How to clean these hands and indices?

[Leitemods]

Hi, I just grabbed a screenshot from one of Mark's service videos. As you can see, there are quite some markings on the polished hands and indices.

So my question is; how would one clean this?

[manodeoro]

Hi, I just grabbed a screenshot from one of Mark's service videos. As you can see, there are quite some markings on the polished hands and indices.
So my question is; how would one clean this?

I first remove indices from the dial, stick them on a foam board and use a nail polish block from Peggy Sage.
Same method for the hands, even those that are gold plated.
Green face for fine sanding and cleaning ...
White face to polish ...
If you work slowly and with almost no pressure you can get really good results.



Envoyé de mon Moto G (5) Plus en utilisant Tapatalk

[clockboy]

I would experiment with only one indices first. These are incredibly delicate I did see a vid once where a guy attached them to a piece of cork and cleaned them in a ultra sonic. Try human saliva (spit) with a cotton bud. Human saliva contains amylase, an enzyme that breaks down starches.

The key is to be very gentle

 

 

 

[Stian]

11 hours ago, Leitemods said:

Hi, I just grabbed a screenshot from one of Mark's service videos. As you can see, there are quite some markings on the polished hands and indices.

So my question is; how would one clean this?

"As you can see".... only in up close pictures. To the naked eye you would likely not be bothered by this and I don't think you would need to (or should) do anything about it. Given that you would have to take off the hands for servicing anyway, very gentle cleaning of them can be done as Clockboy noted. But taking off the indices is a whole new ball game and the risk of damaging them or the dial is very high, for very little noticeable reward as your eyes simply wouldn't see any difference.

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Best regards,
Stian

[rodabod]

It very much depends on how they are made.... could be a very thin plate. Personally, I would not remove the indices as i’d use a sharp piece of peg wood. 

[Leitemods]

On 2/26/2019 at 10:09 AM, Stian said:

"As you can see".... only in up close pictures. To the naked eye you would likely not be bothered by this and I don't think you would need to (or should) do anything about it. Given that you would have to take off the hands for servicing anyway, very gentle cleaning of them can be done as Clockboy noted. But taking off the indices is a whole new ball game and the risk of damaging them or the dial is very high, for very little noticeable reward as your eyes simply wouldn't see any difference.


-- 
Best regards,
Stian

I get what you're saying and I wasn't really planning on removing the indices, more how to "touch up" the hands or dirty spots on indices -while still attached to the dial. It didn't come through in my initial request, sorry about that. When I take pics with my Huawei (damn macro feature) of one of my watches with polished hands, I can zoom in and see these spots and I really hate it. If I ever were to sell the watch, I would want the watches to look good, even at close range with a good camera. I'll try saliva on cotton on a pair of old hands, thanks for the tip clockboy.

Is it too much to ask for a watch under £400 that the hands doesn't look like the attached pic? I'm simply asking because I don't know.

[Stian]

Really depends on the history of that £400, I'd say. If it's a new watch, the hands should of course be perfectly clean and sharp. If it's an old watch (e.g. 30+ years), the hands would likely look much worse than these pictures, even. And most vintage watch buyers would prefer them that way. If an old watch has been make to look too bright and shiny it will even detract from the value of it. Not that gently cleaning the hands or indices will make it too bright and shiny though. 

You may hear about the 30 cm rule, if you cannot see a blemish on a watch at 30 cm away, many will say it's fine. And most people don't take macro pictures of their watches to study the flaws. If you do you would even find flaws in a brand new Rolex 

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Best regards,
Stian