Can polishing magnetize a watch?

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I couldn't get a reading. I rubbed my bronze watch feverishly on everything I could find around the house that's made of a material above bronze in the triboelectric series. My wife drew the line at me rubbing my watch on her hair, so I used the cat instead (fortunately, he's a nihilist and cares about nothing) but to no avail.

In theory, there should be an exchange of electrons and a resulting charge but if there is, it's so small that it doesn't register on my crude device. I'll borrow an electrostatic voltmeter at my university sometime soon to check. So in any case, there doesn't seem to be a substantial charge, so my hypothesis that it could affect the movement seems less plausible now.

The cat doesn't look too happy about it.
 
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I was going to do a @meganfox17 style detective job and list all the candidates but only go as far as the Aevig Valkyr bronze (...)

You're a better detective than you know...that's precisely the watch in question!



(...) when I was seriously distracted by their Huldra vintage C-Cased styled diver in blue

...and I own that one, too! I absolutely agree. In my opinion, Chip (Aevig's owner/designer) has a real talent for designing watches that are vintage-inspired rather than the 'hommages' (often little more than straight-up copies...) one usually sees in this segment.



Although it's not to everyone's tastes, I like to put it on a leather racing-type strap once on a while:



Lastly, it even works as a cocktail watch 😗

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