These are my daughter’s Seiko Vivace watches I gave her about 7 years ago. She uses her phone for time these days and has told me she really doesn’t wear watches anymore so I’m going to put some batteries in them and ebay them or give them as gifts to friends.
Both have a fair amount of scratches and scuffing on the brushed steel watch band surface. None of the scratches are deep it’s all light surface scuffing.
Can this be buffed out and at what cost from a jeweler?
Can I do it myself with a Dremel tool buffing wheel or will that end in tears?
FWIW, I took one of my Movado watches with similar scratches to my jeweler (a Movado authorized repair center) and he wasn’t willing to even try.
The problem is trying to match the brushed surface. A regular buffing wheel is fine for polishing scratches from a bright surface and returning it to being smooth and bright again, but to do the same with a brushed surface means you have to replicate the way it was originally brushed, which pretty much means having the same tooling.
I think the only way you could get a “like new” brushed surface would be to disassemble each link and re-brush them individually. Not worth the effort, if even possible.
They’ve restored the finish to my SS watch bracelets when I took the watches in for overhaul. Of course my bracelets are plainer than the ones in the OP’s pictures, and the refinishing was done by the manufacturer.
It looks like the bracelets in the links in the OP have polished edges and brushed middles. You might be able to mask the polished areas and use a fine wire brush (i.e., like a toothbrush; not a wheel) and/or appropriate-grit steel wool to renew the finish. You’d have to be careful to maintain the line parallel to the direction of the bracelet.
Take the band off the watch first then use masking tape (e.g. blue painter’s tape) to mask off the shiny bits. Then use an abrasive to create the parallel lines.
I believe some folks use some variety of 3M abrasive sponge (not the kitchen scrubby kind) for this.
One way to keep the lines parallel, in my experience, is to lay out the band against a flat object that can serve as a sort of fence to guide your sanding tool as you slide it along the length of the band.
Once you get the brushed surface right, you might wish to touch up the shiny bits. To do that, just mask off the brushed surfaces and use a polishing compound on the shiny parts.
I use a Dremel with a felt wheel. Brasso works relatively well in a pinch, but you can buy proper polishing compound.
