Non-luminous re-lume

[mrkrsl]

It’s time to spritz my Seamaster. I’ll service the movement and do a minor clean of everything else. The challenge I foresee is the crumbling lume on the hands. What should I replace it with? I don’t want empty hands.

This watch is 61 years old, so none of the lume has been active for several half-lives, either on the hands or the dots on the dial. I have some lume compound, but I don’t want to use that. I want to re-lume with non-lume, if that makes sense. Anyone else done this? What should I use with the binder? Chalk?

[mikepilk]

5 minutes ago, mrkrsl said:

This watch is 61 years old, so none of the lume has been active for several half-lives, either on the hands or the dots on the dial. 

By using the phrase 'half-lives', I assume that it is radium? If so, the half life is 1600 years, so it will still be very active. 

It can be removed safely with the hands in water. It looks like there may also be dots of lume on the hour markers.

[mrkrsl]

It's true, it could well be radium. I believe Omega switched from radium to tritium (half life: 12.3 years) in 1962. This watch dates to '62, so I will be cautious. It is crumbling anyway, so it has to go. I will leave the dots on the dial untouched.

[nickelsilver]

4 hours ago, mrkrsl said:

This watch is 61 years old, so none of the lume has been active for several half-lives, either on the hands or the dots on the dial. I have some lume compound, but I don’t want to use that. I want to re-lume with non-lume, if that makes sense. Anyone else done this? What should I use with the binder? Chalk?

 

I've used colored chalk ground up very fine mixed with lacquer to replicate the old lume in some vintage Omegas (like Ranchero). It should be fairly easy on your hands with their thin slot- the big Ranchero hands are a pain finding the right consistency/mix of chalk to lacquer, taking into account contraction and thinning as it dries.

[mikepilk]

I remember reading someone using coffee powder to give a nice vintage brownish colour ! 

[mrkrsl]

33 minutes ago, nickelsilver said:

I've used colored chalk ground up very fine mixed with lacquer to replicate the old lume in some vintage Omegas (like Ranchero). It should be fairly easy on your hands with their thin slot- the big Ranchero hands are a pain finding the right consistency/mix of chalk to lacquer, taking into account contraction and thinning as it dries.

Good to hear you've had success with chalk as that was where my thoughts were going. I will pound the chalk in the pestle and mortar before mixing so it is as fine as I can make it. Thank you. And yes, there's a very slender gap for lume on these hands, so spread shouldn't be too challenging.

[praezis]

You don't have to do without glowing.
I use non-radiating lume (color: nature) and mix to required color with color powder from the artists shop.

l use special laquer, but you can use e.g. clear model paint and mix with above.

Frank

 

[Geotex]

The nice thing about luming hands is that it's easy to practice and perform tests and trial runs because random spare hands are either sitting in our parts bins or cheap to acquire.  I can't say how they will look in 30 years, but I've had good luck simply using "brushing lacquer" from the hardware store as the base, and suspending a lume powder in that to get to the 80/20% settled ratio that is shown on Dr. Ranfft's website in the archived "Luminous Paste" reference section.  Powdered chalk has been discussed in this forum previously in a thread entitled "Color Matching Old Lume." Whatever powder is used should be of a uniform, fine consistency. 

Frank - did you do the numerals on that dial? I like the look of fully-lumed arabic numerals on a black dial, but have wondered how difficult it is to get reasonable results by hand-painting.  

[praezis]

Hi, 
no, I don't lume dials. Just repair missing parts if needed. 

Frank