Excuse me while I vent on a dumbass thing I just did...

Doing a setup on my old lathe (patent date on the chuck is 1903) for making my 20 tactical reloading dies I needed to grind a tool bit. It is a carbide bit but too big to fit into the toolpost, and oh yeah I was just going to do this quick setup before dinner, then do the turning later. Anyway, I take the bit to my 3/4 HP dayton grinder and make the sparks fly. Well they are hitting my arm but I figure I'll grind until my forearm gets sore, just a few moments more, then stop. So I keep going then when I stop I look at my arm to see how much hair I singed off it, and I then noticed I LEFT MY NEW CHRISTMAS WATCH ON!!! Man was I pissed at myself. Of course the crystal is pock marked like the moon. I took it to the buffer after I cooled down so now it is smooth and doesn't look too bad unless there is light reflecting off the crystal, I'll see what a felt bob on a dremel can do later but once again it can be those little quickie things that lead to a problem of one sort or another.

Mark, are you a Blonde? I just plain hate to admit when I do these type of things. Hopefully it wasn't a Rolex

I am assuming that the crystal is a plastic material (similar to plexiglass). I saw an interesting segment on the DIY Network. They were restoring a 1962 Corvette hardtop, which has a plexiglass rear window in the removable hardtop. They went through a process of sanding the plexiglass with finer and finer grits of sandpaper. They started at something like 1500 grit, and went up to something like 24000 grit. Then they buffed with a plexiglass polish. At least on the tellie, it came out very clear. You might check DIYNet.com for the instructions. Of course if it is a cheap watch, you may have more in the sand paper than the value of the watch.

Mequiers sells a plastic polish.

Tom,

I have one of those kits, if the one you saw is called "Micromesh". They are a bunch of pieces of something that looks like a windowscreen with different grits bonded to them. Unfortunately my watch has a mineral crystal (I guess that is a fancy term for "glass") lens on it. I'll use a felt bob on a dremel later on it, with some fine buffing compound. The part that really bugs me is that I was doing some other work outside and I take my watch offm for that stuff usually as a matter of habit. Anyway I just was coming inside and looked over at the lathe and thought that I just had a few extra minutes so why not get everything set up for later, heck I was probably putting on my watch at the same time. Then the bit I chose had a shank a little too big, so hey I can fix that quick.....

Just one of those things that happen when sometimes you try to squeeze something in on the fly.

This may work for you. It supposedly uses some kind of polymer to fill in the pits.

http://www.alltvstuff.com/lens1.html

HTH, Dutch.

Something to try before you have to spend $$ and time locating plastic polishes: toothpaste and the Dremel. I've rehabed more than a couple plastic watch faces with it after over-enthustiastic applications of DEET.

Get a new crystal for the watch! They are not extremely expensive, and if you�re trying to polish the old one, you risk to load the watch with static electricity, which may be worse than some scratches.

Fritz

You guys crack me up... lets try and fix it first and spend hours tinkering with it, when he could probably just send it in and let the manufacture put a new cysctal in for $10... Save yourself both time and money. I don't know about you guys but my time is worth more than $10 an hour