Thoughts on painting hands

[spectre6000]

The hands on my daily wear watch are highly polished in such a way that they're highly difficult to see at most angles. For some reason, the manufacturer also neglected to fully lume the hands for other unknown reasons. Clicking through the embedded link back there, you can see that they also went with a yellow/orange (imitation faux antique). I don't particularly care for the faux antique look, but I think they did a really bad job in a good way. It adds color. To fix the visibility of the polished hands and continue the colorful theme, I thought it would be great to get a set of blued pilot hands. The iron oxide is less reflective without being dark, and obviously colorful. I thought this would be easy since it's a 2824. Unfortunately, it looks like watch hands are also subject to an eta style lockdown pretty much everywhere... You can get all manner of generic hands, but the selection is poor and less than exciting. Decent looking pilot hands in appropriate lengths for 2824s are employed by a billion different manufacturers, but I have yet to find one willing to part with a set that don't have a watch attached. Finally, the unusual nature of the dual rotating registers relative to the core time keeping sections of the dial mean I'm dealing with some odd hand lengths. 

It dawned on me that most of the blue hands are painted, not blued. I don't know what material the existing hands are, but I doubt they're steel. They don't need any polishing or anything though, so maybe it would be easy to paint them? I could also fix the missing lume at the same time. Does anyone have any ideas for how this would be done? I'd also take recommendations for sources for hands, but I've pretty much given up on that idea. Thanks!

[Tudor]

Try a gun bluing kit. 

The hands are most likely stainless. Remove the lume and clean surgically clean. Then follow instructions on the bluing kit. Birchwood-Casey is a brand that jumps to mind but I’ve no idea if they’re the best. 

Also bear in mind some of the bluing kits do a blue-black (midnight blue) which may not suit your style. Test on some junk hands first!

[spectre6000]

I have a bottle of chemical bluing solution somewhere, but it's definitely the blacker variety. I hadn't considered that the hands might be stainless; I assumed (based on nothing at all now that I think about it) they were plated brass. Is there a way to tell for sure?

[Tudor]

Scratching the back side should do it...

If they are brass I'd try to get a tinting spray (semi-transparent color) and mist that over the hands.

[Marc]

1 hour ago, Tudor said:

Scratching the back side should do it...

does it for me every time!!!!!!

 

[Tudor]

There you go!

win-win!

[spectre6000]

Any recommendations for a stainless bluing kit that doesn't go black?

[Tudor]

No specific recommendations. Whenever I used it, it was for its intended purpose and the color on that steel is essentially black. 
 

You’d have to experiment. 

[Rafael]

I replied after partially reading the post. My bad 

Edited October 31, 2020 by Rafael

[KOwatch]

I've seen some transparent pigments used for glass and ceramic decoration: apply,dry,bake. Lots of available colours including a range of blues. I've been thinking about trying them out on a dial project, might be something to look at.