The need to replace the glass in hours occurs quite often for different reasons. Consider the most common of them, let's talk about what are the glass, what are their advantages and disadvantages. And of course look at some misconceptions on the subject.
As raw material used watch glasses can be divided into two groups - plastic and mineral.
Plastic watch glass - it is Plexiglas (it is also a polymer Plates, it is organic glass), perhaps the most common, but considering some subconscious distrust of the client to present the material of the above terms from the seller you do not hear is likely to be called more beautiful and less intelligible words like Hizalit.
Of this material produced watch glasses for nearly all of wrist and pocket watches (with rare exceptions) are made watch factories of the Soviet Union.
The main advantage of the plastic watch glass - despite the fact that the material is expensive, makes it relatively easy to produce glass for o'clock complex configuration. Another important advantage - excellent resistance to shock loads.
The main drawback - eventually formed the so-beckoning "haze" in consequence of the low hardness of the plastic for the formation of many small scratches. To restore the transparency of the glass in the studio simply by polishing, but only if the glass has no cracks or chips.
Mineral glass is usually referred to as the seller only as "artificial crystal" less likely to be called "rock crystal" in the home known as the silicate glass. Hardness of the hour glass is much higher than that of plastic. Scratch it much more difficult, because it is long enough to remain transparent.
But the firm has a downside - mineral glass rather brittle and break it on impact is much easier than the plastic. With a relatively strong impact plastic glazing is usually breaks, mineral breaks into small fragments. This raises the risk of damage to the dial and hands, small fragments falling into the mechanism, cause its failure.
Sapphire - a kind of mineral watch glass. It is worth mentioning that for o'clock use of artificial sapphire, produced by growing crystals of aluminum oxide. The hardness exceeds the hardness artificial sapphire mineral glass usual, but also its fragility increases.
There is quite a common misconception about the hardness of sapphire, the seller often claims that scratch the sapphire has 9 units on the Mohs scale can only be a diamond which has 10 units on the same scale, that is the maximum possible strength.
However, the watch glass made of artificial sapphire with scratches in the studio bring not uncommon, and the owners of these hours do not understand how this all possible. The fact is that the definition of hardness on the Mohs scale, today, gives a fairly approximate idea of the hardness of minerals, as mentioned above Mohs Sapphire has 9 units, diamond 10. But Vickers have 2200-2300 units a sapphire and diamond at 10 000.
In the range from 2300 to 10000 Vickers a whole lot of minerals, for example, silicon crystals are present in abundance in the same asphalt as a filler, which finished in granite buildings and an underground station and many others, they can easily damage the sapphire.
Hardlex - the invention of Seiko, mineral glass hardened by treatment with acid. The hardness of the glass is higher than that of conventional mineral, but the fragility of much lower than that of sapphire. Not expensive option of improved mineral glass.
Sapflex - mineral glass as a base coated, capacity, or by gluing the outer layer of synthetic sapphire. Trying to make the hour glass is not as expensive mineral, but at the same time, the properties and the hardness of sapphire.
The shape of the glass for watches are simple (round, square) and fittings - a variety of polyhedra, convex glass, the ellipses (snake eyes) asymmetric.
Uniform standards for the size of the watch glass does not exist, the glass has an individual size for each model watches. But not looking at it in our workshop ready to watch a stock of common sizes of glasses, which can be replaced immediately if the installation of glass technology does not require sizing, and a seat in the watch body restoration.
Shaped glass are usually made to order individually. In this case the watches should be left in the workshop. Delivery time is typically less than 8 - 12 days, depending on the complexity of the glass.
The cost of construction and replacement glass as well as the cost of any other type of repair is determined after examining the master watches in the workshop.
