IMHO most watches are eequally well finished. If they are polished, they are all polished to the same sheen, the same applies for brushing or particle blasting.
I can not see a difference between the quality of the finish comparing for example my JLC's and my sons "cheap" Japanese watches.

I think the difference we see is more in our minds.

 

In terms of finishing I don't think you will see a huge difference between brands like Omega and Hamiltonwith respect to bracelets or case polishing, etc. You will in the lower end brands, sharp edges, thinner metals, lack luster polish, etc.

The best way to see this is to go to the mall and handle a Rolex without all the rubbish on it, then go down the hall to a kiosk and handle whatever watch they are giving away with a $50 perfume purchase.

 

As I said not really interested with the el-cheapo brand of watches as even I can spot the very obvious differences in the level of finishing. I'm talking abut quality affordables vs mid-tier watches such as Rolex, IWC etc and perhaps to some extent the Pateks and the Vacherons though Im sure someone will be able to show me the differences between those hehe...

 

Thankyou sir. It takes a lot of courage to admit that ones JLC could be on par with a cheaper Japanese watch at least as far as external finishing is concerned. Im sure they are poles apart internally though ;-) Anyhow so at least it does appear (at this stage anyway) that simply a casual look will not reveal the difference in the level of finishing...lets hope we get more replies...

 

The most noticeable difference between a 28800 bph JLC (high end piece of Swiss ingenuity crafted by a master Swiss watchmaker) vs a 28800 bph ETA2824 (mass produced in Chinese and fondled by a not so special Swiss man) - is the service bill!

 

A stainless steel Rolex will have brighter polish than most other SS watches as it uses a different grade of SS (916L). Can't say about IWC or other watches in the same tier.

 

Thank you sir for the enlightening bit if info. Off track any idea why they use a different grade?

 

Sorry meant 904L. They use it because it is more corrosion resistant. Thought the efficacy is debatable in terms of a dive watch that should be rinsed after each use. It also has the added benefit of a brighter polish ( from the increased nickle). Though the ads implying (and anecdotally sales people insisting) it is a precious metal are amusing.

Sent from... well right here I guess.

 

To me, the brushed finish on my Rolex is different than my Omegas .. Different and better .. Omega at par with my previous breitlings .. And them better than my now sold Hamilton .. A lot of that has to include materials, weight, thickness, heft, and the brush quality ...
And even in polished cases, there is a big jump from a breitling to say, JLC and GS.
U gotto handle them well to feel the differences.
They are palpable IMO.

 

Any chance you could provide pictures showcasing the difference between some of these? Would you say the difference could be easily passed over unless the watch was inspected very carefully?

Incidentally I'm only after difference between visual appearance and not difference in feel etc.

Cheers

 

Incidentally the reason I am asking the question is that though I've never seen an Ananta in real life I was very intrigued by the blade polishing concept (and the relevant photos seemed interesting). Also heard many people commenting on the exceptional level of finishing on these. Then I saw a post on some other forum suggesting that whilst the finish was excellent for a Seiko it wasn't up to the same standard as an IWC. Having seen an IWC yesterday I must admit I was a touch underwhelmed. Although admittedly it was only a casual look as I held the plastic covered watch in my hand lol

Well, remember everyone has to justify their own watch. If I had an IWC I'd be talking about it's amazing level of finishing, and since I do have a Seiko I do the same thing. Nothing wrong with that, but having worn, handled, and seen a lot of watches over the last few years I can safely say the margin of difference in case finishing gets pretty small in the watches between $7-800 and $7-8000. There's a difference, any maybe a layman could even pick out unbranded cases as 'better' or 'worse' finished in a lot of cases, but there's certainly a diminishing difference in this range.

Here's a couple comparison shots though of the area where I personally place my highest values in the case fit 'n finish categories: 1) fineness of brushing 2) sheen of polished areas 3) facets and planes, and their difficulty to execute, whether varied planes of polished, brushed, or a combination of the two, and 4) cleanness of edges and lines particularly with regard to transitions from brushed to polished and vice versa.

