NavList:

Hanno, 

Your proposed battery of tests is so mind-boggling, so outlandish that I find it really hard to believe you're not pulling NavList's collective leg! Did I miss the joke?

Testing dozens of samples? Dunking in oil, cleaning agents, and paint!? Subjecting it to mechanical pummeling ... in case someone drops a heavy tool on it or steps on it?!? Few sextants could survive such mayhem and certainly there is not a chronometer or common watch anywhere that could live through such severe punishment. Imagine dropping a chronometer in paint. Your crew at sea, or your friends on land, would throw you in a straitjacket. If this sort of standard is indeed the standard that you expect from navigational gear, then hang up your haversine table, cap your pens, put away your notebooks, because that standard will unquestionably rule out sextants and chronometers entirely.

As for agency requirements regarding heavy metals and other potentially hazardous elements, that Casio calculator comes with the best safety guarantee that you could ask for: it is a required tool in classrooms all across the USA. Anything allowed in classrooms by the thousands is a safe product --you can bet on that.

You concluded:
"I am writing this so anyone considering putting electronic equipment into a bona fide survival kit does not just trust consumer equipment."

Ha ha ha. Seriously, this is all just for laughs, right? I don't think any NavList member would "just trust" any device or any methodology, for that matter. That's why I've been tossing my calculators in saltwater for a week. Trust but verify.

Frank Reed
ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA