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How to make a true gilt dial on the cheap - Tropical or Black

chrome72

Active Member
7/12/17
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Houston TX Baby
You can follow the synthesis of this with the original thread on a gilt dial.

Was initially inspired by the @Bart Cordell how to make a water slide decal gilt dial. Made my own but wanted more. Spent way to much time reading and figured I'd try to DIY. So here we go! This also would not be possible without help from @p0pperini. He is the designer of the art and graciously let me bother him over the past almost 2 years since I started brainstorming this. Below is the culmination of all my success and failures. If I haven't explained something good enough, ask away!

Method: I borrowed an idea from the DIY computer chip makers. The method is called Toner Transfer with heat. You can also use the chemical method which requires a 75/25 mixture of acetone/water. You can also use a laminator if you can get that to work. I found it got me 95% of the way there. I believe that do to the highly polished nature of the metal and the very fine details, the method below works the best.

TOOLS NEEDED:
-Your design, mirror imaged with a small centered hole in the art.
-A donor dial or make your own dial (you are looking for .4mm thick (roughly 27 gauge) brass)
-Polish (I used Mothers Mag, worked great. If you have to sand the dial, you need to use 600, 800, 1000, 1200,2000,3000 grit to get a good shine).
-A laser jet printer (your office has them, your library, post offices, they are everywhere)
-Toner transfer paper. If you google "yellow toner transfer paper" you will find cheap yellow paper that works great. Also glossy magazine paper works just as good.
-A source of heat (i used my stove, you can use a sandwich press, an oven, hair straightener, whatever)
-A burnisher (i just used a wooden clothespin)
-Acetone and isopropyl alcohol.
-A oxidizing agent OR a plating kit. See notes below for what I found worked great.

If you buy everything I have mentioned above and just use someone else's laser jet and I assume you have acetone and isopropyl alcohol around your house and use magazine paper, you are talking about $25 worth of supplies. After that you can make dials for essentially the cost of just the dial itself. I buy brass blanks off etsy for 10 for $4.


Step 1: Get a blank dial or order brass blanks. If you already have a dial you can just use acetone to wipe off the print. If you buy your own brass blanks, you will have to punch a 2mm hole in the middle. You will need a donor dial for perfect alignment of your hole. I used this for punching holes. Works like a charm

Step 2: Polish your dial to a mirror shine. I used Mothers Mag, its amazing! Wash dial thoroughly and remove grease with acetone or isopropyl alcohol.

zvU9ej.jpg


Step 3: Print out your artwork on a laser printer (ink jet will not work). You will need to mirror image the art AND put a small centering hole in the middle of your art. This is important given the small size of the dial.
zvUYCv.jpg


Step 4: Get some kind of metal you can heat up. I got a cheap piece of electrical stainless steel plate from the hardware store for $1.20. You can use a sandwhich press, a hair straightener, whatever gets hot! You will place your artwork facing up on the heat source. Place your dial polished side down on the art, align the centered dot on the artwork with the hole on the dial. This will ensure perfect centering of final product.
zvU6EI.jpg

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Step 5: Heat up your metal. You will want it to get to about 180 F - 220 F. Any lower, it probably wont work. Any hotter, it might make your small details get distorted. Let this reach the desired temp and let it sit for 30-45 secs. The toner from the laser printer will be tacky and stick to the brass dial.
zvUtyX.jpg


Step 6: Flip the art work/dial over (they should be stuck together). Very lightly burnish the art to ensure the art is fully transferred from the paper to the brass. I used a wooden clothespin and it worked great. I am talking very lightly. Too much and the toner might distort. Imagine the pressure you put on caressing someone's skin. Doesn't take much!
zvUQcb.jpg


Step 7: Take the art/dial to a source of water and cool it down. I used my sink. You could just submerge it in a bowl of water.
zvUB4i.jpg


Step 8: Slowly peel off the paper. The design should be fully transferred to the dial now. (I used a reject dial for this tutorial and it had a small lip which prevented a tiny portion of the art from transferring). Dry the dial. Careful not to touch with your bare fingers! You do not want oils/grease on the dial.
zvUCP5.jpg


Step 9: Time to electroplate or oxidize. For this tutorial we are going to oxidize it. Just the right amount will give you a tropical brown. Too much and the dial will turn black. After lots of researching I found Sculpt Neavou M38 to be my best bet. There are other options out there, but this worked great. You will have to tinker with the proportions of the oxidizing agent and water. I found 1 part M38 to 1 part water gave a bit slower reaction which was better for control* I put in a small amount of the mixture into a shot glass, used a finishing nail through the back of the dial and lowered the dial into the shot glass. Helped me get some dunks. People I talked to who use this recommend dunking it slowly and as flat as you can. You can also spray the dial with a spray bottle of the mixture, just cant let the mixture dry out. Once you have the color you like, rinse off ASAP and dry.

