Life Hack: Making a Solar Cabinet Drawer – Safe, Secure & Neat, A Review

Once you start to collect solar powered watches, a problem of maintaining sufficient amount of charge in the batteries becomes apparent. If can wear them all often, this may not be a problem but if this is not possible, is there a solution? Yes, you can leave it out on the dressing table to absorb any kinds of light, natural or artificial but this opens up another problem: security of the watches when you are away from home.

You can put it under the sun but the effects of UV rays on dials, non-metallic materials and painted surfaces would be damaging in the long run.

A rather simple solution is to create a watch cabinet with artificial light. Although there are countless ways of making a really proper “solar cabinet”, I’ve decided to re-purpose an existing drawer with a light bulb.

Charging a SEIKO Kinetic using a Braun tootbrush induction charger

I have two Seiko Kinetic watches that I seldom wear (Seiko Kinetic SKA475P1 and Seiko Prospex Kinetic GMT SUN019P1). Letting the energy deplete completely in the capacitor could weaken it in the long run. Hence, it is best practice to always keep it charged.

Unfortunately, this is the bane of Seiko Kinetics. Without the owner wearing the watch, it will not get charged.

Seiko does have a dedicated charger. However, this charger is only sold to its dealers (in Malaysia that is). Nevertheless, it can be found on eBay although at a very exorbitant price. This got me thinking of another way to get the same result.

Actually there are a lot of threads in watch forums about this issue. One of the suggestion was to substitute the Seiko induction charger with another less expensive alternative. The Braun toothbrush induction charger was a prime candidate.

I got one at a shop and immediately started experimenting on my Seiko Kinetic.