14 Jan 2014, 00:12
There is another problem here that just occurred to me... Replacement of the glass is a simple and straightforward matter; might take about ten minutes, start-to-finish. But the scratches, while not serious in and of themselves, will require some alteration of the surface to remove them. The moment you do that, you set off a sort of chain-of dominoes string of events. It looks very likely, from the second pic showing the broken glass, that your watch has its' original, 40+ year-old patina (yes, even 18K gold tarnishes over time; the gold remains untouched, but about 25% of the alloy is copper, and that is what picks up oxygen from the air and gradually darkens to produce that deep orange color; only the color of 24K gold never changes). It's very thin, only a few atoms thick, actually, and there is no method to remove any surface marks and still preserve it. So, if you refinish only the area where the scratches were, it will be a very noticeably different color than the rest of the case, and if you re-finish the entire case, it will now not match the color of the bracelet, thus requiring a complete re-finish of the bracelet. There's really no escape from this; it comes down to a all-or-nothing kind of situation (rather like the restoration of the painting of The Last Supper; once they began removing the accumulated grime of centuries, they realized it would look very different, but there was no turning back). There are two positive aspects to this...first, you will end up with a totally pristine, mint-looking watch, and second, given a few years, it will all eventually tone back to the color you have now. Downside...unless you want to risk going through this a second time, you probably won't be able (or even want) to wear it again. My 18K TC1 went through the same process, now visually a gem, but confined to its' box, and essentially untouchable.