Episode 114 - All About Sapphire Crystals

Published on Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:21:55 -0800

Synopsis

Andrew and Everett discuss sapphire crystals in depth, exploring their history, manufacturing process, properties, advantages, and alternatives. They delve into the science behind anti-reflective coatings, comparing sapphire to other crystal materials like acrylic and mineral glass. The conversation also touches on interesting tangents like the life and discoveries of physicist John William Strutt.

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Transcript

Speaker
Andrew	Hello fellow watch lovers, nerds, enthusiasts, or however you identify. This is 1420 The Watch Clicker Podcast with your hosts, Andrew and my good friend Everett. Here, we talk about watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like.
Everett	Everett, how are you? I'm really good, man. I feel really proud of my pan on the pot for the intro music. I felt like I really nailed it.
Andrew	We did. We were cohesive, synergizing.
Everett	That's right. You know, you, we've developed this tempo over time, such that even when I know we're not going to use the board, we're not going to use the board recording for the audio, which happens frequently, right? We can only use that if we're recording like we are tonight, just the two of us, you and I, if we've got anybody coming in from outside, I've got to go in and post put in the whole sound bite and then, and then adjust it in my, in my digital audio workstation. But even if we're not doing that, I think our tempo on the intro relies on having that board, you know, in our ears.
Andrew	We have to hear it. We just feel it. We feel the music. That's right. I also see the number 12, and I'm like, oh, my cue. Oh, yeah. Is it right at 12? 12 seconds is my cue.
Everett	Yep. Interesting. Interesting. No, I'm doing well. I mean, I had a crazy day. I had a crazy day, work-wise. Just a trial, and it was a crazy trial, which is, you know, it's like anything else. You know, it's that moment you prepare for. By the time you get there, you've been actually preparing for that specific trial for a week, almost exclusively, and months, oftentimes, before that. So it's this culmination. And furthermore, It is the sort of the occupational skill if you're a barrister, as it were, in England, but for here, a litigator. So there's this satisfaction and joy that I get out of it, but also it's just... It's exhausting, I imagine. It's exhausting and there's chemical dumps and highs and lows and... I imagine too, because it's remote still, yeah?
Andrew	Or was this in front of, like actually in person? It is remote. There's some, there's some challenges in, in that world. Yes. Doing things remotely. Cause you don't get all, and there's challenges in remote activity anyway, but all the body language, all the, all the subtle cues that, that help pump you up and like, yep, I'm on it. I'm doing it. I'm getting it. It's a, it's a bit of a letdown because you're not getting that. It's, you got to feed off your own energy only.
Everett	Yeah, there's a different set of skills you have to employ. You have to be more careful with your inflection. You have to be, you know, you have to find different ways to emphasize your points because it's a little bit of vocal emphasis. Emphasis can go a long way.
Andrew	And for a man as handsome as you, you don't have that working in your favor either.
Unknown	How are you?
Andrew	I'm good. It's the end of my weekend. I'm a little bit, a little bit worn out. You know, we have, we have, both the kids at the house all day, winter breaking it as it were. Winter breaking it. Uh, which was, has been fun, but also exhausting as all of you parents know. And it's, we're, we're in that gap. We're in that, that gap week between Christmas and New Year's. So it's like everything, I'm just tired. I'm just worn out. I'm ready for this part of the year to be done for this days to start getting longer again. Yeah.
Everett	Yeah. No, I mean, this is, I think this is the most miserable part of the year. I leave work at five and it's dark. I get to work seven. It's dark. I leave work at five and it's dark.
Andrew	Yeah. I don't see when I, during my work week, I don't see daytime.
Everett	Unless I go. Yeah. Right. That's right. Unless I go to the driving range at lunch, I don't see daylight. Yeah. Which I do.
Andrew	You have a window. Often. I do. I have an eye mask, so I don't see the sun. Yeah. It's very weird. That's weird. Yeah, it's whatever. So I think we should hit it. We're tackling a big topic today. And I think it's bigger than either of us expected it to be.
Everett	It is.
Andrew	And I think it's because it spans so much outside of urology. I found myself on like geological websites today. Yeah. And industrial manufacturing. And over the, because I've been kind of dabbling in this for the last couple of weeks trying to Trying to come prepared, as I usually do not.
Everett	So... No, you sort of have led the charge here a few weeks. I really love this.
Andrew	I'm not good at it. So... But what I've... Where I found myself very much outside of the world of watches, and I sort of expected that a little, not as much as it turned out. Yeah. So for those of you who are illiterate, we're talking... Or on autoplay. Okay. We're talking about sapphire crystals today. Yeah. Specifically sapphire crystals.
Everett	Yes, which just naturally, right? Sapphire crystal, you hear sapphire crystal, you start to think about versus mineral or versus Hesalite or... Hard wax or whatever. That's right. And then, you know, so there's some tentacles here.
Unknown	Yeah.
Everett	As you said, right? There's some tentacles and some pretty neat rabbit holes, I think. We'll have to be careful that
Andrew	Yeah, we're gonna have to really watch the time because there's a lot of stuff that we must cover and then the stuff that we really want to cover is kind of peripheral to the stuff that we got to get to.
Everett	Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Andrew, would you do me a favor and introduce me to Sapphire Crystals?
Andrew	Sure. So, they're the end-all be-all of crystals. Indeed. Introduction complete. Um, so that was kind of one of the reasons I wanted to tackle this as a, as a topic is, is a lot of the things that we've, that we've chosen to dive deep into are things that are, uh, very subjective ratings. There are these things that are like, Oh, does it have this? Does it have this? You know, if it's got a Sapphire crystal is an inherently better. And I take issue with it is known kind of statements. It is the way kind of statements. They, they, they don't sit well with me. I'll accept it as that that is the way, but I want to know why it's the way.
Everett	And yet you're kind of a, I have spoken kind of guy.
Andrew	I am. It's a, it's, I'm, I'm a paradox.
Everett	We're really, we're really running it tonight.
Andrew	So with that being said, I wanted to dive in and I imagine a lot of you have the opinion that Sapphire is just inherently better. And I want to know why it's inherently better. So that's what we're seeking to find out today and have sought to find out. What makes it better? Why is it better? And is it even, in fact, better? I think no matter what, we'll come to the end of maybe.
Everett	Well, I think maybe and also, no, it depends.
Andrew	Yeah, it depends. It really depends on what you like. So we're going to dive into it. I'm just going to give a real brief history. First instances of sapphire crystal being used in watches were by Jaeger LeCoultre. LeCoultre?
Everett	LeCoultre.
Andrew	LeCoultre?
Everett	Yeah.
Andrew	Jaeger LeCoultre.
Everett	I believe that's how it's pronounced. Yeah. Mick Jagger, LaCouder.
Andrew	I took French in high school. In the 1930s, which is crazy early because then you don't really see it start to emerge again until the 60s. Obviously it pops up, but in large format, not until the 60s with Omega. And Omega is even just still dabbling in sapphire crystals. And then in the 80s, Rolex hops on board and they start using it in more instances and the rest of the watch industry follows suit. So there it is. There we have our birth of sapphire crystals that can be entirely attributed to Rolex being like, hey, we like this. It's luxury.
Everett	Thank you for joining us for this episode of 40 and 20. Is there more? I'm sorry.
Andrew	So we've got a brief history and there's more than that. I missed things.
Everett	I missed probably really important things, but we got to get through it because we got more sapphire crystal become used in a in a mechanical capacity as a tool. In watches? In optics. When do we start seeing sapphire lenses?
Andrew	Oh, so that would have been post 1918 was when the first methodology of, it's called the Cherovsky method, process technique, take your pick. That was when in 1913 or 1918, he sort of accidentally stumbled upon this process of growing, growing. Yeah. from other material. And he stumbled on it. He was working on a project related to metal hardness and he dipped his pen in a little vat of metal and found that he had a single unbroken crystal of this stuff. That's not exactly right because I don't remember entirely, but that's the gist of it. It's kind of a penicillin discovery story where there's going to be some legend associated with it. So the truth is there. but maybe not all the facts.
Everett	Yeah, and so unlike glass or even diamond or plastic, well I guess maybe not unlike plastic, but unlike glass or diamonds, crystal is completely synthetic. It's not, excuse me, sapphire is completely synthetic in the sense that it really doesn't occur in nature. It's something that is almost exclusively grown.
Andrew	Well, so there is natural occurrences, but all of the commercial Sapphire is, well, not all the commercial Sapphire that we use in watches that is used in phones and in Apple watches is all industrial manufacturing grown in vats, not test tubes. Cause they're, they're bigger than test tubes, but they're bat babies.
Everett	And so at its essence, Sapphire is the same as plastic as well. You're welcome. As the blue gemstone sapphire. Chemically, yes. Chemically, it's the same. Sapphire being one of the big three colored gemstones, rumi and emerald being the other two. We're talking about chemically the same thing.
Andrew	And actually chemically better, because what you see naturally occurring, the coloration comes from impurities in the environment in which it grew. So the sapphire that you're wearing on your wrist is the finest quality sapphire gemstone on the planet.
Everett	That's right. That's right. And so it is chemically a sort of compressed heat pressure corundum? What? Is the element? Yeah. Is that right? Corundum. Yeah. Yes. Sure. I might be wrong.
Andrew	I don't know if you're wrong or right. So there's a lot of... And aluminum oxide. Yeah. We'll go with that. Aluminum oxide. And I think corundum is the way to say it. I don't know. I'm not a geologist.
Everett	Me either.
Andrew	But this is where we are today. It turns out. So this manufacturing process, and everyone varies a little bit, but the general industry standard in the production of sapphire crystal is this. You take a little puck size, like a hockey puck size of aluminum oxide and conundrum and all kinds of other shit, and they put it in this vat, and they fill it with some other chemicals, and then they fill it with shard. So what I'm basically Like as I'm watching... Rainbow, rainbow shard. Yeah, as I'm watching this, I'm like, this is Breaking Bad. They're making meth. That's all that's happening right now. Which isn't necessarily different from the process of manufacturing methamphetamine, from my understanding of manufacturing methamphetamine based on Breaking Bad. Fewer Gatorade bottles. Or more, you don't know. It gets hot in there. So anyway, they take these materials, they put them in this vat. Then they take that vat, and it's this, I don't know, five-gallon can or so, and they take that five-gallon can and they put it in a larger drum. And what they're doing is they're, that's where they're gonna create all the pressure. So they seal up this little vat, they put it in the drum, they evacuate the oxygen, and they superheat to like 2,200 degrees Celsius to melt down all of that stuff together. And then over the course of about 17 days, They slowly cool from the bottom of this molten gemstone goo and slowly cool it so that it cools uniformly and crystallizes all the way up. So that the conclusion of those 17 days, there is a single piece of sapphire crystal, which is then removed from its house in the vat. And then graded because there's going to be chemical imperfections. There's going to be imperfections based on the cooling, even though this is a, like a, a super high level industrial manufacturing process, there's always going to be imperfections because they can appear for no reason at all, basically.
Everett	And when you say graded, you don't mean like not cheese grater.
Andrew	I mean, I mean diamond graded. I mean that these, these blocks are inspected, graded, and then cut for their specific applications. Some of them are plugged, some of them are sliced. Once they get to a slab form for whatever they're going to be used for. So if they're going to be making cell phone covers, they're going to shape it to the size of the cell phone they're cutting for. They're going to polish it, further harden, polish, further harden, clean it up. You're going to have a perfectly crystal clear chunk of sapphire. They're going to slice, polish, harden, and then you've got your usable crystal. Now with watches, it's very much the same. They're just going to cut a center plug out, a core sample kind of shape out of the ideal parts of this crystal that's been created, and then all the excess goes back into making the next round of crystals. They cut the core sample out, cut them to the desired dimensions, and then ship them out to whoever's going to do the follow-on activities with them.
Everett	You know my wife, Kim? Her maiden name is Clear. And her dad, who's in my living room right now, was pushing to name her Crystal. That's a true story.
Andrew	It's fortunate for a lot of reasons that he did not.
Everett	Yeah. Fascinating. This is the part of the story that I'm sort of like, all right, I get it. You've got to do all this stuff, but how do you even get Right? Like it's just, you know, I know chemists and physicists and they're always doing crazy stuff, but it's just mind blowing. Meth cookers. That's right. It's mind blowing that you ever get there.
Unknown	Yeah.
Everett	Right. In just day to day.
Andrew	Here we are making crystal. That's right. Not the meth variety. Making sapphire crystal. So we've got the, the general gist of, Like when it came to be, how it's made. Now the question is why Sapphire for this application? Why Sapphire? It's because it is the second hardest gem in the world.
Unknown	Yeah.
Andrew	It's tied for second with some other things. It's, it's tied for, uh, tied for second with, uh, emeralds and rubies. Which are all basically the same. Yeah. Chemically, basically the same thing. The only thing that's harder is diamond. Yes.
Everett	So the Mohs scale, I think is the one that most commonly gets referred to.
Andrew	The Mohs scale is, I wrote it down.
Unknown	Yeah.
Everett	The Mohs scale is the one through 10 scale with diamond being a 10.
Andrew	And it's a qualitative ordinal scale. It was invented or it was invented kind of pioneered in 1812. I think there's probably been some refinements by a geologist. So I say geologist funny cause my five-year-old wants to be a geologist. Um, So I make fun of him by saying it the way he does. He doesn't know I'm making fun of him. It's great. Friedrich Mose. So the scale is rated after him. And being a qualitative ordinal scale, it means that each subsequent grade is actually orders of magnitude harder. So it's not nearly as hard as diamond. That's right. But it's fucking hard.
Everett	Yeah. So sapphire's a nine, diamond's a ten.
Andrew	Yes. Mineral crystal. It's like a two and a half. five, I think, right? Oh, is it a five? Oh, yeah. Plastics are two and a half. That's right. Um, so for some, for some reference there, uh, titanium is a nine. Yeah. So that's where we are. I don't understand then how people break their sapphire crystals.
Everett	Yeah. Well, I mean, I think like anything else, right? Well, so being harder, it's more prone to shattering. Right? So same with steel. The harder you get steel, the more likely it is to break. You can take tinfoil and bend it and crumple it up. That's made of aluminum. Because it's soft. Flaccid, even. That's right. The harder something gets... And this is true with crystals, right? So we see that mineral crystal beings... So there's another scale, a hardness scale, that I think is worth a mention, which is the Vickers scale, which is does not increase with orders of magnitude, right? So in that scale, you see acrylic crystals on the Vickers scale at about 100, mineral crystals at like 500 to 800, and sapphires at, you know, 2,000, 2,300, right?
Andrew	Sounds much more like the... Oh, why can't I think of the hot scale? Scoville. It sounds very Scoville-y. There's not really a top.
Everett	It just, it just keeps going. Yeah. Yeah. It just keeps going. So yeah, you have these comparables, you have these two scales that get used and I, I think they're probably valuable for, for different references. But in that context you see, you know, Hardlex about half as hard as Sapphire, uh, a bit more or less depending on Hardlex or mineral crystal, excuse me. Um,
Andrew	I think hardness too. I think there has to be a big, huge asterisk next to hardness. Hardness is not equal to... I made the not equal to sign with my fingers. You didn't see it, but I told you I said it. So it doesn't equal durability. It's just factual hardness. Yeah, that's right. And with hardness also comes brittle.
Everett	Yes.
Andrew	Prone to chipping and catastrophic shattering. I was thinking like marshmallow versus peanut brittle.
Everett	Yeah. And you know, I think so. So with that, with mineral crystal, you're, I think probably less likely to shatter because of its relatively lower hardness. It flexes and it can move, um, but it chips, but it chips and, and furthermore, it scratches. That's right. And acrylic goes the, you know, takes the complete opposite approach. It's going to flex and it's really going to move a lot, as we discussed a few weeks ago in our Vostok episode, but it's also going to scratch like a motherfucker. Sapphire is basically unscratchable, but for diamond. And stones.
Andrew	And stones.
Everett	You crash into a concrete countertop by... Probably because of sapphire in your concrete countertop or whatever.
Unknown	Yeah.
Everett	Weird.
Unknown	That's right.
Andrew	Weird. Now, another big caveat to the scratching of sapphire. Most sapphires, most crystals have an AR coating inside and out. And we're going to get to that later. That is, I think, the main culprit in what we are calling scratches on sapphire crystals. I think when people complain about scratches in their sapphire crystal, more often than not, they've actually scratched their AR coating. Perhaps, yes. Moes, maws?
