WS 10: HOW TO refurbish satin brushed surfaces

Please also see the newly added article WS 23: "Adjusting Clasps"

The Tools you will need, not much and probably already in your house hold!

• A not to coarse ink eraser, Rotring and Laeufer (German brands) make great erasers that are ideal to refurbish all satin brushed watch cases and bracelets

• Do not laugh now: regular tooth paste! Simply massage the tooth paste with your finger along the original brush and then wash the watch with warm soap water. Be careful, smoker's tooth paste might be too abrasive if the satin brush is pretty fine. Check the toothpaste on a little piece of PVC plastic and look at the plastic under the loupe and you will soon find out whether your tooth paste contains too big splinters of abrasive material.

• a Japan made special rubber sponge - find a picture here (lower right corner) and press the back button to come back - which comes in three variations: extra fine, fine and coarse, to polish watch bracelets and watch cases. But as I said, a Rotring or Laeufer (both German brands) ink eraser can do the job equally well and are a lot less expensive!

How to do it:

·         Test with lower pressure on the inside of the bracelet first and then check with a 10x loupe to see how the micro lines look at large magnification!

·         Always follow the line of the original brushing

·         Always interrupt your work and check with the loupe about the progress

·         Always only pull the tool, never push it

·         Try to pull as straight as possible if the original brush is straight - never rub in circles!

·        Be very carful on cases and bezels, you can scratch a mineral crystal using the tools below!

·        On cases you might want to leave the scratches or hairlines if they are not grave. a watch case is far more sensitive to "advertise" refurbishing attempts due to its curvature. because of that curvature light will fall in from all angles and you have to work a lot more carefully in order to make your refurbishment perfect. an additional restriction is, that you can not reach all the parts on the watch case equally well.

Find a success story in pictures of the "tooth paste method" here, thanks Ching for sharing this with us!