To provide an outer member for a wrist watch and a method for manufacturing the outer member made of titanium or a titanium alloy having a mirror finished surface of high-grade texture with uniformly smooth fine appearance by solving a problem of having difficulty in finishing the wrist watch outer member made of titanium or a titanium alloy into the uniformly smooth fine mirror finished surface although fine appearance and high-grade texture as an arm accessory are required of the wrist watch.

The outer member for the wrist watch is manufactured adopting a manufacturing method having processes for obtaining a hardened layer by imparting compressive residual stress to a polished surface that requires polishing, and polishing the surface of the hardened layer to form a hardened surface layer formed of an unpolished layer of the hardened layer, wherein the thickness of the hardened surface layer formed of the unpolished layer of the hardened layer is 10-250 μm. Shot peening is adopted as a compressive residual stress imparting means for obtaining the hardened layer.