Please Please Please........What's Your Thought On This?

[thom.son]

Cheers!

 

 

[Nanuq]

If I had a gold watch that needed polish, I'd use Flitz metal polish paste and a soft cloth, and spend an hour doing it by hand.  It would lose zero metal doing it this way.

[mymanmatt]

No! Any time you polish electro gold plating, you loose some of the plating. Not so on the new gold watches that have the “hot plating” process. 

[automatico]

All my gold watches are vintage models and the only 'polishing' any of them ever had since I have owned them was done with a 'Fabulustre' cloth or a 'Selvyt' cloth.  The two ply Fabulustre cloth has red rouge embedded on one side and the other side is a very soft cloth.  The red side is used where there are light scratches or tarnish to be removed, then the item is buffed with the smooth side, all done by hand.

Deep scratches would be left as is.  Thankfully none of my watches have deep scratches.  

The Selvyt cloth is super soft on one side only and is used to remove fingerprints etc.  You sometimes see them in jewelry stores.

 

Otoh, I have seen idiots (being very kind here) hold a 14k or 18k case up to a 1750 rpm 8" buffing wheel loaded with 'polishing compound' for 20 or 25 seconds and lay it down because it got too hot to hold.  When it cools off they wonder why there are uneven spots in the case.

 

I had a gold rolex case laser welded where some (fill in the blank) wore it with a Speidel Twist-O-Flex 'case eater' bracelet and it dug a little ditch inside the lugs where the spring loaded spacer rubbed the lugs.  You can not tell at all where the case was welded...$100USD well spent imho.  The work was done with the acrylic crystal etc still in the case because the case does not get hot except where the laser is aimed.  

 

"Any time you polish electro gold plating, you loose some of the plating.  Not so on the new gold watches that have the “hot plating” process."

 

I have had some experience with newer Citizen Ecos and they are plated with a super hard  goldtone that is probably plasma coat of some type.  It is tough but does not stand up to very much machine buffing if scratches are very deep because it is so thin.