Cleaning Rolex—soft toothbrush?

[Colorado_kid]

Originally Posted by LSU-MOOSE

Geeky answer headed your way. Don’t use soaps designed for human use on your watch. Use dish soap or other type of cleaner designed to not leave residue. Boring detailed answer follows if you don’t wish to keep reading.

I used to sell industrial surfactants/detergents. Every one is designed with a specific or set of goals. The main goal is to change the surface tension of water to displace what you want removed. Additional qualities are designed for specific uses (explained below).

In the case of a watch we are removing human oils, dust, dirt and whatever else you may have encountered. Most if not all cleaners in your home will do this easily. Dish soap works very well because they are designed to handle animal oils and fats (some of us are bigger animals than others) and other deposits on your cookware and dishes. They get deep down into the crevices and displace the unwanted material. This works well for your watch and bracelet.
What dish soap DOES NOT DO is leave unwanted material behind that might attract more unwanted material. Dish soap is designed to leave spotless, very clean surface with no residue.

Human soap does all the above with two unwanted residuals left behind. The first is microscopic oils that make your hair or skin “feel” softer. These oils attract dirt and microscopic dust down in the crevices of your moving parts of your bracelet. The second unwanted residual is fragrance so you will smell nice, also microscopic particles to attract unwanted material just mentioned.
This unwanted residual prematurely attracts abrasives into these crevices increasing wear on the internals of the bracelet.

I know a lot of old saggy bracelets can be attributed to many thing but I think washing with human soaps contributes.

I use dish soap only once a month. No need to chance the increased wear on the bracelet internals.

As I was reading all the comments I was waiting for someone to say this (well, not as thorough and eloquent as you did). Many comments mentioned hand soaps. All the hand soaps in my house have moisturizers and fragrances.

My AD recommend the same as you. Once a month with mild dish soap and a fine microfiber towel to dry. They didn’t mention a toothbrush but I’m wondering what that’d do to polished gold (Bluesy)?


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