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Albino GMT - New Sighting!
Greeting fellow watchaholics, this project has been on my plate for so long, I’m so happy to have it completed. I bought the donor dial rep about 18 months ago. It’s a VRF “Oreo” GMT. I have other plans for it as well!
So the first step is removing the black surround hour markers. Standard stuff but it quickly turned into much more work than I expected. The white dial had tiny marker holes so that means drilling bigger holes, and the markers I wanted to use ended up looking rather dingy on the shock white background. So that means re-luming.
I drilled one slightly larger hole for the 6 9 12 markers, this makes it easier to set them and gives some room to pivot them for straightness without going so far that the glue escapes out to the side. The round markers needed bigger holes for the new marker posts, so those were drilled in two stages just to be ultra careful. This is not a difficult task but you have to watch for metal stringers as they can scratch the dial if you let them drag across it.
Next up is re-luming the markers. I stripped out all the old lume with acetone. I tried several different ways of making the lume ultra white including mixing some paint into the lume mix. That didn’t work well, it ended up non-uniform. What worked best was starting with a base coat of Testor’s gloss white enamel mixed with thinner. The thinner makes it run smoothly to all the edges then evaporates out. It’s such a nice result I actually toyed with the notion of adding a few more coats and the hell with the lume, hah!
Top pic is paint fill, bottom pic is lume added
After the lume dries you can very carefully wipe away the excess on the borders with a soft cloth and some ISO alcohol
Then you just use tiny dabs of glue to mount the markers on. I use BSI 30 min slow cure epoxy. After it cures, I go back and drop a dab on the backside of the dial. Then when that cures, I grind off any hardened blobs and sand it all smooth so nothing comes in contact with the datewheel.
Next up, the dial gets a bath. Yes! I discovered this one day while tinkering with a junk Hulk dial. I figured if you can wash a painted car you should be able to wash a painted dial. I’ve done this on many dials since then, including a gen. Obviously do this on a junk dial first, not on a matte dial, and not with water based lume. I use a high quality very soft artist brush and Dawn dishwashing liquid.
Rinse under the faucet, a quick blow dry and it’s immaculate. This is my default dial cleaning method now. Occasionally if you aren’t fast enough with the air puffer, you’ll get a tiny spot or two. Just rinse again, maybe a little extra brushing and blow again.
Finally, we can get to the install
Hands on
And boom, we got an Albino GMT, woohoo!
This is in a ROF case, everything is stock. The insert is paint modded. Here are some pics is different lighting environments.
I’ve often wondered why Rolex won’t make another white dial GMT, it’s such a nice combo.
Thanks for looking!
Greeting fellow watchaholics, this project has been on my plate for so long, I’m so happy to have it completed. I bought the donor dial rep about 18 months ago. It’s a VRF “Oreo” GMT. I have other plans for it as well!
So the first step is removing the black surround hour markers. Standard stuff but it quickly turned into much more work than I expected. The white dial had tiny marker holes so that means drilling bigger holes, and the markers I wanted to use ended up looking rather dingy on the shock white background. So that means re-luming.
I drilled one slightly larger hole for the 6 9 12 markers, this makes it easier to set them and gives some room to pivot them for straightness without going so far that the glue escapes out to the side. The round markers needed bigger holes for the new marker posts, so those were drilled in two stages just to be ultra careful. This is not a difficult task but you have to watch for metal stringers as they can scratch the dial if you let them drag across it.
Next up is re-luming the markers. I stripped out all the old lume with acetone. I tried several different ways of making the lume ultra white including mixing some paint into the lume mix. That didn’t work well, it ended up non-uniform. What worked best was starting with a base coat of Testor’s gloss white enamel mixed with thinner. The thinner makes it run smoothly to all the edges then evaporates out. It’s such a nice result I actually toyed with the notion of adding a few more coats and the hell with the lume, hah!
Top pic is paint fill, bottom pic is lume added
After the lume dries you can very carefully wipe away the excess on the borders with a soft cloth and some ISO alcohol
Then you just use tiny dabs of glue to mount the markers on. I use BSI 30 min slow cure epoxy. After it cures, I go back and drop a dab on the backside of the dial. Then when that cures, I grind off any hardened blobs and sand it all smooth so nothing comes in contact with the datewheel.
Next up, the dial gets a bath. Yes! I discovered this one day while tinkering with a junk Hulk dial. I figured if you can wash a painted car you should be able to wash a painted dial. I’ve done this on many dials since then, including a gen. Obviously do this on a junk dial first, not on a matte dial, and not with water based lume. I use a high quality very soft artist brush and Dawn dishwashing liquid.
Rinse under the faucet, a quick blow dry and it’s immaculate. This is my default dial cleaning method now. Occasionally if you aren’t fast enough with the air puffer, you’ll get a tiny spot or two. Just rinse again, maybe a little extra brushing and blow again.
Finally, we can get to the install
Hands on
And boom, we got an Albino GMT, woohoo!
This is in a ROF case, everything is stock. The insert is paint modded. Here are some pics is different lighting environments.
I’ve often wondered why Rolex won’t make another white dial GMT, it’s such a nice combo.
Thanks for looking!
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