Everett	Maws. Yeah, there's almost certainly some sort of... Mocks.
Andrew	There's got to be a... It just seems too simple a name for a surname for a fellow named Friedrich.
Everett	There's something in there.
Andrew	So, we've got the positives of a sapphire crystal. We've got that it's harder, less prone to scratching, more prone to breaking, but you still gotta like bang it hard to break it.
Everett	And I think most people don't, will never break a sapphire crystal. Most people in normal wear will never break a sapphire crystal.
Andrew	Challenge accepted. I think if you, I think the thing is when you try to break it, you don't hit things at the right angles. I think it takes very specific angles on, on edges. to actually cause that break.
Everett	Yeah, I think I think it's it's easy to say you're really it's pretty low risk. But like with anything, if it happens, it's going to happen and it's going to be bad.
Andrew	And it's pretty inexpensive to replace. And it's surprisingly inexpensive when you look at the cost of sapphire in jewel cut form. I was in an effort to try to figure out why sapphire crystal is so much more expensive. And when I say so much more, I mean, it's a notable price difference for watch manufacturers to use Sapphire versus any of the other varieties that are available.
Everett	Cost of goods, probably about twice as much.
Andrew	And we've talked to plenty of brand owners who have made that decision very deliberately, one way or the other. And I don't think it's either good or bad. I think it's a bad decision when it's just what you go with, when it's an ill thought out decision. I think when you make a deliberate choice, you're making the right choice because you've thought it out. You know what you're doing. When you just go with whatever's easiest, cheapest, that's a, that's a poor decision. So I'm looking at Sapphire gems on the internets today. Holy fuck. They're just as expensive as diamonds.
Everett	Yeah, I think, I think that comes with the expense of, of cutting them and getting your facets right, because it is hard and hard to cut. It takes a lot of work to get those facets correctly.
Andrew	I don't know that it would be any more difficult than the molding process of a sapphire crystal, because I watched an FHFF video. I don't know, the Swiss watch world commissioned a bunch of educational videos. in conjunction with their, like, come to our watchmaking schools. They're available on the YouTube. And I watched one, and it's this woman who does replacement crystals. And she hand makes replacement sapphire crystals. And on the, like, industrial commercial level, the process can't be that much different.
Everett	I think it's just a matter of scale, right? Right. With a gemstone, it's smaller. you've got a much smaller margin of error. It's not a big flat surface.
Andrew	But what I'm talking about is curvature.
Everett	Yeah.
Andrew	And that is, this woman had an inverted Benson burner and a little lazy Susan on which she placed her crystal and then her mold of the case for which she was molding the crystal. And then it's just rotating constantly, getting that perfect fit for these sapphire crystals.
Everett	And by the way, I'm sure she's lovely. But before you go to this gal, check out Crystal Times and or Esslinger.
Andrew	Yeah. Yeah. No, don't go to her. But what I'm getting at is the process can't change that much to scale it. Yeah. Right. It has to in certain ways. But generally speaking, it's still a super precise. I just I don't see it being any more precise than consistent geometric cuts, which can be done fairly easily by a CNC machine. That being said, I think that the Sapphire in most of our watches is probably commercially more valuable than the Sapphire that you bought for an engagement ring, knowing that it would never be proven to not be a diamond. So, drawbacks. It's hard, so it's brittle, and you can break it. But I think, generally speaking, there aren't drawbacks to sapphire crystals beyond the cost. And I tend to like acrylic. I like the way the light plays in acrylic crystals. But in the way of an objective rating, I don't know what there is.
Everett	Well, and I think it depends on the application, right? As we spoke about in our Vostok episode, there are some advantages to the flex that an acrylic crystal provides. Because it's not as hard, it can deform. which sounds like it'd be a negative, but in the application of the Vostok Amphibia, it winds up being a necessity, a function, right? So, you know, some of this stuff is subjective. I think that there's certainly an aesthetic quality to acrylic that's desirable. Yeah. A distortive quality that's pleasing Uh, it's got, I hear it's acrylic sometimes described as having warmth versus Sapphire. And I'm not able to put my finger on what that is, but I, I can put my finger on what it is.
Andrew	It's light transmission. It is the, uh, the ability for Sapphire to transmit light better than, uh, mineral crystal or plastics light gets trapped in those mineral based, like minerals and plastics. It gets caught in there and it's bouncing around while the light is applied to it very differently than the way light cleanly passes through sapphire. So it's actually, it literally is warmer. It's light refracting within those imperfections, those extra shit inside that piece of material differently than just passing straight through sapphire.
Everett	So they're so real. science a thing that perhaps isn't an objective quality, but it's an aesthetic quality. And furthermore, acrylic has this ability to be buffed out. But if you never scratch, you never need to be buffed out. So there's a certain amount of play there. It's very, very difficult to scratch sapphire. it's much harder to buff a scratch out of sapphire. Although you just buy a new one, it can be done. Um, and, and we could talk just a second about that, right? Acrylic crystals can be buffed out because it's soft and easier to remove material. Also acrylic tends to scratch less deeply than sapphire when it does scratch, but it scratches all the time. So you get all these surface scratches. It's easy to get those out with sapphire. You're removing a lot of material and it can be done with diamond paste.
Andrew	Yeah, no, it absolutely can be. Cause that's the process by which it's polished in factory anyway.
Everett	But you wind up removing a lot of material in doing so. Talking microns here though. It's hard to get, it's hard to get deep enough with a deep scratch in Sapphire. It's hard to get deep enough. You've probably got to employ mechanical force and you wind up interrupting the structure. So there's, there's trade-offs, but by and large, I think we can safely say for an everyday user, Sapphire crystal is going to be a lot more worry-free than acrylic.
Andrew	Correct. But if you scratch it, it's because you fuck it up. Yeah. There was some force there. That wasn't just like a bump.
Everett	So I think is it an appropriate time to talk about the high reflective index of sapphire crystal?
Andrew	I think we must because we're going to get into the anti-reflective coatings.
Everett	Yeah. So sapphire, sapphire versus acrylic crystal, for instance, has a very high reflective index. Does that mean Everett? I mean, I think it means exactly what you think it means, which is it's got worse glare. Yeah. Acrylic crystal, because of the chemical properties, does not reflect light as significantly as sapphire. Sapphire pushes the light out, increasing the glare.
Andrew	Does that mean it absorbs it better? It can't mean it's got to pass through better.
Everett	I think that's right. Yeah. mineral crystal is is in between probably a little bit closer to Sapphire but still in between Sapphire has a very high reflective index so it's become commonplace to apply AR coatings anti-reflective coatings to Sapphire yes Andrew you know who doesn't my hand was raised this way he called on me um Marathon Marathon no they refuse to according
Andrew	to Mark from Long Island, and we'll circle back to Mark from Long Island here.
Everett	And why is that? I don't know. So in 1886, this fella named John William Strutt. J.W. Strutt. Who is the most impressive person that you've probably never heard of. And if you have heard of him, good on you. I want to talk about this fella for a little while. Let's do it. So first, this guy discovers anti-reflective coatings, really sort of comes to realize anti-reflective coatings very early in this process. Because this is even early in the spectacle game. Yes. He's credited with this thing. And the way he does it, he notices that with glass, a tarnished piece of glass conducts light better than new glass. So glass, like anything else, oxidizes. And as it does so, it winds up conducting light more effectively, which is why when you see these old houses with very old 19th century windows, they just look crystal clear because this glass has been oxidized. And so it all, it does not reflect.
Andrew	Ooh, I went, we went to see a house the other day that was built in 1910 and the glass had oxidized and warped. And so it's kind of wavy. It was wavy. It made me sick to look through the windows. And it would have, it was the windows in the master bedroom. And I was like, we can't look at, we can't buy this house.
Everett	So in addition to discovering error codings, I want to talk about, I want to talk about John Williams Trepp for a second. Uh, this is a total deviation. I'm sorry. Do it. So earns the title by, by sort of inheritance, inherits the title of the third Baron of Raleigh, third Baron Raleigh. Raleigh. So this guy is the first person to describe the phenomenon of dynamic soaring in seabirds. There's this place in between pressure zones where birds and gliders can use the band in between the pressure zone to soar. Oh yeah. He discovers this. He observes this. He's the first to observe and sort of notice this thing. They're using these bands in between the pressure zones.
Andrew	Because he's watching them gain altitude and lose altitude and without flapping their wings and still move forward.
Everett	Okay. He develops the duplex theory of human sound, meaning how humans process and localize based on sound. He develops this theory, so sound, bird soaring. These things are both very, very important discoveries, although they seem a little benign.
Andrew	They're super important.
Everett	He writes a book that still gets used by musicians today about acoustics. That's sort of an aside, that's an extra, a throw in.
Andrew	Yeah, just on the side, like as a side hustle. He's like, let me talk to you about acoustics.
Everett	In 1904, he wins the Nobel Prize for physics for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases, quote unquote, most important gases, and for literally discovering argon.
Andrew	And this man died at 22.
Everett	Argon is the third most abundant gas on earth. He literally discovers, before he discovers it, it had been previously sort of theorized by Henry Cavendish, but this man literally discovers argon. Nobel Prize. And add to that, he discovered AR coding.
Andrew	M is one of the most important people in neurology.
Everett	And this is, this guy is actually, I'm giving you the highlights, but there's so much more shit here. I've never heard of this dude. And I think maybe one of the most important physicists that ever lived.
Andrew	Anyway. I feel like school, public schools specifically, should focus more on Nobel laureates and their accomplishments.
Everett	Perhaps, perhaps. Okay, so it first gets really used industrially in camera lenses, and then moves to glasses, and then optics, and then eventually finds its way to watches with these wonderful sapphire crystals. AR coatings, they're applied with physical vapor deposition. Holy shit. Which is PVD. So an AR coating is a PVD coating.
Unknown	Mm-hmm.
Everett	When we talk about PVD, we're always talking about black on steel. AR coating's also PVD.
Andrew	Clear on clear.
Everett	There's a couple ways to do this. There's double-sided, both sides, double AR coating. That's on the inside and the outside.
Andrew	Mm-hmm. Top and bottom for you, Layman.
Everett	There is some distinct advantages to a double AR coating. Yeah. It's significantly clearer.
Andrew	Can I tell you why?
Everett	Please.
Andrew	Were you going to tell me why?
Everett	No, I want you to tell me why.
Andrew	So, AR coatings are designed and applied at exactly one quarter light wavelength.
Unknown	Say what?
Andrew	I don't know how you measure the wavelength of a light. And then apply a material to be exactly one quarter of it. But they do it. So when you apply a coating by way of physical vapor deposition, by way of PVD to the inside and to the outside, you're getting two medium transitions, which reflect light. You're getting the medium transition from air to the top of the coating. And the medium transition from the top of the coating to the second coating.
Everett	That's what we call in the military, a force multiplier. Yes.
Andrew	So you get these two light reflections.
Unknown	Boing!
Andrew	Back out and away from the dial of your watch.
Everett	Withing, withing a significantly higher function than two times.
