Omega Seamaster 176.007

[swiss2k]

Greetings everyone!

 

So, yet I find myself with another bought watch, and of course another dilemma. 

 

The seller listed the watch with a couple of pictures that were showing the "overall" condition of the watch, and due to a quite scratched crystal it was hard to say if the dial is OK or not. Well, it looked ok. So I bought it... 

Polishing the crystal reviled that there are some lume dots missing, and some minor (minor?) scratches on the dial. Well they are quite small, but I can not un-see them. 

Now, I sit and think, should I try and repair (or find someone to repair) those scratches, or should just I live the watch as is an do nothing?

 

What do you guys think? 

 

Thank you in advance!

[RichardHarris123]

Others may disagree but I wouldn't attempt it myself, the colour of the paint?  And lume would have to be a  perfect match not to stand out.  If you want to have a go practice on a cheap dial first. 

[swiss2k]

5 minutes ago, RichardHarris123 said:

Others may disagree but I wouldn't attempt it myself, the colour of the paint?  And lume would have to be a  perfect match not to stand out.  If you want to have a go practice on a cheap dial first. 

So you think would be good to repair? 

[rehajm]

It's vintage so part of the enjoyment. Leave alone I say. It's another thing if a dial is completely shot but this is far from it..

A shiny new crystal hides those minor imperfections- lost in the highlight

Edited August 15, 2023 by rehajm

[JohnR725]

 

12 hours ago, swiss2k said:

Now, I sit and think, should I try and repair (or find someone to repair) those scratches, or should just I live the watch as is an do nothing?

repairs such an interesting word when it comes to dials. Fortunately you're not going to sell this watch ever because if you were and you got the dial repaired the price would crash and burn. Diehard collectors do not like things that are repaired or replaced it what everything original. It used to be and I may still exist there are companies that can refinished dials they will entirely stripped him to the base metal no redo everything and providing they have all the right dies to reap prints everything they'll reprint everything and they can actually do a really decent job not sure if they could do this watch it's rather complicated.

As far as repair goes? How exactly are you going to repair the dial? One of the photographs that might be us back of something and maybe we just blow off. The other one I can't tell may be a? Just a warning here anything you do with a painted dial like this you chance of making it worse is much greater than your chance of making it better. So maybe the other spot you might build a gently wipe it with something but you could end up scratching at making it worse.

so basically the word repair a dial doesn't really exist at least as far as removing scratches and other things.

12 hours ago, swiss2k said:

lume dots missing

now for this this can be done. If you know which are doing can change the color and get the colors to match.

A problem I see is whatever the original is I not sure if you build the match that. In other words it's possible you could end up with in daylight it looks fine but at night yours is much more fluorescence than the other ones or the other way around.

 

 

[swiss2k]

@JohnR725 "Fortunately you're not going to sell this watch ever ..." - why? 

"As far as repair goes? How exactly are you going to repair the dial?" - no idea, that's why I opened this discussion.

Regarding the other things you said, it would be better to leave it like that than doing anything and potentially making it worse, is my understanding correct? 

[JohnR725]

49 minutes ago, swiss2k said:

Regarding the other things you said, it would be better to leave it like that than doing anything and potentially making it worse, is my understanding correct? 

I suppose technically we still need to figure out what the problem is.

for instance what exactly is this? the white is printed on but the spots look like they're on top of the surface unless their chips? So there on top of the surface up off of their might remove them or they may make special well basically fancy cotton swabs you maybe would just gently nudge them slowly come off. Providing there actually something on the surface and not in the surface

now for these ones it's hard to tell I think all the white stuff is probably something extra what's on top it may just wipe off or blow off but the others spots just can't tell.

then those images are a pretty high magnification in the sections I snipped out or even bigger. If the white specks would just go away maybe you'd be happy. Traditionally any form of cleaning cleaning products can have undesirable results on the dial. If you had a spare dial to play with but then a few disparate dial you just swap. So traditionally any form of cleaning painted dials has the potential of making things worse.

then we have this. Notice the T stands for Tritium safer than radium but it does present a challenge for someone trying to replace anything that was florescent because ideally they have to use that. I was at a lecture a little while back and is about restoring hands slack she talked about buying hands that use this for the luminescent material salvaging the material in making a new stuff to put on the new hands that they had not recommended for casual use because yes it's still radioactive.

the problem is when you're dealing with a painted surface anything you do will probably make it worse unless it's something external like residue left behind from the fluorescent markers if you're lucky oh just blow off. The problem is if the wife is actually a gouge or something filling it in matching the color would be impossible. Anything you do will probably make it worse. But maybe somebody on the discussion group will tell you some thing that I don't know and fix the problem.

 

 

 

[swiss2k]

@JohnR725 those are actually very small craters(?), so some of the lacquer/paint is missing. If I could blow that off, then again, this would not be a topic. ) Thank you for sharing your knowledge though. 

[markr]

Leave it alone. You would not like the results.

Nice watch BTW.

[Neverenoughwatches]

5 hours ago, swiss2k said:

@JohnR725 those are actually very small craters(?), so some of the lacquer/paint is missing. If I could blow that off, then again, this would not be a topic. ) Thank you for sharing your knowledge though. 

Nah mate don't touch it. Its not just painted, you have a sunburst dial there. No offence  but you dont have a hope in hell of patching that up yourself to improve it. Any pro restoration to the same standard would be very expensive and if you did decide to sell it any serious collector would almost certainly know and walk away from a non original dial. It is what it is and is its history. I love collecting and originality is at the top of my list when considering anything to buy.

[swiss2k]

Thank you everyone for the advice! I guess I will keep it (the dial) as is and just do a service on the movement, and leave it. I do really like it, just such a pity that there is that small dot there. 

 

All the best!