Polywatch vs Glasses?

[Man of Kent]

Anyone used polywatch to polish minor scratches out of prescription glasses?

I have some very faint hairline scratches on my rather expensive prescription lenses but hesitant to attack these with a dab of polywatch in case it melts the plastic....what could possibly go wrong?

[David_D]

Anyone used polywatch to polish minor scratches out of prescription glasses?

I have some very faint hairline scratches on my rather expensive prescription lenses but hesitant to attack these with a dab of polywatch in case it melts the plastic....what could possibly go wrong?

Not sure but if you were persuaded to pay for expensive coatings, they’ll obviously be affected.

[Sinnlover]

As said I would not if coated.
Poly watch or similar removes material (small amounts) this can’t be a good thing for the lenses clarity I would have thought.
They are sized and shaped according to your needs, removing material will alter this

[MADDOG]

I tried Polywatch on a pair of my gegg's which had an anti reflective coating on them and made a complete mess of them.

Step away from the polywatch Sir.

[dkpw]

Perhaps not applicable for lenses, although you can use Polywatch to refurbish acrylic pens, at your own risk of course. I've done this on a friend's Montblanc from the 80s. A dab of Cape Cod also touched up the metal fitments. He was amazed how new it looked.

[DavidL]

You can't polish scratches out of spectacle lenses, or rather you can but then you wouldn't be able to see through them.
There are 2 issues. The first is what would happen here. You would try your damnedest to be even with your polishing and you'd fail so the lens you would look through would be a bit like old windows, wavy and wobbly. Virtually unusable.
The second would be if you could take an even layer off the lens surface down to the depth ot the scratch then yes you would have abetter surface but as the prescription of the lens is a function of the 2 surface curves AND the lens thickness then you would change the effective prescription. So again you wouldn't be able to see clearly.
In addition to that most high value lenses are individually surfaced with aspheric curves and it would all go horribly wrong.

[Man of Kent]

Thanks chaps. I'll live with the patina.

[kace]

You can't polish scratches out of spectacle lenses, or rather you can but then you wouldn't be able to see through them.
There are 2 issues. The first is what would happen here. You would try your damnedest to be even with your polishing and you'd fail so the lens you would look through would be a bit like old windows, wavy and wobbly. Virtually unusable.
The second would be if you could take an even layer off the lens surface down to the depth ot the scratch then yes you would have abetter surface but as the prescription of the lens is a function of the 2 surface curves AND the lens thickness then you would change the effective prescription. So again you wouldn't be able to see clearly.
In addition to that most high value lenses are individually surfaced with aspheric curves and it would all go horribly wrong.

I can confirm this is correct, I had a pair that were beyond useless because of accumulated small scratches so thought I'd give them a polish. They looked better but were actually less use as glasses.

[number2]

I tried Polywatch on a pair of my gegg's which had an anti reflective coating on them and made a complete mess of them.

Step away from the polywatch Sir.

This ^^^^^^^^ yet another school day