Andrew	But here's the crazy thing. Because of the thickness of that coating, it forces that reflection to be a exact opposite of itself. So those two, those reflections, as they emerge, those light waves cancel each other's energy as they are distributed away from the dial of your watch.
Everett	We need a soundboard button that's Maximus screaming. Are you not entertained?
Andrew	And I learned this today from Mark at Long Island Watch. Watch the YouTube video, Watch and Learn number 76, where he talks about this phenomena. He draws it out and everything. And he's wearing his sweet white cotton gloves with the right thumb. With that Islander logo.
Everett	Islander logo. It'll be in the show notes, y'all.
Andrew	It will be. And he explained it in such a way that I understood it. I was like, Mark, You beautiful bastard. You beautiful bastard, Mark. Thank you. So I am now explaining it to you not as well as he did because he had graphics. His graphics are very helpful. And he draws it out. And it I was like, oh, oh, duh, science. So that's why they cancel out. Continue.
Everett	So. You get the significantly better anti-reflective quality, but as as we've alluded to earlier and as you might know, AR coating is not as scratch resistant as Sapphire. It is not a nine on the Mohs scale or a 2300 on the Vickers scale. It is less than that.
Andrew	Significantly.
Everett	And so when you put, and so typically these AR coatings, they're made up of a titanium and zirconium oxide combination. Which are pretty fucking hard. Which are hard. When they put them on the outside, they also add a silicone dioxide, which is also very hard. Um, but it still doesn't quite get there. So, uh, what we see is many, many, many manufacturers of, of sapphire crystals only including it on the, on the underside, which means you get a little bit less reflection, but also significantly less, you get a little less AR function, but, but also significantly better scratch resistance.
Andrew	And with the, with the softness of that AR coating, you've got your increased scratch resistance and then you might as well go mineral crystal because you're going to get the scratches from normal day-to-day. I mean, PBD stuff's hard, but it's going to be a little bit harder than your mineral crystal, not nearly as hard as your sapphire. So you're going to perceive scratches on your sapphire crystal, and you're going to see those imperfections because they're going to be very noticeable, but they're not actually going to be scratches in your sapphire.
Everett	Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, Andrew, any other questions? Yes, Everett, but what does it do?
Andrew	Yeah, tell me what does it do?
Everett	And AR coding, what it actually does is it creates optical interference. So instead of taking something away, it actually interferes with the thing. So it operates very, very, very similar to noise canceling headphones.
Andrew	But noise is noise and light is light. That seems different.
Everett	It warps incoming light and it cancels the glare wavelengths. Literally that's what it does. It warps the incoming light and cancels the wavelengths on the way out. It interferes with it and basically mutes it. It's like putting egg crate on your wall, which we should do in here.
Andrew	Or towels. We used towels for a while.
Everett	Beach towels. Yeah. Kim made me take them down eventually. Because you guys went to the beach. So that's a perfectly imperfect, I think, explanation of what it does. Tons of stuff you can do with AR coatings. They ostensibly can fight fingerprints. They can make glass more hydrophobic.
Andrew	As if glass needs to be more hydrophobic.
Everett	They have anti-static properties in certain instances. They can provide UV protection. They can block blue lights. But really, with watches, we're talking about anti-glare and sometimes scratches.
Andrew	So are you telling me that the blue light cancelling glasses are just a piece of glass with a blue light AR coating on them? Almost certainly, yes.
Everett	Okay, yeah. How about we talk about some alternatives to sapphire glass. Because there are a number. There's obviously mineral crystal. Yeah. And I think everybody I've ever talked to about this agrees. Mineral crystal is the red-headed stepchild. There's no really good reason to use it except for cost savings. Yeah, but then why aren't you just using your acrylic? Perhaps, yes. And I think that there's some function, but mineral crystal scratches. breaks. It does not do either of the things that acrylic or Sapphire do well. It doesn't do either of those things all that well. It is a sort of middle ground that winds up being kind of lame.
Andrew	It misses on all the things that you want it to improve on and it hits on all the things that you don't care about.
Everett	That's right. But it is economically a very good option. which is why we see lots of Japanese brands still today using forms of mineral glass. Seiko famously uses hardlix, which is a slightly hardened mineral glass.
Andrew	It's like, it's not quite the redheaded stepchild. It's, it's like his, his better spouse.
Everett	There's also flame fusion glass, which is, uh, well, let's come back to flame fusion. There's safflex, right? Which is Seiko's fused, laminated, it's essentially a laminate of sapphire on top of a mineral crystal. And there's something we said for that. It's got scratch resistance. The problem with sapflex is because of the thinness of the sapphire layer and because of the way it's applied, laminated, it can tend to chip. So you get this very thin, highly shattered prone material in a thin layer.
Andrew	Which is why you see your phone screens break. It's a very similar process. Yes, exactly.
Everett	Then there's flame fusion crystals. This is used primarily by Invicta, as far as I know. And it's similar to Saflex, except that the way they apply it, they apply it with more pressure, more heat. And so the two pieces actually fuse such that they're no longer really a laminate. It's more of a weld. And so it's got a lot of the properties of Sapphire because that outer coating is very scratch resistant. It's also got a little bit more shatter resistance. And when we're talking about Vickers scale, probably about 2000 on the Vickers scale versus 2300. So it's up there. It's pretty good. I think it's surprising we're not seeing more folks use this.
Andrew	There's also... I imagine that the process is still a little cost prohibitive. Relative to using sapphire or mineral crystal, I'd guess that it's probably more expensive than sapphire, unless you have the process already in-house.
