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Thanks for bringing this post to life again with this link to Unitednuclear fluorescent paints. These are really no different than the others such as Luminova or the ones sold by Ranfft. Sorry George to be so late with a reply. The only radioactivity in everything that has been mentioned in this post is the very old residual radium paint on the dial and hands of vintage watches. The radium is still active but not the fluorescent material that was destroyed long ago by the radiation.. If a thin layer of paint such as Luminova is applied over the old dial numbers or hands then it will glow because of the radium underneath, and this glow will be permanent lasting longer than the short-lived glow from exposure to light or ultra-violet rays (sunshine). This short-lived glow is phosphorescence caused by light, whereas the radium induced glow is usually called fluorescence. In Tritium fluorescent watches (marked with a T on the dial) the radioactivity is from the Tritium gas that is contained together with the fluorescent material in glass micro-spheres. The radioactivity emitted by Tritium is low energy (penetrating power) and so it does not pass through the glass. If the glass spheres are ground down by accident the Tritium gas would just fly away presenting no hazard.

My wild guess is that it's lume. It's interesting dial in that they printed the outline of the numbers. This would allow somebody to hand paint the luminescent material on and know where to do it. It'd be interesting to knowing the time frame that the dial and/or watch was made. I'm guessing because it says the word waterproof we can narrow it down for that. Finding a modern luminescent material that's darkening colors going to be interesting. Then because this is a holder luminescent material it's probably dark because it's radium based. But you need a Geiger counter to verify that.

Thanks. I do have another 24 Jewel incabloc. Btw, this watch has a radioactive radium dial.

I recently bought a few old cheap watches to work on and I believe some of them have radium on the dial and hands. Yesterday I accidentally touched the dial with my fingers and opened up the others to inspect them.. Should I be worried? Should I not work on watches with radium on them?

Wondering what everyone’s method/material is for color matching very old lume on watch hands. I don’t want it to glow, just refill the hour hand to match the old minute hand, as the radium “paint” is gone from the hour hand.

Never touching radium dial might be tough to do if you're in watch repair. There may be a general perception that radium was discontinued a long time ago and is not really an issue today. I have some links below the talk about radium and when it was discontinued notice it wasn’t that long ago. Then watchmakers have a habit of accumulating things like hand assortments that look brand-new filled with radium. Or even things like the wax kits made for fixing the hands can be radioactive. Then for your watch I agree with everyone else there doesn't appear to be anything that looks like florescent material of any type.. https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/radioluminescent/radioluminescentinfo.htm http://www3.epa.gov/radtown/antiques.html http://elginwatches.org/help/luminous_dials.html

Sorry for the delayed response everyone! Thanks so much for all the information!! Haha yankeedog and andyhull, I will do my best to resist the urge to lick the dial. I have made it habit to use finger cots at all times when taking down or assembling a watch. I will maybe add a mask when dealing with potential radium dials to be on the safe side. So as far as cleaning the movement, is there any precautions needed there as far as pre cleaning any potential radium dust from the dial, I don’t really want anything like that in my cleaning solutions, or am I being to paranoid?

Besides being continuously irradiated unnecessarily, my primary worry was accidental ingestion of the radium itself. Here's the process I used on the hands, as presented by the world famous Nekkid Watchmaker:

I do so with the question " Should I worry about radium? " and the guy always buys a gieger counter on ebay, handy for checking neighbours blood pressure with. Another one, " which watch are you wearing today" how about yesterday? and always a timex shown which someone else has already throw up on.

The correct textbook answer is to treat everything as contaminated until proven otherwise. Radium based lume paint doesn't normally turn into a dust but it can flake off. It won't be in the air unless you do something to put it there such as using an air duster. A meter also is very unlikely to pick up dust in the air unless it lands on it. To test for particulates we use a filter sampler that pulls 1m^3 of air through a filter than we then check. Here's a video I made that has a demonstration of a meter and the inverse square law. Mazur PRM 9000 I've never dealt with radium in watches as I really have no clue how to work on a watch right now. My experience is with the radium lume on aircraft gauges.

Radium has a half life of around 1600 years and undergoes alpha decay. Since the half-life is so long, the amount of radioactive material painted on the watch face is pretty much the same regardless of how long ago the watch was manufactured. Alpha decay is quite dangerous but only especially so if the radioactive isotope is able to enter your body via ingestion or inhalation (alpha particles can generally be stopped with a shield as thin as a piece of paper). Tritium is a bit different. The half life of tritium is around 12-13 years and it undergoes beta decay. While beta particles can pass through thicker shielding, the half life of tritium means that a watch produced in 1972 has much less radioactive material on it than when it was originally sold. As a general rule I remove the dial and hands of radium/tritium watches while wearing nitrile gloves and place them in a secure location. The gloves are then disposed of and I wash my hands. Not much more than that should be required when servicing older radium/tritium watches. If you want to be extra careful you can purchase a dosimeter fairly cheaply to check for contamination of your workspace- I did just that and confirmed that I wasn't spreading radioactive material around.

