trailboss99 said:
H3 is known as Tritium, as far as I know.
No Tritium is the chemical name not a trade name. I seemed to remember that Lumibrite or something like that was a trade name for the stuff. H3 is actualy a grade. It's brighter than T35 and is the mill std for watches. Very rare indeed,
go here:
http://yarchive.net/gun/tritium.html and here:
http://www.kronometric.org/article/lume/ and here:
http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/radioluminescent/radioluminescentinfo.htm for everything you wanted to know about Tritium but were afraid to ask.
Why it's not still available I don't know. Used propperly it's harmless.
Some watches still use it for mill use but not many. At least they don't soak moreing lines in the stuff anymore. The US navy used to :shock:
Col.
Tritium lume is still available, if you can get passed all the export, import, storage and use regulations imposed on it as it's a radioactive element that is used in nuclear fission and so heavily regulated.
Basically use for watch lume is no longer considered a genuine use for it, so getting licensing for watch use is next to impossible unless it's in gaseous form and contained in glass vials and even then is still subject to the same regulations, so very few companies produce them, MB-Microtec (who make Traser products) being the main one.
No watch/dial maker has been manufacturing Tritium painted dials, military or otherwise, since the mid '90's when stocks of the compound ran out. Some of the slow selling 'military' watches from makers like Fortis and Tutima hung around in dealer stock for quite a while, but by now the lume on even these last ones will be noticeably weaker as Tritium for lume has a half life of about 12.5 years and the excitation effect drops off visibly after as few as 4 years.
The T25, T35, T100 etc referred to the maximum level of radiation emitted. That's why Blancpain did the 'No Rad' version of the Fifty Fathoms, to allow use in subs without setting off the radiation detectors.
