Thoughts On Cleaning Your Watch – Part 3

Non waterproof watch on Leather, Rubber, NATO, Stainless steel or Precious metal

This part of the article will only look after the watch itself and not the type of strap as they have all been covered. Seeing as it is a watch is not waterproof then no water or any other liquid for that matter. The use of a soft brush again is recommended as you do not want to mark the case or even the glass/crystal/perspex depending on which watch you are cleaning. A wipe down with a micro fibre cloth that has been moistened with a very weak detergent solution is a good idea as it helps lift the grease and grime off the case. A tool I have found to be very useful when ‘detailing’ a watch is a cocktail stick or toothpick, only the wood ones will do as it is soft enough and will not scratch the case. It is also fine enough to get into most of the contours of the watch very well. Then one final wipe with a clean and dry micro fibre cloth (this one is from Heli) will leave you with a very clean watch, I know I have mentioned that micro fibre cloths can sometimes leave micro abrasions, this is inevitable in this particular case.

Final Thought

If all of this takes too much time, there is one little tip or secret for you. Go buy some wipes. A large proportion of wipes you can buy for your cell phone, or camera lens will also work on your watch, what is great is that they are individually sealed and will not have any abrasive materials already embedded into the cloth itself. My recommendation is the ZEISS lens wipes available from your local WalMart store. They use pure alcohol that moistens the wipe enough to help clean and remove grease, it also dries exceptionally quickly allowing for a quick and thorough wipe and clean down of your watch. If you are super efficient after you have done your watch you can also use the same wipe to do your phone and camera and tablet computer, maybe even your glasses if you wear some! So as you can see there are many options and ways of cleaning your watch, the single most important thing to remember is to make sure you know what type of watch you are dealing with, is it waterproof, is it leather, or rubber or a metal? Once you have pinned that down you can get on with looking after your precious watch.

Happy Cleaning!