One of the goons at IAD once ordered me to go through the WTMD. I was waiting for the x-ray operator to clear a previous pax's bags, which she was running through and reversing several times. I wasn't about to leave my laptop sitting there, particularly on the rollers where a quick reverse of what was in the machine might push my laptop to the floor.

The guy kept saying, "Sir, step through the metal detector," and I just kept ignoring him. :cool:

My Timex can also stay on my wrist. :cool:

I have largely stopped removing my rings and necklace; they'd go into either the little bowl (to be placed in a bin under my coat) or into a pocket of my laptop bag previously. The deal was that some airports' had their WTMD sensitivity set so high that these things--my class ring in particular--were setting them off. DAB was notorious for this; once, the grommets in my ball cap set off their WTMD (that was pre-TSA, but my class ring set off TSA-run WTMDs at smaller airports all the time)

Bart or perhaps eyecue did mention once that the sensitivity is supposed to be standardized and not easily changed by the operators, I think, but I know some stations seemed to crank theirs up higher than others. (Conversely, my Rockports and their steel shank set off the WTMD at many airports, but not a few others--such as CLT--that I tried walking through with them)

I put my watch, cell phone, wallett, all that jazz in my laptop bag. Even though it won't set off the alarm. Gold, titanium, and leather isn't magnetically resonant so won't do doodly.

Handheld metal detectors used by hobbiests are able to alarm on gold; any metal will affect the phase of the magnetic field to some degree. I don't know that the airport WTMDs alarm on gold, but my class ring (10KT gold, so plenty of other metal in it) has alarmed WTMDs before.