I ran watch bands of every description and discovered that they are very labor intensive unless you simply strip them. Many of them are almost totally stainless components, although some are copper based alloys. On those that are copper based, you can usually dismantle them and discard the stainless, but unless your time is worth very little, I don't recommend that process. The square telescoping type found on women's watches tends to be such ----with stainless springs.
I stripped them in a cyanide bath, using a block of titanium placed on top of a plastic basket filled with bands. The titanium was not in contact with the cyanide, just the deep pile of bands. It's a relatively slow process because you have to dissolve copper and silver along with the gold, but it runs unattended with the exception of the occasional dumping of the basket and refilling in order to insure that there are no spots that are not stripped because of intimate contact with other pieces.
In my case, the cathode was a sheet of 1/8" stainless. The stripped values were then scraped from the cathode by hand, with a singe edge razor. The material stripped from the cathode was processed in nitric acid, then AR. I found them to be a good source of gold, but you must buy them very cheaply.
Harold