Everett	I think it can be cheaper, but not much cheaper. There's Kristerna, which is used by Sterling and Sterling's subsidiary, Acropos. I don't know very much about that. I get the feeling that it's kind of like in between Flame Fusion and Hardlex. probably some sort of flame fused hardened sapphire derivative of mineral glass. Mineral glass with sapphire application. Um, I also think that all of these things tend to be just probably not quite as good as either of the alternatives.
Andrew	That's right. It will have none of the properties you like that warmth, that true flex, that ability to easy buff out of, mineral and acrylic and you're not getting a true sapphire experience. That's right.
Everett	I think in particular probably the flame fusion, the Invicta version is, is the best out of all of those. That would, that's, that's my understanding. That's my guess as well.
Andrew	I didn't even, I, you know, I'd have to look at some, some more Invicta dials to see if it had, if, if any of them carry the warmth that you'd get out of a, out of mineral with, all the benefits of sapphire.
Everett	You feel like mineral gives you gives you a warmth?
Andrew	A little bit more. So one of the things in in Watch and Learn number 76 you see. Thanks Mark. Thanks man. Like you made this episode possible. He's he holds a non-coated crystal next to a coated crystal and inside and outside top and bottom coated crystal. And side by side it's very apparent which is which. One is completely clear, just a sheet of clear glass. And the other has some, it's just a touch more opaque. And you don't notice it unless they're side by side. And that's, I think what he alluded to is why Marathon doesn't use coated crystals, because it can negatively impact legibility.
Everett	Yeah, that's right. I mean, sometimes, you know, you can even see it in photographs. I think people love that blue tint that is common for AR coatings.
Andrew	And there's plenty of other colors available in AR coatings. You can get an infused AR coating of anything. Purple, red, green. And you've got the blue on your, or you had at least, the blue on your SNK, and it was amazing. Amazing, yeah. Yeah, it was just terrific. But it does impede your the readability to some extent. You're not necessarily going to get reflection. And I think once you get into domed crystals, then you start really fucking with it. The true value of AR comes in flat crystals where light refraction is uniform. In a domed crystal, the AR coding, the true benefit is the color infusion. Because lights were reflecting in every direction coming off of a domed sapphire. Lots of lights. In every direction. And it changes just based on minuscule movements. Very different than a flat surface. So, yeah, there is some impediment to light transmission in that. Long answer. Don't fully remember the question.
Everett	Well, I think we've done it, dude. Yeah. Anything you wanna add about Sapphire Crystals? Because my head's all full.
Andrew	Yeah, man, the amount of geology that I read today, and over the last week. Geology. Yeah, my wife was like, why do you look so tired? You never look this tired when you're working on an episode. I'm like, well, because this is hard shit. I'm just trying to understand a Mohs scale and a Vickers scale. gem hardness. I don't care about that.
Everett	Gem hardness. Yeah. I mean, super interesting though, right? If nothing else, we were introduced to John William Strutt. Yeah. J.W. Slutt, man, he was, he was the shit. The most impressive man that you've never heard of.
Andrew	Yeah. Died at 22. I think probably we're going to hear- Didn't die at 22, just to be clear. I don't know when he died, but- He was very old.
Everett	Probably 60s. I think we're going to hear from like, all 15 of our listeners about how everybody knows about Jadovia Slut. Probably.
Andrew	And we were the assholes. Just like usual.
Everett	Andrew, other things. What you got?
Andrew	I got a good one. So if any of you are like me, and I'm sure you are, you are usually behind the game when it comes to holiday cards. We did send some this year. I'm sure you didn't get one. I'm not sorry. Unless you did. And unless you did. And I'm not sorry because they're very expensive. This is the first year I think we've sent out Christmas cards in many because it's like by the time you need to send them, you don't even have the fucking picture taken. So for those of you who are like me and use and have to send thank you cards and are just kind of mad about it because you're sending thank you cards to people who sent your children toys with air quotes, some assembly required, six D cell batteries, two nine volts and 24 triple A's that they will use three times and 74 screws that they'll use three times with those three times make you want to die. So if you're like me and you got some of those things and you want to send a spiteful Christmas card to just be like, suck it, Susan, thank you for this fucking miserable piece of trash that my children love and makes me want to die.
Everett	I really hope Susan isn't listening.
Andrew	I have no relatives named Susan. Good. I have it for you. I have the, the pinnacle, the mantle piece of spiteful thank you letters. It is a letter stamp and wax kit because there's nothing that makes you feel worse about not sending a Christmas card to somebody than receiving a Christmas card from somebody who has taken the time to hand seal with wax and stamp their envelope to you. And I was always like, I never got one of those and just was prompted to go to the Amazon to be like, you know what, fuck you, Karen. I'm not gonna be, I'm not gonna be one-upped by you anymore. Now, you don't have to be one-upped by her anymore. So on the Amazon, I think I spent, all said and done, $40 to get a stamp. a monogrammed with my initials stamp for my letters, and then a wax kit with all variety of colors. You just light the wick, you pour the wax on, and you stamp your envelope closed. And that is how you can thank Karen for sending you that battery-eating monstrosity that is now in your living room.
Everett	I thought it was Susan.
Andrew	No, Susan is the other one. Karen's the one who sent you that shit, and she sucks. And everyone's got a Karen who sent them, or sent their young children that thing that they then had to assemble themselves and fill with batteries remove from fire alarm, like from your smoke detectors, batteries. Also, if you don't want to just be spiteful, it's really nice to get a letter that's sealed with wax.
Everett	In addition to just being nasty, it's kind of classy and fucking cool.
