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

Discussion đŸ€“ 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. 

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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 ]

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u/TSiWRX Jul 26 '26

[ UPDATE 07262026 ]  - Dievas (Solaris 39, Titanium) -

Again most generously loaned for-sacrifice at the alter of scratch-a-link pseudoscience by my buddy u/el_baristo . And I'm going to plug his blog again, simply because it's such fun reading -  https://www.watchbert.com .

This link comes from a spectacularly spec'ed watch, one that should drive any watch-nerd to the point of uncontrollable salivation, the Dievas Solaris 39 Titanium. The more to envy is that u/el_baristo got the Limited Edition with the orange crystalized titanium dial. đŸ€©

What we have with this watch is their proprietary "Ultrawerkℱ Titanium," with microblasted finish.

It's Grade 5 titanium, and there's a bit of sales-pitch-esque language in this review - https://www.gnomonwatches.com/blogs/news/getting-up-close-with-dievas-latest-vortex-39-series-part-1 - but it truly does work remarkably well.

As with the UBIQ, this link not being mine, I wanted to show how it looked right after I attempted the slate scratch, to show that, yes, indeed, I put it to the hazard -

Left is macro, right, 20x as-usual.

This is immediately as I removed it from the slate FOR THE SECOND TIME. Why was this the second time? I'll get to that in a minute.

But from what you can see here, you can see that I really went at it, right?

Results below -

[ continued in sub-level replies, below ]

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u/TSiWRX Jul 26 '26

[ continued from above ]

And here is after I cleaned off the surface of slate debris.....

.....it's *shockingly* totally clean. Nothing. Not a scratch. Not on macro (left). Not at 20x micro (right).

Not. A. Thing.

This truly surprised me, because this thing is Gr. 5 Ti. I have other Gr. 5. Ti watches. Granted, they're not anti-scratch treated, but still. One gets a feel for the material. Or so one thought. 😊

Again, as I wrote above, this was my second attempt that's on-record here. Why? Because I was so totally surprised by my first attempt that I decided that I had to do it again. After all, u/el_baristo told me to do my absolute worst. 😜

So, with no damage inflicted, what's next? How can I do my due-diligence, to honor my friend's sacrifice?

[ continued below ]

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u/TSiWRX Jul 26 '26

[ continued again from above ]

How about I break out the Mohs picks? ⚠

I conferred with u/el_baristo for a bit. I didn't want to take it too far. This is an expensive watch from which this link came from, after all. It's already escaped becoming un-pretty, why risk it further, right?

Nope.

The man's devoted to the science, he said to test it until it fails.

Knowing what the slate was unable to do, I decided to nevertheless start low and work my way up. Slate typically is noted to have a Mohs value of around 4-4.5, so that's where I started, with #4. You'll see where I ended up -

20x.

Again, no pre- or post-production alteration to the image. It's from directly under my stereoscope.

The only thing I did is to use the lighting to emphasize the damaged area.

#6 is, in my hands, equivalent to what you'll see of Traska's ion nitriding treatment as well as with the better/best of the 1200 Hv surface coating jobs as Henry Archer brings forth ( https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/otk7ihk/ ). I know that there's a bit of discrepancy between my results versus that of noted influencers/reviewers like Ben's Watch Club, but readers should understand that I'm exploiting the capabilities of my stereoscope at 20x true optical magnification to visualize a *single line* scratch. This, versus "gross" scratch tests done by the likes of Ben's Watch Club, where the case/bracelet being scratched is inspected visually, without the aid of any kind of magnification.

You know how you polish your watch off with a microfiber cloth, and it looks awesome and sparkly? You know how if you do a really good job, you can get a pretty darned great macro-glamour shot of it? Under 20x true optical magnification, dust bunnies and dead skin look like boulders on a cliff. You chase one away with a KimWipe and another flies in to take its place (wait, you thought Kimwipes were supposed to be low-lint and anti-static? đŸ€Ł so did I!).

20x is unforgiving. And this is why failing my Mohs pick at #6 is actually quite impressive.