Best Source for Custom Dial?

[RareBird]

I am beginning work on my dream daily: a Jenny Caribbean 400 case with a top grade ETA 2824-2 and a custom dial. Most of my project is relatively straightforward but I'm having some trouble figuring out the best source for a custom dial. I'm thinking something more or less along the lines of a black lacquer 1016 or 1019 dial pad printed with the Caribbean 400 text. It has got to look absolutely factory perfect. To whom should I turn and what might I expect to pay?

 

[rabl253]

So on the DIY side of things there's printing your own dial with an inkjet printer on a piece of sticky paper.

Here's a good video on that by Mark Lovick, the guy who has those watch repair classes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt1nmSqS-Ps&pbjreload=10

Here's a good writeup on that same topic http://www.stefanv.com/watches/making-custom-watch-dials-1.html

I think there are also a couple of threads in the tech section of this forum where people detail their experiments using inkjet printers, but I am not particularly good with RWIs search function so you'll have to find those threads yourself haha



For paying someone else, it seems that helenarou does custom dials though they don't say what techniques they use, and there are these people as well https://selcotime.com/services/custom-dials/ there are also alibaba vendors. The problem you run into of course, is minimum production requirements, nobody wants to do a one-off.

I personally don't trust the quality of an inkjet printer to last 40+ years against UV damage. It might be interesting to do experiments with e.g. a UV light to see how much damage a watch dial will undergo before it begins to degrade for various methods of manufacturing.

Anyways if you do find more information and ultimately choose a route to go on please do update this thread, I (and I'm sure many others) am interested in this topic and hopefully there are some better answers out there. It seems to me that if you're willing to pay a few hundred bucks and use photoshop/illustrator, you should be able to have your own custom dials, without having to do the work yourself. But yeah, I don't know who it is who'll do it.

 

[Nanook65]

I am beginning work on my dream daily: a Jenny Caribbean 400 case with a top grade ETA 2824-2 and a custom dial. Most of my project is relatively straightforward but I'm having some trouble figuring out the best source for a custom dial. I'm thinking something more or less along the lines of a black lacquer 1016 or 1019 dial pad printed with the Caribbean 400 text. It has got to look absolutely factory perfect. To whom should I turn and what might I expect to pay?

look on the vintage area. There are some guys that make dials and are really good at it. Roughly $100 ish