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Dial (face) cleaning?

64americandeluxe
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64americandeluxe
64americandeluxe

My dad's 30-ish year old Seiko has white crud at the 12:00 marker.  I think it is adhesive from an old repair (possibly a crystal repair with the dial still in the case?).  Any thoughts?  Would it be

Bill3
Bill3

Thank everyone who responded to my question about cleaning a watch dial. better What a treasure trove of useful information! I was doubly surprised to get so much good information, especially since t

Graziano
Graziano

Hi there LittleWatchShop ,on that particular dial I would go no further than saliva (enzyme solution ) on a q tip .It will not remove printing and lacquer only dirt and leave it at that. But don't do

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manodeoro WRT Addict

manodeoro

Posted
Posted
On 13/05/2018 at 10:18 AM, Redwood said:

Can the lost lettering/ branding be replaced with water slip transfers printed on a home printer and then apply a thin coat of varnish, or will this look dreadful


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

If you have a really good camera, a really good printer and you are good at using Ilustrator and/or Photoshop ... then it's doable.

 

Take a high definition picture of your dial, without crystal and perfectly front picture of course.

Open it with Photoshop and change the image so that the lettering is the real size and the definition is 4000 ppi.

Then you redesign the lost lettering on a specific layer.

Here you have to mimic the "age" of the remaining lettering cause you want to repair an old dial ... not make a brand new one.

When the design seems OK you print your file (only the layer with lost lettering) on clear decal paper, spray 1 or 2 really thin coats of varnish to protect the ink (unless you have a laser printer).

Then you can cut your decal and transfer it on the dial, trying to perfectly adjust the position.

Let the decal dry for about 24 hours then spray all the dial with a thin coat of varnish, matte or bright depending on the finish you want.

Protect the dial with a glass and let the varnish dry for about 48 hours.

Now you can put your dial on the movement, case everything and enjoy your refurbished watch.

 

If you try that one IMPORTANT thing is you must make you first tests on dials you really dont care about, because at first you could do more damages than improvements.

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frenchie Distinguished Member

frenchie

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Tough call on that one... The issue is the clear coat/lacquer turning yellow. You can usually remove it gently with an ammonia based window cleaner and a q-tip (rinse in lots of water and dry thoroughly when done). BUT, you can also see that the black paint used to mark the minutes is sticking to the lacquer, so removing the lacquer may cause all the black paint to come off as well. Same reason why I'd keep it out of the ultrasonic cleaner: the lacquer is already chipping and the vibrations might cause it to chip even more.

If it were mine, I would leave it alone.

If you decide to go ahead, let us know what you end up doing and take pictures!

Good luck!

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Chopin Super WRT Addict

Chopin

Posted
Posted

I would leave it alone. If you think that's bad you should see some of the dials that I've handled...

Too risky to go ahead with this. Quite possibly the paint will start to come off. Not entirely but it'll turn bad and out of place.

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barkerka New Member

barkerka

Posted
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Hi All,

I am just getting started in the hobby and wondering what the best approach is to cleaning my dirty watch faces on my military watches (A-11 type), some are really faded and stained and some look like the inside of a coal fired boiler.  I recognize they will never look minty fresh, but a little cleaning will help several of them

Just looking for general suggestions /"tricks of the trade" before I do any real damage .. 

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JohnR725 Distinguished Member

JohnR725

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Posted

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.

 

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seikoskx Member

seikoskx

Posted
Posted (edited)

I have this vintage Seiko digital LCD watch from around 1985. The "dial" seems to be very dirty and I'm wondering how I can go about cleaning it. It looks like its mostly dirt and grime. What can I use to clean it? I tried looking around for a NOS dial with no luck...

seiko lcd watch.jpg

Edited by seikoskx
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Dpastl Watch Enthusiast

Dpastl

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Posted

Hello,

I'm working on my AS 341 movement and am trying to clean up the dial.  So far I've been able to polish the numbers by rubbing the face against some paper with a bit of polish on it.  I've also tried using a bit of soap and water as well as isopropyl alcohol, but I'm not able to bring it back to what I would expect is "clean".  Does anyone have any tips or experience with cleaning old watch dials, or what a watch dial like this "should" look like?

Closeups were done with a DLSR, taking an old manual lens and using it backwards.  Makes a great cheap macro lens!  Just make sure to check the mirror won't hit anything and the aperture is as small as possible

Thanks!

 

1668710572_PALDial.thumb.JPG.433f13da670e66e59a9752304a77b156.JPG

IMG_6489.jpg

IMG_6497.jpg

IMG_6499.jpg

IMG_6500.jpg

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