Cartier Santos polishing

[Carterman32]

I have a Medium Santos wsa0029. I lost a lot of weight but didn't change out the links to make the bracelet tighter. As a result, the watch flipped around my wrist and was hitting face first into hard objects. I know. Stupid.

I scratched the bezel up badly. I went two local watchmakers in LA. One said not to polish it because it can ruin it from being water tight. The other said Santoses can't be buffed and need to be sent out (not sure what would be happening at an external watchmaker).

Is it true they can't be buffed? And if so, what's the best course of action. It's just the bezel that needs work. I'm especially bothered by the gash in the upper left hand portion of the bezel.

[airchitect]

Just take it to Cartier. I’m pretty certain they can handle it, and most importantly, handle it correctly as opposed to some schmo…


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[Blansky]

A few things:

Polishing takes off the metal. Especially trying to remove deep scratches.

I doubt polishing would affect water resistance.

Cape Cod type of cloths could clean it up a bit if you do it yourself but make sure to tape off the crystal. There are polishing pastes you can get that could remove scratches as well but remember you are removing metal and could disfigure the bezel a bit by going very deep.

You could send it to Cartier and have them make it new again or even buy a new bezel and start fresh.

If it was me, and the rather deep rash on the case and we can't even see the bracelet, I'd bite the bullet and send it in to be cleaned up.

[joli160]

As mentioned tape off everything you don’t want shiny and use cape cod or sunshine cloths.
I would not worry about going too far, by the time you reach that level you are most probably already tired of it. Takes quite a lot of elbow grease and results are good.

Sending it in takes forever and personally I like to do these kind of things myself. It’s very relaxing and I have not been able to ruin any of mine by using these