There's a SLIGHT difference in the satiny-ness of the brush, advantage Seiko. The larger difference is in the amazingly clean edges of the brushed-to-polished transition planes of the Seiko, along with what I assume is a higher degree of difficulty on the Seiko vs. the rounded polished top case edge of the Hammy.

I love the TAG Heuer for other reasons than the case, which is not the strongest point of the watch to be honest. Not sure how great this pic is but I think you can still see a clear difference.

Little too shiny and reflective but these are all shots from a few weeks ago when I wasn't specifically trying to compare case finishing. However, you can still see some differences even here I think.

 

Thanks for an excellent post. Your pictures clearly showcase the difference in finishing between the three watches. (nice watches btw). I think there are a couple of things that we can reasonably infer at this stage:

1. A side by side comparison is a much easier way to spot the difference in finishing then seeing each watch individually and isolated from each other in both place and time
2. It is still very possibly to see the difference in finish though not with a casual glance and definately not looking at it through the glass or with the sticky plastic covering hehe

Interesting to note that the Seiko is the best finish of the three brands. That together with the excellent level of finish very evident in the pictured Grand Seiko leads me to question more and more as to whether the IWC's finish is indeed visibly better than an Ananta (this incidentally was the very question that lead me to start this thread)

Anyhow thanks guys for the excellent posts

Well, remember everyone has to justify their own watch. If I had an IWC I'd be talking about it's amazing level of finishing, and since I do have a Seiko I do the same thing. Nothing wrong with that, but having worn, handled, and seen a lot of watches over the last few years I can safely say the margin of difference in case finishing gets pretty small in the watches between $7-800 and $7-8000. There's a difference, any maybe a layman could even pick out unbranded cases as 'better' or 'worse' finished in a lot of cases, but there's certainly a diminishing difference in this range.

Here's a couple comparison shots though of the area where I personally place my highest values in the case fit 'n finish categories: 1) fineness of brushing 2) sheen of polished areas 3) facets and planes, and their difficulty to execute, whether varied planes of polished, brushed, or a combination of the two, and 4) cleanness of edges and lines particularly with regard to transitions from brushed to polished and vice versa.

View attachment 755611

View attachment 755612

There's a SLIGHT difference in the satiny-ness of the brush, advantage Seiko. The larger difference is in the amazingly clean edges of the brushed-to-polished transition planes of the Seiko, along with what I assume is a higher degree of difficulty on the Seiko vs. the rounded polished top case edge of the Hammy.

View attachment 755613

I love the TAG Heuer for other reasons than the case, which is not the strongest point of the watch to be honest. Not sure how great this pic is but I think you can still see a clear difference.

View attachment 755614

Little too shiny and reflective but these are all shots from a few weeks ago when I wasn't specifically trying to compare case finishing. However, you can still see some differences even here I think.

 

Also, don't foget the complexity of the dial and the polishings on the markers/hands and how minute details make/break the look, take a look at this Grand Seiko Spring Drive GMT Chrono that I took a shot of. Notice how each well polished each of the markers are (and the fact that each markers have 9 faces to polish and how perfectly uniform they have been polished), and evenness of the bluing of the hands. How the chrono second hands and minute hands have slight bends at the end to reduce parallax effect. Hands are equally complex in polish as well as their execution and complexity (Take a good look at the power reserve hand for attention to detail). This is most beautiful dial/hands I have seen so far in real life. (I have not seen uber high end watches so I can not speak for them, but I have seen watches up to several 10's of K $$ and as finishing goes, this is about the best one I have seen)

 

I'm fortunate enough to have a JLC Master Ultra Thin Moon and I actually think the finishing is noticeably superior to lesser brands. (Of course I'm hugely biased and have to justify the expense of this watch.) I found a great photo album of the watch online but with rights reserved, so I'll just add a link (credit to mingthein.com):

_8011331 copy | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The moonphase disc in particular is exquisite:

_8011276 copy | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

If you want to pay attention to details, the perfect polish of the moon face is breathtaking. There is also a very interesting effect when you look at it from certain angles. The small little stars on the disc reflect light, which reflects back from the crystal, and is then reflected in turn on the moon face, so you get a glimmer of stars across the moon.

