gold spring bars Vs gold plated spring bars

[timelord]

I noticed that all the solid gold Rolex models I have seen all have gold spring bars or what appears to be gold.

I understand the reason why the gold spring bars are mainly used is that the steel tips would be too hard on the soft gold and therefore gold is used to avoid cutting into the gold cavity as gold is soft.

Until recently, I never expected to find gold plated spring bars as I thought they were all solid gold.I believe gold plated would not serve any purpose other than for cosmetic appearance. My question is; would that small plate of gold really be effective to avoid a steel spring bar putting too much wear on the soft gold? How would one tell which is plated and which is solid apart from trying to scratch them?

[Mr. Krabs]

You can probably weight them and tell which ones are solid gold. Plated will be just as good as the solid gold.

[Grey.Coupe]

Plated steel much harder...

[T. Ferguson]

I'd be more concerned that solid gold spring bars might bend/twist/torque and fail. If anything I would expect Rolex would put a small stainless steel sleeve into the lug holes to avoid the wear issue you're referring to. Seems to me if wear is a problem then any gold plate would eventually wear off. Though in practice it is doubtful the spring bars actually move or pivot that much.

[unreformed66]

I doubt that the gold plated ones are about lessening wear on the gold case. I'd imagine that it's more about corrosion resistance. But I've been wrong before. I've even got a bunch of solid brass spring bars around here that I got in a load of watch parts years ago. I sawed one in half to see if they were really solid brass. They're too thick for most applications though, I'm not sure what they were made to replace.