Another potential watch build. My 47mm Pilot case and an Athaya dial

[Strodda]

Looks pretty cool the colour it is now

you mean the raw metal? It does have nice tone to it. If you think about it, its kind of just a tone of gray. Ive thought about just wetsanding it and having an unpainted polished dial, but I dont know.

I have a feeling this dial might just sit for a bit because i cant decide what I want to do.

 

[Strodda]

I had a spare junk dial. I stripped the paint, gave it a quick sanding and filled the lettering with some black paint. I wonder if a matte clear coat would stick to the bare metal and what kind of affect it would give.

 

[Strodda]

Im starting to like the idea of no paint even more now.

 

[Strodda]

Here it is

The dial arrived today, 4 days after Athaya shipped.

After all the back and forth about colors, I went with a black on white panda-esque theme. Im still not sure if Im going to or what areas I would fill... but Im considering filling in some areas with lume and some with black paint to give it some more black other than just the lettering/silhouette.

Any ideas are welcome. I want all the cut out areas to be lume, but I also want some black paint in there... obviously I cant have both, so Im kinda stuck.


I primed, and used a satin white paint with a very light spray of a metallic silver, gave it a little texture as you can see... and then a coat of matte clear.

 

[Taze00]

I have really enjoyed reading this thread
Major props for this project!!

I dont know anything about painting or luming dials first hand, my question is... are there any binders that are black to mix with??

 

[Strodda]

I have really enjoyed reading this thread
Major props for this project!!

I dont know anything about painting or luming dials first hand, my question is... are there any binders that are black to mix with??

There arent any black binders that I know of. There is a pigment called "stealth", which is pretty much black, but the glow sucks compared to a typical c1/c3 mixture. I would definitely consider a stealth/c1 combo, give some more glow and a grayish day look... only problem is I dont have any stealth pigment.


Does anyone have a tad they could spare or sell?

 

[Strodda]

OK, so its complete for now. I couldnt decide how I wanted it to be, so I figured out a way to make it temporarily permanent. I put a piece of packaging tape on the back of the dial and trimmed. Then I was able to paint/lume the back of the dial. Gives it a sandwich dial appearance and at the same time, if I change my mind, I just pop the dial off and rip the tape off and start over... no ruining the actual dial.

I knew I wanted more black in the dial because how it looks in the day is more important than the light glow, as difficult as that was for me. Here it is, whatcha think? Would you do more or less lume/black and where?

 

[barth]

Looks really cool !

 

[Taze00]

Awesome dude, looks great!!
The lume at 12,3,6,9 looks almost like a target sight. I like it.
But I also wonder what it would look like with lume on each 5 minute marker.

 

[shelby1501]

Fantastic work mate! I really like this watch.

 

[Strodda]

Awesome dude, looks great!!
The lume at 12,3,6,9 looks almost like a target sight. I like it.
But I also wonder what it would look like with lume on each 5 minute marker.

Yea, I thought about that. It would look great at night but the day look would suffer having a more bland dial. Since I wear it more during the day, I went against my normal ways of luming the hell out of it... and instead chose to go for a nice contrasting day look. Its as close as I'm gonna get to a panda.