 

Watches don't translate well to pictures I've found.

I have a Steinhart that's an 'homage' (i.e. replica with some minor design updates and tweaks) of a discontinued Rolex. A buddy of mine here at work has a Rolex Deepsea Diver. We compared them side by side.

The Rolex is clearly more refined in almost every way. The finish on the bracelet is pretty close, but the head of the watch has a refinement that's difficult to put into words - the shape of the lugs, the transitions from curves to straights, the engraving, etcetera. From across the table they look similar, but side by side the difference is clear.

The real distinction, however, comes from the dial. When looked at alone, my Steinhart has a really nice dial. When put next to the Rolex, it looks incredibly flat and 'workmanlike'. I guess I can see now why Rolex abandoned that dial design, because it looks too complex to do the raised steel-rimmed applied markers, and the more elegantly detailed hands.

Now, whether that's worth thousands of dollars now + thousands of dollars of Rolex services over the life of the watch...that's your call. But it is fairly easy to see. No matter - I'll still wear my awesome 'bang for buck' watch for my own reasons, but being the most highly finished isn't one of them.

 

Interesting. I'm having a hard time adding much to this except for a couple of thoughts:

Well machined vs. average machined - are flat areas really flat? Looking at the Bezel on my SARB reflecting my tube shop light, the surface is fairly flat but the inner and outer 'rims' if you will, are not - and the wavy line shows it!

But there's a crispness to really good finishing that does stand out, and it's something to see rather than describe.

I also agree with the comments on dials - a good dial design with indices and such can only enhance the overall 'finish' of the watch.

 

Came to his late. I agree with Janne who stated there is little difference between polished SS cases at any price point if they are all 316L steel. One way, briefly mentioned, to differentiate case finishing is Omega's approach to mixing brushed and polished surfaces. Long before they began doing that however they sculpted their cases and particularly their lugs to make them more elegant and stand out from the crowd. Even the famous SM300 dive watch had sculpted lugs. That three-dimensional effect is remarkable in itself.

Lastly, first mentioned by hparks, is the detail put into a dial. What sold me on a Chronoswiss Lunar Calendar Chronograph, my first high end watch, was the black enameled silver dial. It has a somewhat plain steel case differentiated only by it's signature coin edge, IMO a superb and practical detail, but the guilloche dial, four sub-dials with different texture, and Breguet white painted pomme hands set this piece apart from most others I know. The calendar pointer is dipped in red while the moon is blue enamel and gold. The entire effect is understated yet stunning in its richness. Few photos do it justice; least of all mine.

Most of my daily beaters are tool watches. As such they have little to no dial detail save my SMPs wave pattern texture and Sinn 757 UTCs raised thickly lumed markers.

Although I agree with many posters here that Grand Seiko dials are very, very good my style preference lies with the likes of Breguet and JLC dials among few others. Of note is Breguet's fluted case sides on some of their steel cases.

God lies in the details.

 

You guys must:

A: Be extremely unlucky to get a badly done/finished watch that slipped through the QC
or
B: Have a vision better than my 10/10 Laser modified vision.

 

You guys must ... Have a vision better than my 10/10 Laser modified vision.

I think you missed a keystroke. ;-)

 

Because you guys are discussing the actual design of the cases......
Not the finishing.

 

Maybe we need to clarify what people mean, what it is we are talking about. I read the OP as asking if their is a difference between the polish on a, say, Sub verses a Jazzmaster. That is what I understand as finishing; how the the surface gets treated in the end. This would exclude things like lug shape and dial design. It would include the crispness of the line between a polished and brushed surface. I would be interested in seeing images that addressed this issue. I recognize that it will be difficult because one needs a macro lens and some skill to photograph polished surfaces closely enough and with enough detail to reveal differences.

