Vintage lume and reversal

[WatchN3RD]

I see numerous threads about aging white lume with markers, coffee, paint, ovens, etc.

But does anyone have suggestions on what could be used to lighten lume that is too dark, too orange, etc.?

I'd rather not use a white "wash" of paint, as I'd prefer to avoid destroying the clean lines from the screen printed indices.

 

[geoffdragon]

Tricky to keep the flat screen printed look...

You could re-lume with white luminous powder, plenty of sources online.

I use mat acrylic water-based varnish as the mixing agent, that way it's not too tricky to clean up any "mistakes".

 

[ward1991]

Can't be done without re-luming. You would have find a chemical that could lighten the indices without touching the black paint on the dial, like a strong bleach or peroxide. That's going to look rough assuming it can even turn yellow to white and not be a complete mess. At this point, it would be easier to simply apply lume.

You'll need a steady hand to get close to the clean lines you want and a good ratio mix on the lume that will allow the round indices to self coagulate into a perfectly round blob of lume mix.. The triangles and rectangles are much more difficult but with lots of practice and mess ups on junk dials, not so bad.

I like to add a bit of cream/off white to my lume mixes for a true NOS look. I never do ancient lume colors.

Also, painting the indices white or off white with acryllic paint first, helps with lume brightness if that's something you want.