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Polishing Panerai Bridges With Capecod


slay

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I got some cape cod's in the mail today and I thought about polishing the bridges of one of my G-Series movements so it gets a shiny look like the gen.

The Rep movements are not polished to a mirror finish, they have little brushmarks on them. How should I best do it? I tried to rub the cloth on the bridge for a few minutes (I used a LOT of pressure, I even used a Screwdriver with cape cod around its top) but it still doesnt have the mirror finish I want it to have. I always thought those cape cods are like some sort of magical stuff that makes everything shiny as a mirror?

I then put some of the cloth around the dremel and tryed that, but it still doesnt have that mirror finish I want it to have. Whats the magic trick? How should I do it to get the finish I want? It looks a little bit better than before, but I really want it to look like a mirror!

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I got some cape cod's in the mail today and I thought about polishing the bridges of one of my G-Series movements so it gets a shiny look like the gen.

The Rep movements are not polished to a mirror finish, they have little brushmarks on them. How should I best do it? I tried to rub the cloth on the bridge for a few minutes (I used a LOT of pressure, I even used a Screwdriver with cape cod around its top) but it still doesnt have the mirror finish I want it to have. I always thought those cape cods are like some sort of magical stuff that makes everything shiny as a mirror?

I then put some of the cloth around the dremel and tryed that, but it still doesnt have that mirror finish I want it to have. Whats the magic trick? How should I do it to get the finish I want? It looks a little bit better than before, but I really want it to look like a mirror!

Slay:

As a sailor who swears by Cape Cod, I can tell you that it will not "convert" brushed SS to polished - what it will do is polish up any tarnished or faded SS that was polished to begin with. To bring brushed SS to Polished requires buffing and is fairly hard on something as small as a watch casing.

Good luck.

LeBoul

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Slay the gen G series are not polished at all - they are brushed with a very fine radial type finish (not sure of the swiss name for it).

129312-19682.jpg

Finepics: 'Pearled' polishing finish maybe?

Back to the problem, I say listen to finepics here. That is a point to consider. You don't want to make your rep further different from the gen :bangin::D

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I used cape cod to polish the brushed center links on this rep bracelet to a mirror like finish; the gen bracelet I have for this watch, being made of 904L was causing a rash, so I switched to a hollow link 316 SS to use in it's place. Since the entire bracelet was brushed, I had to polish the centers so it would be correct...

129365-19632.jpg

So, you can use Cape Cod to polish to a mirror like finish. It just takes a really long time to do it!

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I'm not sure there is just one "cape cod" cloth. I've had a yellow one that was dry and worked great. It totally took a brushed case to polished. I also have a few pink ones that are wet with some vanilla sent, IMO, these do not work nearly as well. It takes forever to get a scratch out. With the yellow one, even a decent scratch would be gone in seconds.

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What I did was the following:

While watching the first episode of lost the other day, I kept the bridge in my hands and rubbed the cape cod on it. After the episode was over, the cape cod cloth was black, and I mean really black, and the bridge had a mirror finish. It looks better IMHO, not exactly like the gen, but a lot better than with those little nasty brush marks.

I will now try to give it a brushed look, sort of like on that picture you attatched, mark. Thanks for that btw. I havnt found a good pic of the movemt yet.

Another reason for my attemt to polish the bridge is, that the engraving is too deep on the rep. If you take a look at the picture, the engraving is not as large as on the rep movement, but also not as deep. The polishing made the engraving look not as deep.

I have no idea, yet, how to get a nice brushed look, but I hope I will figure it out eventualy!

I learned, that all it takes, is time and dirty hands lol! i mean the brush marks were like real deep on that bridge, now they are not visible anymore!!

Maybe the best method of recreating the look of the gen is grinding all the engraving off, brushing the bridge and using a pencil to write PANERAI PANERAI on the bridge lol

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Cape Cod is good for minor scratches. To convert brushed finish to mirror polish, you should really use correct wheels and polishes.

I did this on all the ss dome nuts on my Triumph Bonnieville... with stuff from Cetem (go Googol).

but... when i wanted to polish my JLC Kompresor, my polishing motor was history.

So I used cape Cod.

Cut the cloth into a thin strip. Concertina fold the strip, then punch a hole through it and mount it on your on tjhe arbour of your (in my case Black and Decker) Dremel-type tool.

It takes longer than using the proper selection of wheels and polishes... but it works. The results speak...

129427-19627.jpg

Actually, it took longer to strip all those crowns off the case than it took to polish it.

Edited by Highflyingclive
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