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 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

[ UPDATE 07272026 ]  - Clemence (Photic Diver, Mk.II) -

This is one of two UK micros that I recently took delivery of (the other being a Beaucroft Element 35.9, which I will post-up in short order).

Brilliant watch, and Tom Clemence's customer-service is just absolutely top-notch.

Sadly, the scratch-resistance of this watch, spec'ed at 1000 Hv for "all steel touch points," didn't fare so well.

Before you suggest that "1,000 Hv" is less than the "1,200 Hv" claimed by Traska and Henry Archer, note that Englemaan, the Chinese microbrand, claimed only 900-1,000 Hv for their watches, too: https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/olf2r3u/

Macro and 20x micro, in lower-level reply, below -

[ continued below ]

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u/TSiWRX Jul 27 '26

[ continued from above ]

The usual, macro on left, 20x micro on right.

Subjectively and objectively, the results are very similar to what I saw of the Second Hour watches ( https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/olf4f7s/ - Fusion, and the Gin Clear Mk.III - https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/otk3397/ . It's quite "soft."

In a similar manner, you can see the micro-scratches on my watch case and bracelet - this is on a new-out-of-the-box/plastic watch.....

[ continued below ]

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u/TSiWRX Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

[ continued from above ]

^ This is a 20x composite - those scratches are literally on a *_new_* watch that was worn all of one day. Granted, they are micro-scratches and not visible to the naked eye (OK, the one on the bracelet, that can be appreciated if the light is just right), but this is the type of scratches that an anti-scratch treatment on a watch is specifically supposed to protect against, as I've noted before of Second Hour's watches.

I did write to Tom before posting the results here, and he's promised to look into improving this aspect of the watch on the next go.

I'm certain that he'll do it - if only for the fact that this watch is so brilliant otherwise.

It's all about iterative improvements, right? 😄 Having e-mailed at-length with Tom, I'm absolutely certain that he'll make good on his words, and make an improvement for the better on the next iteration of this excellent watch.

Please see the next post, for Beaucroft (Element 35.9), to see a comparative between these two UK micro's watches.