Empirically there should be differences in the quality of polish and brushing. Polishing is done by using finer and finer agents to lay down successively finer and finer scratches in order to create as smooth a surface as possible.To get a very fine polish takes time and on watch case would require manual labor or fairly sophisticated robots, meaning a very fine polish would be expensive to produce. Wether we can see the difference with the naked eye on casual inspection or even close inspection, I don't know (and would be curious about). Brushing is less time consuming to do (unless you apply it on top of polish and even then it would be somewhat pointless to do on top of a very fine polish) but still requires skill to apply to lugs, particularly when there are both brushed and polished surface so excellently applied brushing would still be more expensive to do as a producer.

 

you can't entirely ignore the design of the case when looking at quality of the finish.
As mentioned by others, the quality of the finish depends on the surface treatment of some designs where there are different finishes on complex surfaces that are directly adjacent to each other.
i.e the quality is seen where surface treatments meet.

Also, as said before, the complexity of the case is an indicator of the amount of work required to the case.

In the general sense though, a polished surface is a polished surface and in that respect, there will be little difference between one and another, especially when the surface isn't perfectly flat.
On the other hand, where the surface is relatively flat, you can get an idea of just how flat that surface is by the clarity and un-distorted the reflection is.
This would equate to a level of quality in finish.
i.e the flatter the polish, the better.

 

Honorable mention goes to the Hamilton brand, but more specifically the Jazzmaster series. The level of detail and intricate case work so far has gone unmatched in my quest for perfection. Calibre and branding arguments notwithstanding, I think it's fair to state that a high level of case finishing can be easily and readily found in mid-tier brands.

Styling is where the money lies, and is quite difficult to measure beyond subjective opinion as most would probably agree, but in my experience there is really no need in current times to spend exorbitant amounts of money to find a nicely finished watch as I've found - And this easily goes against my watch fanaticism and disposition - I would certainly sleep more soundly if I could gather the justification for owning that special Rolex, or Omega, but at this time for some reasons stated above I simply cannot

 

With those parameters I still claim there is no difference in the finishing.
I have not seen a polished surface on the cheaper watches ( Hamilton, Tissot) that is not 100% well polished, with visible defects or irregularities in the basic metal shape.
( except my PAM)

Some cheaper watches do have intricate case/ lug design, it depends on the model.

The watch with the most complex case/ lug design I have seen is the flesh is the Reverso.
Of my examples all the individual parts are exquisitely machined, the joins are virtually invisible, the polishing is as it should be, top.
But, the Reverso is unusual. Most designs have a caseback, case, bezel, of a fairly simple design. Different areas that sometimes are only polished, or brushed, or blasted, or a combination of them.

 

Yes, you can see the difference...

...though you need to hit the deep end of the pool to see it:

For example, if you set anything less than a Patek down on the table with this crew it's gonna suffer by comparison:

AP claims that 35% of the cost of every watch they make goes towards the finishing. It shows.

And yes, that figure includes movement finishing, too:

This is just for the bracelet:
Audemars Piguet - Making the Bracelet for a Royal Oak - YouTube

Regards,
Adam

PS - Yes, even a modest IWC will blow a Hamilton out of the water:

 

Re: Yes, you can see the difference...

Took a few pics last night, so here goes.

First up, Debaufre Ocean 1 GMT.

Looks fine in person, end links do not fit perfectly (accentuated here by the odd positioning), and take a look at the brushing and bezel edge. Slightly coarser and less even brushing than you'll see on a couple other coming up, and the bezel edge is not as clean as another. Also examine the lugs for future reference.

Next up the Gerlach Sokol -

I've always been pleased with the fineness and lack of variation in the brushing on this watch. The lugs especially are finely brushed in the same direction as the case. This is the least expensive of the watches I'm picturing here, but the point is if you're going to do a simple case design, finish it well. And they did. At least in the case of the brushing, it stands up nicely to the next watch pictured.

Hamilton Pan Europ -

Three things to note: 1) You can see a slight imperfection up close on the bottom of the lug in the first photo 2) The brushing isn't as fine or uniform as in the next watch coming up and 3) There's a difference in the transition from brushed to polished vs. the next watch.

Seiko MM300 -

I won't say much but point out uniform, fine brushing, the transition points, and bezel edge. There's a difference here.

