A question we receive often is “What do I use my diver’s bezel for?” That’s a great question for two reasons: (1) Because they have been made obsolete with the advent of the dive computer and (2) it appears to only function aesthetically. It may be obsolete for diving, but that doesn’t mean that your Kamasu watch is only useful for telling the time. Let’s dive in.

Since their first appearance on watches in the early 1950s, the bezel on a diver watch is almost as iconic as the diver watch itself. They’re the most common “moving” bezel seen on watches, and come in all shapes, sizes, fonts, and colors. Diver’s bezels are usually scaled from 0-60, with the beginning/end marker “zero” marker typically denoted by a shape and lumed circle (referred to as the “pip”). Early on they were a nifty tool for divers to time their dives and measure the finite amount of mixed gas left in their tanks. To preserve the accuracy of the bezel in case of turbulence, they were purposefully built to be unidirectional.

Now onto the practical uses for this, especially if you want to measure time. We can’t guarantee that you won’t burn those cookies in the oven, but here are the steps for using your diver’s bezel for simple time measurement:

  1. Align the zero marker (like the bezel pip) to the minute hand. Watches like our AA02 USA II utilize 120-clicks for accuracy. 
  2. You should be able to tell from the position of the minute hand in relation to the numbers on the bezel the amount of time that has elapsed.

Counting down is equally as easy: Just align the number with the minute hand and as soon as the minute hand reaches the zero marker, you will know that time is up. For instance, if you want to countdown 20 minutes you would align the “40” mark with the minute hand.