*if your metal is warm, the mixture is warm, too much humidity, too little, too short exposure, too long exposure can all effect final color. You will need to tinker. For this example, it took about 40ish secs in the mixture, took it out, rinsed it with water, put it back in for 10 more secs.
zvUPSF.jpg

zvUPSF.jpg

zvUXet.jpg

zvU4Hn.jpg

zvUkEE.jpg


Step 10: Use acetone to wipe off the art on the brass dial, revealing the polished brass beneath. I normally have used a cotton ball or q tip soaked in acetone but didn't have those so I dunked it in a small amount of acetone and just wiped with a paper towel.
zvUM13.jpg

zvUs4s.jpg


Step 11: Marvel at a gilt dial!
zvUyS1.jpg


Step 12: Lacquer it up! The gens used to use Nitrocellulose Lacquer. This type of lacquer is not synthetic and over time dried out and could turn yellow if exposed to UV. That is why some gilt dials have that nice orangey hue to the gilt portions. Guitar makers hack this and exposure their lacquered guitars to UV. You can also cheat and buy amber tinted nitrocellulose lacquer. Or just use what you have. Downside to nitrocellulose is it takes quite a while to cure.

Step 13: Polish it up, lume it up. Enjoy your DIY dial!

Again, this would not be possible without @p0pperini and his amazing digital skills and his willingness to help a stranger out. My skills are stuck as MS Paint.

Try this out and post your results!
 

chrome72

Active Member
7/12/17
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Houston TX Baby
Here are some follow up thoughts:

The gen dials were done with pad printing. I found this to be cumbersome and stinky and not worth it for a dial here, a dial there. Plus you have to make cliches which can cost a bit.

Another method is doing whats called photoresist. Basically you have a special film on the polished brass dial and an overhead transparency of your design on that film, expose the dial to UV light in a specific NM range and a specific time. This should work great and lead to ZERO errors in image production on the dial, but the time is specific. A little too much or a little too little and the art is under or over exposed. Someone out there might have better results than I did.

You can use a laser engraver too. Basically paint the polished dial with spray paint and etch away the negative image.

I am sure there are other ways out there.
 

chrome72

Active Member
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Finally, in terms of tropicalizing, my method is not a true tropical dial, but is very close. I only had 1 dial that I electroplated that turned tropical after forcing it. I believe after talking with someone at the Nickel Institute that achieving a true tropicalized galvanic dial is complicated which is why there aren't a lot of them. Basically you need to have the "wrong" humidity prior to and after electroplating and exposure to "contaminants" in the air which allow for a specific ion to form at time of plating which is the seed for the later turning of brown. If you want to get a true galvanic gilt dial, you need to electroplate with BLACK NICKEL. Caswell Plating has a good starter kit, its what I have. You could also use an old phone charger and an alligator clip and a q tip and get good results.

here is a little cheat sheet of other oxidizing agents out there that can get tropicalized results. You can see the colors of true tropicalized gen watches and a picture of whats possible beneath it with the various agents (i.e. M38, CB, CB2 etc). There are others out there and depending on time,temp you can get even lighter browns or dark browns or blacks (if over exposed).
zvWeob.jpg
 

chrome72

Active Member
7/12/17
470
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Houston TX Baby
Finally, in terms of tropicalizing, my method is not a true tropical dial, but is the same in spirit...oxidation of metal. I only had 1 dial that I electroplated that turned tropical after forcing it. I believe after talking with someone at the Nickel Institute that achieving a true tropicalized galvanic dial is complicated which is why there aren't a lot of them. Basically you need to have the "wrong" humidity prior to and after electroplating and exposure to "contaminants" in the air which allow for a specific ion to form at time of plating which is the seed for the later turning of brown. If you want to get a true galvanic gilt dial, you need to electroplate with BLACK NICKEL. Caswell Plating has a good starter kit, its what I have. You could also use an old phone charger and an alligator clip and a q tip and get good results.

