Help polishing lens on Marathon General Purpose watch

[adirondackdestroyer]

I have a Marathon General Purpose watch that I purchased around 6 months ago or so. I don't wear it anymore because of the scratches on the lens. I remember reading that it has a Hexalite (or something like that) lens that can be polished and will remove scratches. The scratches aren't deep at all and are right on the surface.

Any help is appreciated

 

[Flying Turtle]

Takes a long time, but I've safely polished out some light scratches on my Vostok with a bit of toothpaste on the corner of a washcloth. I'm sure there are better methods.

Geoff

 

[bimemrboy318]

I have some interest in vintage watches and it seems that www.timezone.com is the authority on vintage and modern watches.

Sorry if this link outside of CPF is frowned upon but it's watches... not flashlights!

I have a Marathon General Purpose watch that I purchased around 6 months ago or so. I don't wear it anymore because of the scratches on the lens. I remember reading that it has a Hexalite (or something like that) lens that can be polished and will remove scratches. The scratches aren't deep at all and are right on the surface.

Any help is appreciated

 

[LawLight]

Any jeweler will do it for you free. Takes about 30 seconds.

Law

 

[Northern Lights]

I have successfully used Flitz and Semichrome metal polishes on watch glasses and LCD meter, instrument and gps faces. The polishing creme is pink. It contains a chemical that helps clean metals but that is inert to plastics and glass. The pink is the abrasive and it polishes well. Once I took a crazed plastic surface and used semichrome with a polishing wheel on a dremel and cleared it up. It also is ideal to use in gunsmithing to polish action surfaces as well as a bore cleaner. I would start out with a soft cloth by hand before going to a wheel on a watch. The wheel works for metal and glass very well. This weekend I removed deep scratches from my Casio atomic watch with it using the wheel on a dremel.

 

[Steve Andrews]

Polywatch is great on polycarbonate and acrylic crystals.

 

[Alloy Addict]

Toothpaste works well. I have the metal bodied Navigator and used that method. If the scratch is really deep, not much will make it go away without taking off too much material, but polishing over it makes it less noticeable.

People often use Brasso (the kind that comes impregnated on fibrous wads of ??) to polish their iPods, and they are made of extremely soft plastic. I would think it would work on watches, but would do some reasearch first.

Flitz & Simichrome are both great, but I find the Simichrome to be a bit more agressive than Flitz. I have no data to back that up, but that's my impression from personal use.

If you want to get crazy, these people
https://www.micro-surface.com/default.cfm?page_id=175
seem to have a kit to polish anything. I've been looking for an excuse to order from them, maybe I'll do the headlights on the cars next spring.

 

[GarageBoy]

I used the 3M lapping sheets. They're REALLY fine and are usuaully colored in pink, blue, white

 

[DieselDave]

For what won't work...I tried using 2000 grit (or there abouts) wet-sand paper and it did nothing on my mineral glass Luminox. It didn't even dull the surface after prolonged rubbing.

Additional of what does not work...
After I posted I got out the Dremel and put on the buffing pad. First I tried Crest toothpaste for 2-3 minutes, no help. I then tried Go-Jo, the one with sand in it, again 2-3 minutes, no effect.

 

[felder]

Most if not all of these posts discuss polishing acrylic or plexiglass (i.e. plastic). These you can polish with a pretty good degree of success if the scratches aren't too bad.

Mineral glass on the other hand I don't believe can be polished very effectively or is very difficult to polish. I'm pretty sure you pretty much have to have the crystal replaced.

For what won't work...I tried using 2000 grit (or there abouts) wet-sand paper and it did nothing on my mineral glass Luminox. It didn't even dull the surface after prolonged rubbing.

Additional of what does not work...
After I posted I got out the Dremel and put on the buffing pad. First I tried Crest toothpaste for 2-3 minutes, no help. I then tried Go-Jo, the one with sand in it, again 2-3 minutes, no effect.

 

[leukos]

IMO, it's worth the extra $$ to get a watch with a sapphire crystal.

 

[Coop]

You can also try Displex polish...

Normally it's sold for polishing cellphone displays, but works great on other stuff too... It even mentions use on watches on the tube 🙂

 

[JNewell]

I've had great luck with Simichrome.

 

[adirondackdestroyer]

Thanks guys. The toothpaste method worked great! I would have never guessed anything like that would work, but it did. 🙂

 

[fluorescent]

I have the same watch and I use Brasso...

 

[GarageBoy]

Yes, yes, glass and sapphire are nice, but nothing beats the beautiful warm look of acrylic dome

 

[dg]

Toothpaste is great for cleaning glass - especially car windscreens

Just remember that you should brush up and down, and not side to side