mafoofan
57
Apparently they have a special process for these instances..
Feb 03, 2022,14:20 PM
I was told that when a case is put back through production rather than service polished, they first laser weld any new metal necessary to avoid net material loss and then go through all the minute steps of factory polishing used when the case was first made, thereby duplicating an as-new result. This includes things like diamond-polishing the bezel, which creates a distortion-free, perfectly flat plane that would otherwise be impossible. In a service polish, they would simply use a buffing wheel on the bezel, adding a little more roundness and distortion each time.
Apparently, the above described “return to stock” repair happens behind the scenes all the time unbeknownst to the customer. It could be an instance where a watch has accumulated shop wear at the dealer and the dealer sends the watch back to Patek to be made new again. I suspect this is why sometimes we see out-of-production models suddenly appear in stock as new watches a year or more after being discontinued.
Also, say a watch doesn’t pass final QC in production: rather than throw out the case, Patek may run it back through the gauntlet. Neither the AD nor the consumer would ever be made aware.