Just wanted to share some work I’ve recently completed. This dial and handset was purchased used and sent to me by a client with the request of making it as good as possible, to then install in a clean 116523.
You can see the poor shape of the dial markers, lume, scratched and bent hands.
First things first tackling the hands.
The best approach in my experience to restore hands in this condition is to first give them a bath in 100% acetone. This will remove the lume, paint & dirt.
With the bare hands we can move onto working out the bends. 18k hands are forgiving, American hands can only take one or two bends at a spot before they snap. Quality of Replica hands for something like this is a crap shoot.
Anyways, to work out the bends I prefer to use two sets of sharpened boxwood tweezers, a 5x loupe & a bright ring light & some grid paper. Think of this like paint-less dent repair. Using the light to asses where the main bend points are, use one set of tweezers to isolate the point before the bend & use the other to gently work it straight, I use the other tweezers at an angle so when I apply pressure the two contact points apply force in opposing directions.
Use the grid paper to asses the straightness.
If done properly you’ll end up with something like this
Next up is polishing the hands, this is something I won’t go into depth here, you can either use a quality staking block with kapton tape, or shellac to secure your hands for polishing, the compounds are personal preference.
After you’ve done a thorough polish, painting is next. For these Daytona hands, testors enamel hobby paint works well, two parts paint to one part thinner. I use an old auto-oiler as my paint brush. This is very similar to reluming, relying on a clean area with surface tension to do the work. Results after polish and paint below
I’ll move onto tackling the dial markers next.
First step is to carefully remove the markers.
To do this you’ll need to use a very fine pick or 3C tweezers. Cover the front of the dial with the single use plastic sheets for hand removal. From the back push out the marker feet & then remove them with boxwood tweezers from the front.
Once you’ve got your loose markers, acetone bath to dissolve any dirt & lume.
Moving on to polishing. This is very tricky. The best approach is to shellac the markers to a block or use a dial blank to “install” the markers securely to then polish them. Photo below is after polishing & reinstalled on the dial.
For reluming dial markers the power to varnish ratio is closer to 5:1, I don’t know the exact parts, this has just something I know what to look for over time. I like to start with equal amounts and adjust until the consistency is ideal.
You can see the poor shape of the dial markers, lume, scratched and bent hands.
First things first tackling the hands.
The best approach in my experience to restore hands in this condition is to first give them a bath in 100% acetone. This will remove the lume, paint & dirt.
With the bare hands we can move onto working out the bends. 18k hands are forgiving, American hands can only take one or two bends at a spot before they snap. Quality of Replica hands for something like this is a crap shoot.
Anyways, to work out the bends I prefer to use two sets of sharpened boxwood tweezers, a 5x loupe & a bright ring light & some grid paper. Think of this like paint-less dent repair. Using the light to asses where the main bend points are, use one set of tweezers to isolate the point before the bend & use the other to gently work it straight, I use the other tweezers at an angle so when I apply pressure the two contact points apply force in opposing directions.
Use the grid paper to asses the straightness.
If done properly you’ll end up with something like this
Next up is polishing the hands, this is something I won’t go into depth here, you can either use a quality staking block with kapton tape, or shellac to secure your hands for polishing, the compounds are personal preference.
After you’ve done a thorough polish, painting is next. For these Daytona hands, testors enamel hobby paint works well, two parts paint to one part thinner. I use an old auto-oiler as my paint brush. This is very similar to reluming, relying on a clean area with surface tension to do the work. Results after polish and paint below
I’ll move onto tackling the dial markers next.
First step is to carefully remove the markers.
To do this you’ll need to use a very fine pick or 3C tweezers. Cover the front of the dial with the single use plastic sheets for hand removal. From the back push out the marker feet & then remove them with boxwood tweezers from the front.
Once you’ve got your loose markers, acetone bath to dissolve any dirt & lume.
Moving on to polishing. This is very tricky. The best approach is to shellac the markers to a block or use a dial blank to “install” the markers securely to then polish them. Photo below is after polishing & reinstalled on the dial.
For reluming dial markers the power to varnish ratio is closer to 5:1, I don’t know the exact parts, this has just something I know what to look for over time. I like to start with equal amounts and adjust until the consistency is ideal.