Just FYI, I picked up an FTLab headphone jack geiger counter, I can't vouch for it's accuracy, but it is picking up significant counts for the watches I own I know to have radium lume, and little to no counts for those I know/hoped to not have radium lume. Very important to use it with your data and wifi disabled, was picking up some worrying levels of radiation before I copped this. Almost set a match to the place!

There was a discussion recently here on radium do a search and see if you can find it. The problem with radium is it burns out the phosphorus relatively fast it is still radioactive for a very long time and depending upon how much you have it's not good for you. Then military dials and hands tended to be much much more radioactive than the civilian stuff.

Welcome aboard! Being a submariner you are already familiar with two things: water-tightness integrity and radiation. So, why not to start working on waterproof watches with radium 226 dial and hands? Dolphin Code 35

Hello everyone, I'm not sure if this has already been discussed and I do not know if I am in the right place to send my post but I put it here and free to modos or admins to delete it or move it. Considering that on a lot of forum there are amateurs old or vintage watches, and that what is put on the dials and needles is dangerous (Tritium and Radium), then, is the LumiNova dangerous? The text below says it. What is LumiNova? LumiNova®, also known as "lume", is a luminescent substance that allows you to read the time in the dark. Functioning as a kind of "light battery", it stores light and then restores it in low light conditions. Contrary to popular belief, LumiNova® is non-radioactive and non-toxic. It contains neither radium nor tritium nor any other radioactive product. The LumiNova® is mainly used by the watch industry, but it is also used in other applications, such as security markings, or in aviation. It was invented and developed by the Japanese company NEMOTO & CO. LTD, a world leader in photoluminescent pigments. The Super-Luminova® is produced by Swiss RC Tritec AG. This product, of a quality to date unmatched, is used by all the major brands of watches on the planet. Manufactured from strontium aluminate, LumiNova® is an inert product, which presents no danger. It is both much more efficient than zinc sulphite products, and infinitely safer than old radioactive products such as radium or tritium.

1 million years = 31556952000000 seconds (3.155 x 10^13 seconds) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radioactive_nuclides_by_half-life Radium 226 has a half life of 50x10^9 seconds or around 1,600 years .. so 1 million years will probably make the lume on those hands safe enough to spread on your toast. Having said that, the radioactivity is relatively low level, so providing you don't actually intend spreading the lume on your toast, and it will remain in the watch, and that the watch is not worn daily, for may years, then its probably not worth worrying about. Most of the activity is absorbed by the dial and case. A small amount of gamma might make it through the case to you, and a little more might make it through the crystal, but not enough to loose any sleep over. An international flight, or a tooth x-ray, or even a days worth of bright sunshine will do more damage. A banana a day would probably be similarly dangerous ( as wearing the watch, not eating it obviously, the watch would be a choke hazard).

For vintage watches that the hands may have radium lume on them and they are not painted I just drop them into a small jar of acetone and let it dissolve the lume. I then remove the hands and tip the acetone (about 20mills only)into my jar of spent cleaning fluid which is left in the corner of my shed to evaporate down and then the heavier parts like turps that dont evaporate are stored in a container to go to my local council recycler that takes oil and paint thinners. The little amount of radium in it is of no risk as I don't touch that many old watches and it means I don't have to worry about dust coming up from the hands when I remove the old lume. I do take care even with the movement and case and ensure I wash my hands after dismantling them for cleaning and usually wear finger cots too.

Be aware that even if the dial no longer glows, it is still probably radioactive, since the half life of Radium is around 1600 years, and other transuranic elements are probably present with similar or longer half lives. The hazard is relatively low, but you should still take care. If removing old lume, wear gloves, and a mask, and keep the old lume in a paste form by using some form of barrier material, water, while it may leave marks is probably OK. Something oil based may be better, and any solvent that evaporates rapidly may transport the particles into the air. The amount of material involved is pretty small, and the radioactivity present in a single watch dial is not a huge amount, but it should be treated with respect to avoid ingesting it. Skin contact, while ill advised is less hazardous, if you do get it on your skin, wash it off with plenty of water and soap or hand cleaner. In this sense, it is similar to things like asbestos, lead and mercury, all of which you are likely to encounter in the environment naturally, and all of which present a small, but not insignificant environmental hazard. There is an interesting article on Wikipedia -> here <- particularly the section on safety. The hazard is greater when the material is on a more industrial scale. This article might be of interest in that respect. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-34862223 In summary, treat with respect, but don't get too paranoid, just exercise suitable caution. Slightly off topic. If you are interested in detecting radium and other radioactive particles, you can obviously buy a suitable detector, or if you like a challenge, you can build your own, using a geiger tube, or even a pin diode. Google keywords "open source geiger counter." or "pin diode radiation detector" I have a bunch of old pin diode based dosimeters in my junk pile, which I intend to convert into counters when I get a bit of spare time. See here for more -> http://www.stm32duino.com/viewtopic.php?t=3322

