As I said the attached image was the one which gave Natas and me the idea of the direction to follow. Until then I only had thought of having the dial relumed and, perhaps, lightly retotuched to stop it from looking so bland and flat. When Natas sent me this pic he had found online we agreed that this would be the way to go. As I have written elesewhere I already had seen pictures of his unbelievable Panerai builds, so I knew that he was the right man for the job, the only slightly worrisome point being that I was not sure about the outcome of translating the result of time and wear from a 45/47mm dial to a 36mm one. Would such an intense patina fit well on a smaller diameter? Would it not look 'overdone' ? I searched for pictures of weathered dials and found some excellent samples of vintage watches with fully patinated dials -some whose diameter was even smaller than that of my 1016- which looked stunning. This reassured me but did not the least prepare me for what Natas would come up with…
Of course, I have not given up already on the original idea of a circa 1970 build with a very clean black dial and white puffy lume, but this is another story…