Vintage lume mod?

[Champagnesky]

Hi broz! Ive just bought a standard lume kit from a member and would like to try out some lume work. Is there a way to make the lume more weak and brownish, by for example adding espresso or do i need special colored vintage lume for this?

[Dlf]

Depending on you're binder and thinner.

trail and error

i use a small amount of acrylic paint.

[Nightwatch]

In daylight the Nescafe works well but the lume in the dark will be very grainy with dots.

Like Dlf I´ve been using acrylic paint and it works best. Acrylic white and tiny bits of raw sienna and yellow ochre work well imho (burnt umber is more reddish). A kid´s set is cheap and has 12 or 24 colours.

Nescafé lume (it has blotches if You look close up later covered this with another layer)

acrylic lume, much more crispy (ok, I like lume even on vintage watches, it´s for reading the time)

 

bright acrylic-mix on the Tudor

darker acrylic after previous nescafe on the sub

 

[Mendota Explorer]

Nice work@Nightwatch! Those look amazing. Where do you buy the lume powder and what should we use as the binder? I'm assuming you mix some powder in with a binder and then mix in your color of choice. A member on another forum also recommended adding in a little mineral spirits or white spirits (depending on where you live) because when it evaporates it leaves the lume plots looking dry with that distinctive grainy texture of old tritium lume.

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[Nightwatch]

1 hour ago, Mendota Explorer said:

Nice work@Nightwatch! Those look amazing. Where do you buy the lume powder and what should we use as the binder? I'm assuming you mix some powder in with a binder and then mix in your color of choice. A member on another forum also recommended adding in a little mineral spirits or white spirits (depending on where you live) because when it evaporates it leaves the lume plots looking dry with that distinctive grainy texture of old tritium lume.

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Hi and thanks. This is what I use http://watchlume.com/RELUME-KITS, got the kit with green powder from ebay and did not try the others yet, they also offer white or vintage. It´s easy to mix, bright and long-lasting, cheap, it´s my only kit so I don´t have comparisons if others work better or not but I will stay with this as I´m happy with it (and I use lume for checking time).

For the mixture itself I´m now just using the acrylic and maybe 1 or 2 drops of the binder the kit comes with. While reluming I just add water drop by drop if the original mixture is drying (10 or 15 minutes into the process) or if pausing cover the recipient with tesa film and can use it later to refinish. The acrylic paint itself will produce a consistent grainy texture. 

With this method when it dries the center of the dots will sink in a little and needs a tiny second go at it. Still waiting for an oiler kit I ordered 6 weeks ago to see if I get better results (for a 3 6 9 dial) but it might be lost in the mail. At the moment it´s mainly toothpics.

Other benefits I see is when totally dry (next day)  the acrylic may be slightly sanded or if it went wrong popped off as a dot to try again.