Hi guys … some really good news today ...
Members who check that thread from time to time have already read about my « Irish Star » Doxa project I posted here October 2000.
The original Irish Star dial was made for Dr Pete Millar and was quite nice but, IMHO, it looked too much"modern style".
So I decided to redo it, "vintage style" and with a real Irish shamroc, not a 4 leaves clover.
Since then I’ve had too much work at the office and I postponed that project.
But sometimes things catch up with you …
Mid-September I received a PM from the Doxa guy himself … Dr Pete McClean Millar.
For those who didn’t heard about him, Pete Millar has writen books about the Doxa subs, collaborated with the Company and is a(the!) specialist about those divers.
You can check his website here http://www.doxa300t.com/ , his books about Doxas here http://www.thedoxabook.com/ an his last book about the Aquastar here http://www.adiveintotime.com/ ...
I was really honored to read what Dr Millar wrote about the work I had already done on those Doxa dials, saying I had progressed to almost perfection … though I’m still far from it …
We chated about Doxas, divers, dial-making, Oil & Gas industry, etc … and decided that the Irish Star project had to exist « in real ».
First thing I did was to prepare a blank ETA dial plate to the exact dimensions needed to fit in the Doxa Sub 1200T case were it will be … no pics of that step as it’s standard work …
The next step was to select the perfect « Irish » green I would apply on the blank plate.
We agreed that « Mickey Finn’s Irsih Green Apple » was nice
So I painted the dial using the same green, then I applied 2 coats of glossy lacquer
While the final glossy coat was drying, I did a print test on a blank copper ETA dial, just to check that the position of the date window was good enough
Everything looked OK … both for me and Pete, so I went to the print process and got that result
Here we were really close to the end …
But there was still the lume work to do and though the last ones I had done were nice they were not good enough … that one had to be as « close to perfect » as I could do…
I wanted to achieve sharp angles on the white rectangles in daylight and on the lume in darkness …
So I searched for a new method to apply the lume
I searched and finally found the way to proceed … simple and easy, no expensive tools, just steady hands and some imagination …
And today I’m glad to show you the result …
The « Irish Star » is alive and glows in the dark …