My friends,certain cleaners out there are capable of eliminating hairlines on dials to the point of being undetectable.(At least by me!) I just tried it and was amazed at the results-now I'm worried about how this effects(especially) the Ebay market.The potential for dishonesty seems extremely high-is there a way to detect these hidden defects? Does anyone know how long these "cures" last?
If a new guy like me knows about this(and I found out by accident) word must be around by now.let's hear some comments! - Marty

Hi Marty, Firstly, My experience is there are two causes of Hairlines;
1. Natural, ALL ceramic fired dials when cooled and hot-cold life cycled will crack due to the extreme differential expansion of the ceramic which has no expansion that is bonded to the copper substrate which has 10 - 15 times more expansion. It is only after the hairlines are made visible by collecting enough fine soot and dirt (or green copper oxides from the substrate) that you can "see" them.
2. Accidental, When the watch repair guy "crowbars" the dial off without loosening the feet screws, or something is dropped that smashes the crystal, or the dial is poked hard by someone trying to set the time with a pick-axe, or some other human-caused "act of nature", it is highly likely that a starred effect set of hairlines will develop.

A clean dial is a clean dial. Hairlines or not. An honest dial with NO hairlines is either a fake or an act of God.

My opinion (at least).

Thanks,Dave-I think you satisfied my scientific side very well; that's not something many people can do. - Marty

David,"crowbars"?,"pick-axe"? Maybe the guys just got shaky hands or mad that morning at his wife, or the "sledge hammer" wasn't handy

Just kidding around here like I always do.

The hairlines never go away, no matter what product has been used. They are still there, just made less obvious by cleaning all the dirt & dust out of them, to the point where they are "invisible" to the unaided eye with hands and bezel in place.

However, you still should be able to see the discontinuity in the dial surface a hairline causes when you take the bezel off and rotate the dial around under a loupe with a strong light reflecting off it.

Ed, I honestly couldn't find some,especially smaller ones-even though I knew where they were. You have to see this yourself, I keep going back and looking again!

For one of the best discussions on dial cleaning check this link out. I thought it covered all the bases.

https://ihc185.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/3426047761/m/4391095851

Marty, do you mind telling us what you did to clean up the hairlines?

Gary

Thanks Gary! Polident's OK, but it looks like you found me out quick-it is that liquid comet-and I swear some light hairlines are undetectable after using this stuff-sure; with most hairlines you can see the refraction of light rays off the crack,no matter how clean...but not all. The stuff can do wonders...so far I've had no trouble-but I don't have a Fergy,either!