Wet sandpaper 400 / 800 / 2000 / 3000 / 5000 grits. On to the pics. Before: quite a few deep scratches. 400 grit... I should put in a bit more time into it. 10 mins later Working through the grits.... this was after 2000 iirc 90% there.... She's not perfect, but I think it matches the case and bezel insert condition.
Big improvement! You can finish it off with a glass polishing compound. Could a replacement glass been an option? Also what does the % in the title refer to?
Nicely done! I don't think I have the patience to sand for that long, but could see myself doing it for the right faceted, hard-to-find crystal. The watch looks great!
I will look for a glass polishing compound soon. I've looked for the glass but the only one I've found so far is over $100+ (meh) - it's not the conventional Squale case. It's a thicker version. The percent is just my subjective rating on the condition of the crystal pre and post. It was pretty scratched up when I got it, and while it not perfect, im sure that doubling down on the elbow grease with the 400 grit will probably get me to 95% of a new crystal.
Mineral glass - the worst qualities of sapphire and acrylic...relatively easy to scratch, but relatively hard to polish. You did well, and it will come up nicely if you get some finer materials to finish the job.
Do you think given the diving application, it makes sense though? Cost savings aside, I know Seiko still insists on using their Hardlex (Seiko proprietary mineral) on most of their "professional" dive watches and I always thought at least the minor amount of shatter resistance over sapphire was one of the reasons. I know this has been discussed to death in other forums and threads, but curious what your take on it is and if you've ever had to service shattered, flooded sapphire crystal watches. As an aside, personally I've never been able to put a scratch in Hardlex even on my "beater" SNK809.
Serviced plenty of flooded watches, but none because of shattered sapphire crystals. Although sapphire can break, it usually takes quite a force to do so. It can also scratch, but again it takes a lot to scratch it. Mineral crystals on the other hand easily scratch and break, sometimes all on one watch - broken and scratched front mineral crystal: Scratched display back mineral crystal: The only good thing about mineral crystals is that they aren't very expensive to replace. If there is a positive, that's the only one I can think of... Cheers, Al