Anti-reflective Coating - only on the inside?
Why use sapphire crystal on Tordney timepieces?
Sapphire crystal is a synthetic material with hardness second to diamond. This means it is harder than most materials you will encounter in your daily life, making your watch far less prone to scratches. From time to time, you will have your watch bumped into things. It is for this reason we use sapphire crystal for our watches.
Why anti-reflective coating?
A drawback of sapphire crystal is that it is highly reflective. To improve legibility, the application of anti-reflective (AR) coating is common practice in high-end watches. Our watches have anti-reflective coating vapour-deposited just on the inside. Yes, some brands have AR coating on both sides of the crystal. After careful consideration, we believe this is the most appropriate option for our customers. Before explaining why we made this decision, let us think about what happens when the external coating scratches.
When the external AR coating scratches
If you cannot stand the scratch marks on your watch, some available options are:
- Have the external AR coating reapplied. This will cost significantly more than the price of a Tordney watch! Since the AR coating is applied in batches of sapphire crystal, the cost would be extremely high to do it just for your watch.
- Have the sapphire crystal replaced. This is not only a costly option but also a waste of the sapphire crystal. It takes a lot of energy to produce sapphire crystal and only longer use can do it justice. And why give up on a perfect sapphire crystal when it is only the AR coating that has been scratched?
- Have the scratched AR coating removed. Why have the external coating in the first place? :)
Anti-reflective coating just on the inside
To minimise your hassles, we decided to apply AR coating just on the inside. It may be a different story when producing diver watch or other heavy duty timepieces. For our current collection though, AR coating on the inside will limit reflection to a level that is acceptable for everyday use. Most importantly, it will keep your level of maintenance low.
Love Your Watch
Apart from resources used in sapphire crystal production, thorough cleaning is required before AR coating application. The crystal needs to be cleared of all impurities in order to apply the AR coating. For all the hard work that has been put into an important component that protects your watch, we hope you could take good care of it and keep it for as long as possible.
