Edge's Guide To Dial Vinatgizing - Subs

[Edge]

Also in the Edge's Guide to Watch Mods thread pinned in the Watch Repair and Upgrade section

So by now I’m sure that most of you have seen my attempts at vintagizing a 1680 dial. I am extremely happy with the results and am very happy with the extremely complimentary comments that have come from the member. Due to some demand I have put together this tutorial as a “How To…”

If you haven’t seen the dial, then there are pics of the finished product at the end of this post.

This is a relatively simple and actually reasonably quick process and really doen’t require that much equipment.

The Gear:

Americana Yellow Ochre Acrylic Paint - ~$5 on the bay

Revell Night Colour - £4.25 from www.modelsforsale.com

1 set of toothpicks - ~$1 from anywhere lol. Tesco for me.

1 x 1680 Hands and Dial (MBW for me)

1 x something to mix the paint/night colour in. I used the pot that my genuine vintage pearls came in.

As with most things I am more than sure that you can use any kind of paint or die with the night colour as long as you mix it to YOUR desired shade/colour it should be fine.

Personally going into this I spoke to the owner of the watch and he really wanted a genuine looking slightly yellow creamy colour which is so often seen on the genuine vintage watches. So I mixed it to that colour, but you can make the tint to any shade you like, make it blue for all I care lol.

Now the procedure:-

Drop a few spots of paint into the pot, the acrylic paint I used was quite think, so I thinned it down with quite a lot of water, but that was merely personal preference and to lighten the colour a little.

Add a reasonable amount of night colour to the other half of the pot (the lid), you won’t need a lot of night colour for this, so just use maybe half a teaspoon of night colour in the pot. I put enough in to give me a light film across the whole of the base of the lid.

Take a toothpick or brush or whatever and add the paint, thinned or not, slowly to the night colour, it will require quite a bit of mixing but that’s cool. Just add as little or a much paint as you want to get your desired colour.

Then comes the time for the application.

What I found most beneficial in doing this was my surprising patience in what I was doing. The temptation is to lather on a full dot worth of the mixture to cover the whole marker then just let it dry. I don’t advise this, as with the paint in the night colour I found that if you use a lot of the mixture, you have very raised and rubbery looking markers, and this was not the look I was going for.

I decided to do it this way…..

Take a toothpick, dip it into the paint twice then gently spot it on a dry surface twice, this gets rid of lots of the excess mixture that you have gathered and leaves you with a little bit on the tip of the toothpick. Then I gently applied this very light film to the marker, covering the whole marker with really small spots of the mixture until it was covered. My mixture was quite light so you could actually barely see the mix on the marker, but once it starts to dry you can really start to see it come up, with the grain and then the glow if you cover it.

I repeated this process for all the markers, due to the circular nature of the hour markers they were relatively easy, however more care need be taken over the 6,9 and 12 markers as the are rectangular and triangular respectively, so have corners.

Because the mixture is quite light in colour the difference between the new tritium look markers and the old white ones isn’t that much so you can get away with missing out a little bit of the markers if you want, as the genuine isn’t perfect by any manner or means.

However I decided to practice and try and get as close to the edge as I could without going over, however the gen’s I have seen have sometimes had tritium almost burst and spill over onto the dial itself so don’t worry too much if you get a little on the dial. It can in fact be removed after it dries, with the toothpick if it bothers you, because the dried mixture is actually still quite malleable.

Anyway, so now you have applied the mix to the dial, which is pretty simple, as you will find out, but now come the hands which are more fiddly.

Hands:-

The hands are quite small and require a bit more finesse. Using the same method as above I tried to apply the mix the first time, and struggled to keep off the metal, but actually found that if you go onto the metal a bit, you can remove it when dried. But again I really wasn’t happy, and decided to remove the whole lot from the hands, so started again, slower and more patiently with very little mix going on at a time, and hey presto much easier and much better results.

So that’s it, just let it dry and there you have it, simple. Put the watch back together and you have completed the vintaging process.

I hope that you find this guide helpful, and please enjoy the few pics of my finished results.

I don’t have pics of the hands, as they are back away in the sealed atmosphere they were being kept in and I can’t be arsed taking them out and taking pics, so make do with the dial lol.

Please feel free to post you comments on the work.

Edge

[ubiquitous]

Excellent write up, Chris! This is what the forum is all about... Sharing ideas and creativity

I agree... Sometimes on genuine dials, the tritium has swelled and hence has expanded over the edges of the original marker. I've seen this on a number of vintage dials, from varying dial makers/watch brands; a result of moisture and humidity I assume.

Anyhow... This is an excellent tutorial! I hope this inspires others to give it a try

Best,

R

[Edge]

Thanks mate means a lot that you approve lol. Without you i would never have tried or been able to do any of the things I have been doing recently so major kudos to you for helping me and sharing information and tips with me, much much appreciated.

A massive thanks also to many other members you know who you are, for helping me along the way.

It is people like R and you other guys that make this such an enjoyable and informational place to be and I am eternally grateful for your help and support.

[Sherrington]

Well done mate. Great post. First time for this one I do believe. You could also try watch oilers instead of toothpicks as they come in various sizes.

[Dutchy]

Amazing! Very good job Chris! The owner of this watch is one lucky bastard

I have a feeling Chris is gonna take this as a job, so everyone, start sending your watches to him!

I especially love how you guide us along the entire process. All of your threads literally explain the ENTIRE process, explaining what to get, how to get it, where to get it, how to use it, what to do if you mess up, its great!

Anyway, in short, very well done once again, as always, two thumbs up!

[alligoat]

Thanks Chris, that Revel Night Color looks like a better deal than the luminova that I got from Ofrei last month for a touch-up project on a dial. Can't wait to get after that DRSD dial that's too yellow.

[Edge]

No problem mate and good luck with the dial.

Thanks to everyone for the kind words.

If anyone needs further details or any help in this regard then please don't hesitate to contact me and I will discuss this further with you.

If anyone wants this look and doesn't want to do it themselves then I may well be open to doing it for you as I have the equipment now, and nothing else to use it on lol.

[Dutchy]

If anyone wants this look and doesn't want to do it themselves then I may well be open to doing it for you as I have the equipment now, and nothing else to use it on lol.

Take advantage of this offer people, while you can .....you see the results.....

[Tribal]

Hey Chris,

great Tutorial and also great result...

I love the creamy color and the grainy Tritiumlook..

I think next i take my time and attempt it a third time...

Fantastic work...

RG Tribal

[Pugwash]

Once more, an excellent post.

[Jetsons]

Terrific write up Chris and the dial is totally killer. I'm not sure that it can get much closer to the gen than this.

You make it sound like its a relatively simple process. I wouldn't mind practicing on a couple of cheap dials beforehand but this certainly looks feasable for us mere mortals, no small thanks to your detailed instructions.

Thank you very much for sharing your techniques. Most excellent of you to do this for us.

Cheers,

Jet

[yt74]

Dug this one up as I have been contemplating this for a while, just one questions: How is the glow from the Revell Night Colour? Any chance of some pics?