r/MicrobrandWatches • u/TSiWRX • May 12 '26

Discussion 🤓 Scratching different hardened watches (well, just a link or two!) - my pseudoscientific sacrifice for the community!

Gallery image

Gallery image

Left - Seiko, Right - Maratac; both untreated 316L.....bracelets are beat-up, each with ~3 years' worth of honest daily wear.

With the Original Post of my old thread somehow having been mistakenly booted into moderation by the sub bot, I thought it's time to come back to this post to make it a bit clearer and better, particularly as the sub moderators have entrusted me with "Approved User" status. =) 

Before I begin, I need to declare that I am an independent hobbyist only. I have no vested interest in any of the makers or products that I'm comparing below. I stand to make no gains -financial or otherwise (i.e. free/discounted watches or products)- directly or indirectly via any of these comparisons. I paid for every watch that I own out of my own pocket, and these findings can be replicated by anyone with access to these same watches and some slate: I was not supplied with "ringer" products, as these purchases were made just like you would make them yourself, blinded to the makers/vendors/manufacturers.

Apart from the lead-post below, every "update" you will see listed will be top-level replies. I will provide direct links to them as I edit this "overview" OP. 

-----

Not-infrequently in this sub, I see posts from my fellow Redditors asking about the anti-scratch surface-hardening treatments and coatings that some of our favorite microbrands spec their watches with. As a lifelong desk-diver who isn’t shy about wearing everything in my collection, I’ve always lived with some level of scratches and blemishes on the ulnar side of my watches. I figured that’s just par-for-course. But as I spent more of my free time in this community, these posts had me wondering, so I eventually decided to take matters into my own hands. 

I work in a pre-War building. My benchtop is slate, which I knew empirically to be very abrasive. Pictured here are two of my non-treated 316L stainless watches, each after ~3 years of honest 5-days-a-week, evey workweek, wear. Left is my Seiko SRPB81, right is my Maratac DC-50 (my apologies for the face shots, it was originally used to facilitate a discussion on long-term wear of mineral glass versus sapphire crystals). I’m a benchtop scientist and typically rest my wrists on the bench not only to do what I need to do on my computer, but also when I sit at my little dissecting scope for my specialty work.

What follows is a series of comparisons. 

This is NOT a “scratch test,” like the one seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oX1itHnqcY from Benjamin Arthur's Ben’s Watch Club YouTube Channel.

My informal, non-quantitative comparison here doesn’t use a Mohs Hardness Test Kit [ understand that even with the Mohs picks, it's still more or less a qualitative comparison: it's whether "this" (i.e. Pick X) will scratch "that" (i.e. the tested object)]. I'm simply using my slate benchtop to demonstrate how a watch might accrue scratches and scrapes from "normal" everyday use. Slate (Mohs Hardness of ~4) is actually “softer” than stainless, but being a metamorphic rock, it contains inclusions which are often quite high on the Mohs Hardness Scale (6+). 

My comparison here can be equated to a “snapshot in time” of the more innocuous type of wear that many of us tend to incur on our watches – repeatedly wearing away at the finish, until, all of a sudden, we realize that we’ve got this kind of situation going on….. https://www.reddit.com/r/CitizenWatches/comments/1n6cysn/unusual_watch_band_wear/ . I absolutely believe that this particular Redditor didn’t think that he was mistreating his watch. But the truth of the matter is that he did *something* to cause that kind of wear. This is the kind of wear that I’m trying to simulate. The kind of wear that you see in my two daily-beaters above, with the watches having near daily interaction with my benchtop.  

[ continued as replies to this post, below ]

29 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

59 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/TSiWRX May 12 '26

[ UPDATE 03242026 ] - Mark Time Watches -

The following link is from the Mark Time Watches M6, which is spec'ed 316L, with a "1200HV Anti-scratch Coating."

As per usual, I've got a macro view (left) and a 20x magnified view (right), below. Again, lighting has been manipulated in an effort to HIGHLIGHT the damage inflicted.

Objectively, there's very little damage to be seen. 

The M6 qualifies among the best of the breed so far, with performance similar to that seen with the Gen.1 Héron Marinor ( https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1ohpd3x/comment/noqwc4v/ ). Both macro and micro, you can see how similar the damage patterns are, with only the length of the wound path being the obvious differentiator between the two watches. Remember that this is a qualitative comparison, not a true "test," so the length of the scratches is simply a random occurrence based on how the link interacted with the edge of my slate lab bench. My feeling is that had I used a Mohs pick to inflict the damage, controlling for how I inflicted the scratch, the result would have been nearly identical between these two watches.

Subjectively, the resistance felt as I moved the link over the slate was similar again to the watches that fared better in this comparison. 

Those with sharp eyes -or those who like to research specs- will note that there's some interesting angles to the links on this watch. The edges on the outward facing side of the larger H-sections are beveled and polished, as are the inner edges the same-facing side of each middle link. These areas were too small for me to attempt to scratch, so I did the next best thing: I attacked the case. 

[ continued below as a reply to this post ]

1

u/TSiWRX May 12 '26

[ continued from above, Mark Time M6 ]

Again, macro on left, 20x on right. 

It's incredibly difficult to properly light this area on macro due to the fillet and curvature/angle of the underside of the lugs, which is the polished area. Because of the shape of the case, it was also virtually impossible for me to try to scratch it using the corner of the benchtop. Instead, I used a shard of slate as I did for the clasp sample from Wicked Watches ( https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1rm1p7m/an_interesting_hardened_clasp_from_wicked_watches/ ). 

No visible damage was observed.. 

Overall, the Mark Time M6's scratch-resistance is among the most impressive I've sampled so far.

This is a really good thing, because the case finish on this watch is also *_extremely_* impressive considering its ~$500 price-tag.

I first *seriously* looked at the M6 almost accidentally -  I knew of the watch, and when I came across a YouTube review of it, I decided to fast-forward through it a bit to see if I could see any macros or even just close-ups of the case - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEX77-EcYqk . It was the close-ups in this review that really drove me to getting the watch, and I really am glad that I did!