidentally get turned after it is set.

Well now that you know a little more, it’s time to learn how to operate the thing.

Well here is my Seiko Black Monster sitting on the wrist of your humble presenter. As you notice the bezel is set so that the ‘zero’ mark is set at the 60 minute, or 12 o’clock position:

Seiko Men’s “Black Monster” Automatic Dive Watch #SKX779K3

Let’s just say we are underwater on a dive. Actually forget that! I want to use a more real-world situation, so let’s say we want to know how long it takes for my cake to bake. Disregarding the above shot of my Black Monster, the current time on my watch is 11:40, so what we want to do is turn the bezel so that the ‘zero’ mark, or the big triangle, is hovering right over my minute hand like so:

Seiko Men’s “Black Monster” Automatic Dive Watch #SKX779K3

So now that my bezel is set I just leave it there until I need it again. When my minute hand reaches 11:55 that would mean that 15 minutes has elapsed, when the watch hits 12:00 that would mean 20 minutes have passed and so on and so on…

Well I’m smelling a burning from the office oven so that must mean that my cake is done. I read my watch and it looks like this:

Seiko Men’s “Black Monster” Automatic Dive Watch #SKX779K3

Now pay attention. How long was my cake in the oven? Look at the time, it is now 12:18.

If haven’t figured it out at this point, than you have problems. Here is the solution:

Seiko Men’s “Black Monster” Automatic Dive Watch #SKX779K3

Main purpose of a diving watch is diving, but I suspect that diving bezels all across the world will do just as well timing steaks on the grill as well.

Well there you have it monkey. That is how you use a diving bezel:

Seiko Men’s “Black Monster” Automatic Dive Watch #SKX779K3