Radium like asbestos needs to be treated with respect, but both seem to garner a lot of fear mongering. I dabble in antique radio restoration and a lot of radios used asbestos cloth sheets for heat control. the subject of what to do comes up a lot.just like the subject of radioactive paint from days gone by. With asbestos as with the paint, if you leave it alone there is no risk. Only if you start cutting grinding or scraping will you release particles into the air. That is the hazard. With asbestos in radios just leave it alone. or if you feel strongly about it you can spray it with water remove it to a plastic bag seal the bag and be done with it. As clockboy states finger cots a dust mask and store in a sealed container and all is good. If you are not sure if the watch you are working on is radioactive and you do not wish to assume the risk, what little there is, while taking the proper precautions, then pass such work on to some one else. For me, i will probably never work on a radium watch. But if I do, at least I have a clear understanding of what I am up against and how to handle the situation to minimize the risk to myself and others around me. That is the beauty of forums like this with learned members, being informed goes a long way to being safe. Thanks for posting and the heads up... Ron

Thanks for the replies they are much appreciated - I did wonder about the main spring but as the dial is not in great condition I don't intend to turn this into a working watch it is not that important. I have though made some progress in the last 3 or 4 hours, the position and orientation of the main central gear is obvious, I think it is for the minute hand - one of the gears in the train has an extended shaft so this goes in the position for the seconds sub dial so the third gear must go in between - the last position can only be for the escapement wheel, it took a while to work out which way up the escapement wheel and middle gear went and after a 30-40min struggle the top bridge finally dropped on and the gears all meshed, after spending some time working out which way to install the spring and spring winding arbor into the barrel, I found that I couldn't juggle the main spring barrel into place and should have installed the main spring barrel first. I guessing there are plenty of forum members that have been there and done that. I'm at the stage where the gear train is assembled, main spring and the two gears that go with it are on and the pawl that holds the main spring in tension is in place, but I can't find a spring for the pawl, there is a very small bit of bent wire only a few mm long - it may be the spring I'll have to study it for a while and see if it will fit. I'll give it a rest for now it's getting late and I don't want to push my luck. There are no identifying marks on the movement - just 15 jewels swiss made, the dial is marked GALA - I suspect it is a radium dial, it does not glow after being in bright sunlight for 10 or so mins. I did spend a whole evening the other day on bidfun-db looking at movements but there is just so many I gave up.

Of course it is still up to the individual to decide but, I usually reply not to "Lick" the dial. From the many times I've seen this question asked the general replies are there is more radioactivity surrounding you each day than there is on the typical dial. So don't be concerned. Even on of biggest horological foes with whom I had many intellectual dialogues with ( a nice way to say we butted heads) actually agreed with me on this one! So I offer you what I have to others. "You get in a Timex 600 ft diver and I'll gladly hold on to it for you until the half life of the radium has halved!" Just some northern New Jersey humor there! "What you got a problem with that?" see I did it again.

I'm no expert in this matter but I think with the quantities involved, the risk should be minimal. As long as common sense is used. Don't flick the old lume off and create a radium cloud. I put a drop to glycerine on the hands to entrap all the particles that may fly off. Work on a clean table top with no clutter. Spread old newspaper if you are really worried. The question is how do you dispose of the rubbish after that? Do you call your local radioactive waste contractor? Do you dump it in your general rubbish? Shhhh.... ?

I've got a few I'm thinking about tinkering around with and I was wondering what my risk of exposure to radium would be.

Hi. Do these late sixties Timex Skindiver watches have radium on their dials? Thanks in advance and take care all

Neat idea. I may borrow some cues from that design. The Canon Powershot A2200 I used runs CHDK, so I can get RAW images form it, and RawTherapee will do the lens correction. It has built in Canon Powershot lens profiles or you can define your own, and it can convert negatives to positives including acceptable orange colour mask removal with different masks predefined, or using the unexposed area round the negative. It also batch processes, so the work flow is actually quite simple. feed the negatives through my widget on top of the lightbox. Click away. Post process in RawTherapee, then do any final tinkering in Gimp or DarkTable. I thought trichloroethylene had completely fallen out of favour. In the past I have used it for PCB cleaning amongst other things, and yes, it is pretty aggressive and somewhat hazardous. Don't drink it while chewing on your radium lumed hands and you should be just fine.