The Uncivil Meeting Of Two Pillars: Wall – Meet Rolex! Rolex – Meet Wall!

383 days is a relatively long time to spend with a watch. In the trials and travails of everyday life there WILL be everyday accidents. Today we find out how to cope with the side effect of a clumsy left arm and a Plexiglas crystal.

When I started this epic journey in February (really back in October/November in the planning phases) I knew that this day and this article would come. I knew it so well that I actually have it on a list of proposed topics for this yearlong experiment. What I didn’t know at the time was when or why I would need to discuss polishing up the Plexiglas on my 30 year old Datejust!

The events unfolded as so: I was walking into my bedroom to get my glasses. Being a ‘happy-go-lucky’ kind of person I was swinging my arms as I skipped along. The funny thing is that my eyesight isn’t really that bad; over the course of the last two annual visits to my opticians in London I have been prescribed progressively weaker lenses. (Yet another thing to feel happy-go-lucky about I suppose.) Well my happiness and my luck were about to be tested as I SLAMMED my left wrist into the 12 inch thick cement hallway wall. (That sinking feeling set in.)

I knew there would be some damage to the Plexiglas for sure, but I had other things on my mind. My first check was to make sure that the watch still had 3 hands attached. Check. The bezel wasn’t affected. Check. The crown was still attached. Check. Now for the moment of reckoning: what part of the nearly centimeter wide swath of paint on the upper left hand quadrant of the crystal was just visiting, and what part would be permanent. After a quick rub with my t-shirt I saw that it wasn’t so bad, just the presence of a series of pinprick divots in the Plexiglas. After a few weeks of leaving the scuffs in the crystal to remind me of my transgression and because I thought it gave the watch a bit of character, it was time to reach for “The Kit”. (In reality I was just plain lazy, nothing else.)

The Kit

At the inception of this exercise I pulled together a small collection of things that I thought I might need to keep me sane while on the road. Some of the items in the small plastic case are commonplace things for any watch fanatic.

• A springbar tool and pin pusher (essential when working with drilled lugs.)
• A screwdriver for the links on the Jubilee bracelet. (Because of my ever fluctuation weight I’ve had two additional links added. If my plan goes the way I hope it does I will need to remove those links when I get to my goal weight!)
• A few changes of strap: leather, tropical rubber and NATO
• A few other add-ons that will alter the overall appearance of the watch (we’ll talk about those later in the year.)
• Some polyWatch.
• A microfiber polishing cloth.

If you’ve never used Polymath, it is really simple. The instructions read:

“Apply polyWatch to the plastic watch crystal. Polish the scratched areas for 203 minutes with pressure, using a piece of cotton wool. Deep scratches need to be treated more than once.”

I don’t think any of us here at Monochrome-watches.com or any of you folks reading this will have a tough time following those directions. Sure enough – after two minutes of grueling effort only the memory and lingering concerns about timekeeper were left of my grievous encounter with the wall. Take a look at the before and after photos.

Before:

After:

All in all polyWatch made fixing the scuff a painless procedure. While I don’t want it to happen again, I know it will. When it does happen again I won’t break my happy-go-lucky stride. I’ll just reach for ‘The Kit’ and fix it.

Observation:

Forcing myself to be faithful to just one watch has reevaluate a lot of the pieces in my collection. I don’t know if wearing only the Datejust has made me actually like it more than I normally would; I’ve owned quite a few Rolex Oyster watches over the years but can’t actually recall enjoying one this much – let alone one so plain. (Can a watch engender Stockholm Syndrome in its wearer?) This month I have packaged up 12 watches for sale.

Discuss.

Photo credits (photo 1 and 2) – Jocke (www.watchwallpapers.com)