 

Re: Yes, you can see the difference...

Took a few pics last night, so here goes.

First up, Debaufre Ocean 1 GMT.

View attachment 757320

Looks fine in person, end links do not fit perfectly (accentuated here by the odd positioning), and take a look at the brushing and bezel edge. Slightly coarser and less even brushing than you'll see on a couple other coming up, and the bezel edge is not as clean as another. Also examine the lugs for future reference.

Seiko MM300 -

View attachment 757329

I won't say much but point out uniform, fine brushing, the transition points, and bezel edge. There's a difference here.

Very nice pictures, sir. One point though: I'm curious why you mention the end link fit on the Debaufre, yet not commented upon with the MM, which appears to me to be even moreso mismatched? I actually wonder if this is a flaw in watches sometimes though, as I see it on my SMP as well. I think it would be a bit of an odd choice not to have endlinks match lugs' shape, but it must be a conscious decision?

Cheers,
HBL

 

Re: Yes, you can see the difference...

all this talk of finishing, brushing and polishing has brought a question to my mind.

I wonder to what extent the watch manufacturers charge you for waste materials?
I imagine that it won't be that much on a steel case but on a precious metal case, every gram literally is money.
Question two would be; I wonder how much of the removed material do/can they collect and re-use?

 

Re: Yes, you can see the difference...

... but on a precious metal case, every gram literally is money.
Question two would be; I wonder how much of the removed material do/can they collect and re-use?

I once did some work on a gold jewelry manufacturing facility. All gold dust was captured, cleansed, and recycled.

 

Re: Yes, you can see the difference...

Thanks so much for the great pics of finishing! I have been impressed with Seiko's. Even on the SKX007 the case finishing is outstanding. The bezel and the rest don't hold up to the MM, though (I wouldn't expect them to).

 

Re: Yes, you can see the difference...

I thought observations of fit and finish was all a bit silly: if you pay more than £500 for a watch you shouldn't be able to notice any imperfections. The photos (which are lovely, by the way; I might have to get into photography) don't conclusively prove otherwise imo, but do show the different finishes (not the quality of them per se, but the types) very well.

 

Re: Yes, you can see the difference...

I thought observations of fit and finish was all a bit silly: if you pay more than £500 for a watch you shouldn't be able to notice any imperfections. The photos (which are lovely, by the way; I might have to get into photography) don't conclusively prove otherwise imo, but do show the different finishes (not the quality of them per se, but the types) very well.

Thank you on the photo comment, means a lot to me.

As far as the other, I think you're nearly spot on. Around that price range you mention, everything should be almost perfect. However, as the price goes up, you should get closer and closer to perfection, albeit with diminishing returns as compared to the rising price. Here's my best example:

This is not noticeable to the naked eye on the wrist, but when you get into a magnifying glass, loupe, or macro shot you can see it. I think as you approach those $10k watches you should not be able to find even the slightest bit of uneven-ness. This gets ridiculously picky I know - and by the way regarding the shot above, it doesn't bother me one little bit as it's unnoticeable while wearing - but the point I'm trying to make is there is a difference in finishing even above the $1k mark.

In contrast to the Hammy, I cannot find anything remotely off on the Seiko, and now a month in I've gone over it with a fine-toothed camera lens. This is why I'm now completely sold on Seiko quality as regards the visible aspects of their higher-end watches, or at least my particular model..either way I'll trust them enough to buy another nice one sight unseen someday. Topic for another thread I guess.

 

Re: Yes, you can see the difference...

What those ( excellent, btw) pics show is the damage every day wearing does. Scratches, etc.

 

Re: Yes, you can see the difference...

I've been very impressed with the finishing on every JLC I've owned so far. I am amazed at the crisp lines they are able to create, even at the point where several different kinds of surfaces come together. Here, you can see five surfaces coming together on my JLC Navy SEALs Diving Auto's lug/case, alternating between brushed and polished, with the brushed surfaces having graining of different directions. Pretty cool stuff, IMO. To be honest, I've not seen such attention to detail on more modestly priced watches. (Please excuse the lint.)