Andrew	Yeah, you can get them with all variety of things. I think I paid $17-ish for the one that I bought on Amazon with just my initial. Stamp it. And then the wax kit, because the one I bought didn't come with a wax kit, though it looked like it did. So I had to buy a wax kit. It's just, it's a nice little touch. You can get them with all variety of things. Family crests, initials. I saw some folks on Etsy who do the custom, like, Andrew and Sam, Kim and Ev. Nonsense. That's not for me. Just my initial. Stamp it.
Everett	I like it. I wish I could get one. Do you just get an R or do you... I got an R, yeah.
Andrew	I would like to have gotten the middle finger, but the R is what was available, so... I think a middle finger is the way to go. They just weren't available. I might go... I might get one of the really nice one, like hand churned, full brass.
Everett	A signet ring, a middle finger signet ring.
Andrew	Oh, that... I might find somebody to buy me a... Or to make me a middle finger signet ring and just... Very cool. Yeah. So yeah, 40 bucks ish on Amazon. Just, just look up letter sealing wax stamp and you're going to be amazed by the amount of options. All manner of colors. And I, that's how we're sealing all of our thank you cards to the Karens of the world this year who sent us battery eating monstrosities.
Everett	I've got another thing. Do me. You know how when you have baking sheets, they're always like mismatched. They don't nest. Yeah. have bends in them, you use them too long. Oh, I don't have a single flat baking sheet in my house. Right. So this sounds like an advertisement. It sounds like a commercial break. I don't.
Andrew	I can hear them in the oven every time they go in.
Everett	So, you know, being in the restaurant industry, which we both were for many years, I always remember the half sheets and the and the full sheets, the baking sheets with the sort of three quarter inch lip on the edge They get used, they nest really well. You can get a stack of like 10 of them. For like probably $4. You know, and they just nest really well. You know, you see them, they're consistent, they look the same, they fit together, they're standard sizes. I discovered that Cash & Carry, which is our sort of... Restaurant Supply Co.
Andrew	slash Poor People Costco.
Everett	That's right. You can go in, they've got, you know, giant containers of seasoning, and they've got aluminum... 25-gallon jugs of soy sauce. They do have that. Yeah, they've got like the five-gallon buckets of soy sauce. But they carry all sorts of things that you are going to use in a commercial kitchen. So great nonstick pans, but they carry baking sheets, commercial baking sheets. It's a rolled aluminum. So like Nordicware. Nordicware is the sort of pinnacle, but you don't need to spend Nordicware money. Cause nor is not expensive, but nobody treats their baking sheets. Well, that's right. So they're, they're usually like six or seven bucks. I bought a handful of half sheets recently, but that's not my other thing for this week because I bought these half sheets, put them in the cabinet. I love them. We use them all the time. I met cash and carry and I've been meaning to pick up quarter sheets for a while. So a full sheet is really too big to fit in a home oven. It's for a commercial oven. Yeah. So most people use half sheets or something like a half sheet at home. A quarter sheet, as you might imagine, is exactly half of a half sheet. What? Right? Go figure. And picked up a couple of these recently, and it is the most used kitchen thing in my house right now.
Andrew	What's the size, like relative size conversion to quarter sheet versus inches, like American?
Everett	Yeah, gosh, I don't know. I would say it's probably about 10 by 18. I am sure I could look it up. But if you imagine just a normal baking sheet, cookie sheet, it's probably just a little bit more than half of that. So it's a rectangular sort of single or two meal size baking sheet. They're attractive, at least when they're new. And certainly even after they start to patina, they still look good. So you can use them for kind of an industrial presentation look. But they're just convenient, man. We've been using these for everything, and especially around Thanksgiving. I was like, gosh, we need two or three more of these things, because you can stack appetizers on them.
Andrew	Because what I use for Thanksgiving, I buy the disposable aluminum one-use pans, and all the holiday cooking just goes in those disposables, and then I throw everything away.
Everett	Well, so the thing is they don't have a a super high lip. I mean, certainly you can get them with a higher lip, but the standard ones are a lower lip, you know, three quarters of an inch lip. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. It's not a casserole dish, but certainly you can put appetizers in them. But, you know, just even like for weekday cooking, you know, reheating food. For people who don't have microwaves. I feel like this is a little bit of a boring other thing, and it probably sounds that way, but
Andrew	Having functional cookie sheets that don't boing every time you put them in the oven, there's some value in that. I'll be going to cash and carry this week, because I need new ones. I piss and moan about the fact that none of my sheets cook, none of my sheets nest together.
Everett	Bring 40 bucks, get three half sheets, three quarter sheets, and just be happy using quarter sheets. It's totally, Kim commented the other day, even my wife, who's sort of not big in the kitchen and doesn't really care about kitchen stuff. She's like, these things are so fucking cool. She probably didn't use the F word because she doesn't use the F word.
Andrew	If she had used the F word, that would, that would be how you knew. Like, yes, I did it.
Everett	But yeah, quarter sheets, man. America. That's it. Andrew, what else do you got before we go for the day?
Unknown	I don't have anything else.
Andrew	I'm out of things. I'm out of things. I was only told to bring one other thing. And you brought it. I brung it.
Everett	Hey, thanks guys for joining us for this episode of 40 in 20 watch clicker podcast. Check us out on Instagram at 40 and 20, also at WatchClicker. If you want to check out all of our articles, reviews, and even every single episode of the podcast ever, you can do so at WatchClicker.com. And if you want to support us, and gosh, darn it, we really, really love it when you support us. Sure do. You can support us at Patreon.com slash 40 and 20. That's where we get all our money for hardware, hosting fees, etc. And don't forget to tune back in next Thursday for another hour of watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like.