here is a little cheat sheet of other oxidizing agents out there that can get tropicalized results. You can see the colors of true tropicalized gen watches and a picture of whats possible beneath it with the various agents (i.e. M38, CB, CB2 etc). There are others out there and depending on time,temp you can get even lighter browns or dark browns or blacks (if over exposed).
zvWeob.jpg
 

chrome72

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There is a little bit of gilt showing through where it shouldn’t in the final product. I didn’t catch the small smudges after I peeled off the paper. My other dials I have done came out clean. My apologies for using a reject dial and not catching true marks prior to writing this up
 

alligoat

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WOW! This is quite a write up! Thanks for sharing. Maybe this could be a sticky???
 

chrome72

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I applied some lacquer to my oxidized dial. It looks great. I am comparing it with my only plated dial I could get to tropicalize by trying to force oxidize the plating. It’s a similar chocolatey color. It’s hard to capture in photos. The shiny brass on the one on the left is filled because it’s been exposed to heat,moisture, and oxygen for the past 5-6 months so it’s dulled a lot.

z7BW6S.jpg


With the M38 oxidizing agent I mentioned earlier, you can get the following colors by tinkering: light brown, dark brown, Reddish brown. You can get uniform color by submerging the dial or get splotchy more wild aging by spraying the mixture on the dial.
 

p0pperini

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Fantastic tutorial @chrome72 - and it's been an honour and pleasure to have some small involvement in this ongoing project.

Now, on to the next dial artwork..!
 

jamiex

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Nice tutorial buddy, I’ve ordered some paper and I will give this a go during Christmas break.
 

chrome72

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Nice tutorial buddy, I’ve ordered some paper and I will give this a go during Christmas break.
You can ask use glossy magazine paper. Works just as well. Just about it every magazine is glossy. Doesn’t matter what is on it (ie images or text)…the only thing that will transfer is what YOU print on it with a laser printer.
 

jamiex

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You can ask use glossy magazine paper. Works just as well. Just about it every magazine is glossy. Doesn’t matter what is on it (ie images or text)…the only thing that will transfer is what YOU print on it with a laser printer.
Oh well it was only £12 for 40 sheets so no harm done but now I know for future.
Have you tried electroplating a thin layer of zinc first then black nickel because I’ve a sneaky suspicion that’s how the gens were done?
 

chrome72

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Oh well it was only £12 for 40 sheets so no harm done but now I know for future.
Have you tried electroplating a thin layer of zinc first then black nickel because I’ve a sneaky suspicion that’s how the gens were done?
Nope. I didn’t see anything in my research to indicate this but who knows. I just am 100% confident the final coating is black nickel based on it turning galvanic and the potential to tropicalization which necessitates it being black
Nickel.
 
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jamiex

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Nope. I didn’t see anything in my research to indicate this but who knows. I just am 100% confident the final coating is black nickel based on it turning galvanic and the potential to tropicalization which necessitates it being black
Nickel.
I know you’ve done a lot of research on this but do you think that the black nickel alone can give the depth that we see on these dials?
 

jamiex

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Well I have some black nickel electrolyte mixed up and ready to rock so we shall see what happens, maybe it just needs a long dunking to give it that depth that wee see on gilt dials.
But maybe because the pictures are always blown up so we can easily see the depth it could be easy to forget that the actual thickness of the coating is only 0.2/0.3mm thick so like you say who knows, I guess we will just have to find out.
 

chrome72

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Well I have some black nickel electrolyte mixed up and ready to rock so we shall see what happens, maybe it just needs a long dunking to give it that depth that wee see on gilt dials.
But maybe because the pictures are always blown up so we can easily see the depth it could be easy to forget that the actual thickness of the coating is only 0.2/0.3mm thick so like you say who knows, I guess we will just have to find out.
I’d take some pics of my depth but my iPhone isn’t good as those magnified views. I can tell you the black nickel vs the brass is amazing. I noticed sometimes too my black nickel was a bit blotchy but smoothed out when you apply lacquer. Just a heads up.
 

chrome72

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Well I have some black nickel electrolyte mixed up and ready to rock so we shall see what happens, maybe it just needs a long dunking to give it that depth that wee see on gilt dials.
But maybe because the pictures are always blown up so we can easily see the depth it could be easy to forget that the actual thickness of the coating is only 0.2/0.3mm thick so like you say who knows, I guess we will just have to find out.
Looks like a diy zinc solution is super simple to make. I’ll try it very soon then plate black nickel over it.