Bead-blasting as a solution to worn PVD coating

[Seiko7A38]

The idea of bead-blasting watches (and their bracelets) to achieve a 'custom' finish has been around for donkey's years. It's predominantly used by the modding community, to give divers or 'military-look' pieces the appearance of being 'a tool watch'. The resultant finish depends on a number of factors, including blast media and air pressure used, technique etc. Thankfully, it's not been used that regularly to refinish Seiko 7A's, incidentally none of which (not even the Seiko 7A28 RAF Gen. 1) ever came in a factory bead-blasted finish. One of the first examples I saw online, in April 2009, was a 'satin finished' stainless 7A38-7270 posted on the UK RLT forum by Bryan Hibbins, under the auspices of 'Satin Time'.

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[Seiko7A38]

The variation in colour and coarseness of finish achievable, by using different media, is clearly demonstrated by this 'franken mod' (based on a similar 7A38-7190 watch case) posted on the old archived forum by member miromustang.

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Here's another photo of the same watch, when it was subsequently listed by a profitering US eBay re-seller in July 2019.
See updates on page 9 of the Heads Up on yet another 7A38 Franken thread.

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[Seiko7A38]

It's entirely subjective, but IMO, some dressy case designs don't lend themselves well to bead-blasting, no matter how carefully the work has been executed. This aberration, which was once a gold-tone 7A38-7260 was listed by an Italian eBay seller in March 2017:

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[Seiko7A38]

The black chrome coated 7A38-6010 SAA040J, of which many well-worn examples suffer from coating loss has recently become a popular candidate for the bead-blasting treatment. This 'head only', fitted with a NATO strap was listed by an Italian eBay seller in July this year.

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Note the case-back hasn't been bead-blasted, but instead excessively skimmed. There have been a couple more like that (on NATO straps) besides, but there was another bead-blasted 7A38-6010 that I'd intended to write up earlier ....

[Seiko7A38]

Fortunately, I'd saved all the details of the listing at the time, because thanks to eBay's automatic deletion of ended listings after 60 days, they've all since disappeared into the ether - hence the link below no longer actually works.

Venice, California based profiteering US eBay re-seller redline76 ('Warren') is a regular exponent of bead-blasting, as an alternative to 'proper' re-finishing. His watches' conditions are often stated as 'Seller refurbished'. Earlier this year, he's listed and sold a couple of stainless 7A38-7270's and 7A38-7029's which clearly showed his use of the technique, in that the watch cases edges had suffered from loss of definition as a result. I won't bother posting photos of them, you'll just have to take my word for it. His auction listings are always of the private listing - bidder identity protected type which means they're wide open to shill bidding. Judging by the selling prices he regularly achieves, very likely are.

In September this year, he listed this bead-blasted 7A38-6010 'Prototype' as an experiment (toe in the water exercise), as a 7-day auction, with an opening bid price of $49.99:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nov-1984-Vin ... 3601626780

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Here's half the seller's dozen photos, some of which show the various dings not removed by the bead-blasting process:

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The description is the pièce de résistance - a real 'piece of work':

7A38-6010-(Divers)-Black+Gold-(CoatingStripped)-Bead-Blasted-eBay-Sept2021-Description.png (66.47 KiB) Viewed 4368 times

The 7-day auction ended with this botched-up bead-blasted 'prototype' selling for a whopping $510 after 33 bids !

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203601626780

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[Seiko7A38]

If you've read this far, you may be wondering what finally prompted me to express my distaste at this blasted practice ?
Blame the Instagram influencers.

To be continued ....