The Breitling Watch Source Forums

The crystal of Navitimer 1461 ( ref A38022) has some scratches on the crystal . I though I could use Polywatch to restore it , since there were no major scratches to it , and only superficial ones . But I have some questions :
On the vial of polywatch , it says it is for plastic crystals . Will it work on the sapphire glass of this watch , or at least not damage it .
Will the AR coating go away from the polywatch treatment and is this coating something a watch-repairer can fix locally ?

I've never tried polywatch on sapphire, and I don't think I ever would. It works great on plastic / acrylic, but sapphire is a whole new animal.

I'm pretty sure that it would mess up the AR, and while in theory AR can be reapplied it's a pain in the butt (not least the need to remove the crystal without damaging it in order to resoak it). Breitling just replace crystals instead.

Are you sure that the scratches are actually in the crystal and not the AR - it's generally only diamond that can scratch sapphire.

Stupid me , havent thought of it like this . Since the scratches are superficial , they are most likely on the AR coating . Can I use polywatch to remove the AR coating or you suggest something else to remove it ? If AR's abscence ends up bothering me , I guess I can always get it to my AD and get a new crystal . . .

Polywatch will probably remove AR, but likely not the best substance for the job. Cape Cods will take the AR off but takes some work, might just be best to take it to a jewelers. They should be able to do it, but not sure what they use.

I've never used Polywatch myself so can't comment, but I've read elsewhere that people have used it for successfully removing the AR coating from sapphire crystal.

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Driver8

Site Moderator

I ll give it a go and give an update here . It is not like I cant afford to have Breitling to replace the crystal if it gets screwed .

Ι had to apply polywatch 2-3 times on the crystal , but in the end the result was satisfying . A black substance remained on the cleaning cloth during the process and now the scratches are gone for the most part ( with another session of polywatch they should be gone altogether ) . Bottomline , you can use polywatch on crystals to remove the AR coating . By trhe way , since breitlings have double AR coating , outisde and inside of the crystal , removing one layer doesnt make the end result look bad in any way .