How to Remove Scratches From a Watch Crystal

Watches are beautiful pieces of craftsmanship that we cherish and look after for years. However, accidents do happen and it’s not uncommon for a scratch to appear on the surface of a quality watch. Although watch crystals are made from quality materials, they’re not immune to being scratched. There are however simple solutions to remove scratches from your watch crystal.

While there’s nothing worse than seeing a scratch on the glass, there are ways to remove them if you’re willing to put in a bit of work. It’s a lot cheaper and faster than getting something like a full watch crystal replacement. You may even have the right tools and materials to do the job at home.

Is it Safe to Remove Scratches from a Watch Crystal?

Absolutely, but it’s important to understand what kind of watch crystal you have. Most affordable watches these days use an acrylic crystal which is easy to polish and very cost-effective for consumers. It’s easy to fix scratches on these watch crystals as long as you have a few tools and materials at hand.

However, more expensive watches might be fitted with mineral glass. This material is roughly seven times the hardness of acrylic and far more scratch and impact resistant. This means that it’s less likely to be scratched, but repairing this can be a lot more difficult. It’s not as easy to polish watch crystals made from mineral glass, so watchmakers suggest just replacing these. It’s a lot cheaper than DIY solutions and will give you more peace of mind, especially when it’s a more expensive watch.

At the higher end, most watches use sapphire crystal. Sapphire is a 9 out of 10 on the Mohs mineral hardness scale, meaning it’s even more resistant than mineral glass. Unfortunately, this comes at a premium and is why it’s almost exclusively used for high-end watches. Although this material is harder than mineral glass, the effort and cost of removing scratches are usually worth it because a replacement can easily cost several hundreds of dollars.

How to Tell What Kind of Material My Watch Crystal Is…

Common traits to tell the difference:

• Acrylic glass is lite weight, reflective, and often beveled
• Mineral Glass is very hard, flat surface, a lite reflection
• Sapphire glass is domed, thick, and anti-glare

How Does Removing Scratches from a Watch Crystal Work?

You probably already know that it’s not exactly possible to “remove” a scratch because it’s already damaged the material. So how exactly does scratch removal on a watch crystal work?

Scratch removal is one of the most commonly requested watch repairs. When polishing a watch crystal with a polishing agent, you’re essentially removing a very fine layer of the watch crystal around the scratch to even out the surface, thus removing the appearance of a scratch. This sounds like it’ll cause more damage, but most scratches on a watch crystal are extremely fine, so it’s not going to cause noticeable damage like a crater in your watch crystal.

Steps to Remove Scratches from a Watch Crystal

If you’re interested in removing scratches from your watch crystal then here’s some advice.

What you’ll need

• Some tape to cover the bezel while you polish
• A soft polishing rag
• A polishing agent such as Brasso, Polywatch, or even toothpaste

Step 1: Tape the Bezel to Protect it from Damage

The last thing you want to do is start rubbing your polishing agent into the bezel around the watch crystal. This can damage the metal and will make it look dull if you’re not careful. To prevent this, we suggest getting some masking tape to cover the bezels.

Take a bit of extra time doing this because it’s important to cover the entire bezel. Use scissors to cut smaller strips of masking tape if needed and make sure none of the bezel is showing before you start to polish the surface.

Step 2: Starting Buffing the Watch Crystal

Follow the instructions of your polishing agent and apply a small amount to the affected area. Take your polishing rag or cloth and start rubbing it into the watch crystal with a circular motion.

Do this for a couple of minutes and you’ll notice the scratch slowly disappearing. Once the scratch has mostly disappeared, you can then move on to a finer polishing agent if you have one.

Repeat the exact same process with the finer polishing agent and the scratch will almost completely fade away.

Step 3: Examine the Watch Crystal and Repeat if Needed

Lastly, wipe off any excess paste and inspect the watch crystal under a light. If you notice that there are still visible scratches, then simply repeat step 2 using the coarser polishing agent first.

Continue inspecting and polishing until you are happy with the results. Once done, clean off the excess paste, wipe away fingerprints, and remove the masking tape.

Removing Scratches From a Watch Crystal – Conclusion

It’s not that difficult to remove scratches from your watch crystal, praticularly if it is acrylic. Mineral glass is really hard to do though and a crystal replacement may be more cost and time efficient. Given the cost of Sapphire glass, trying to polish out a scratch is worth it. Sapphire is typically on really high end luxury watches and for those you want to take extra time taping off and protecting the bezel.