Restoring (not a repaint) a badly damaged 1680 Red Sub dial

[classicwatchparts]

I am showing pictures of a dial of a client after his consent to post when he picked it up today.


Basically he picked up the dial for spare change hoping that I can do something about it without resorting to a complete repaint. As you look closely there were chips around the edges on the min markers, chips around the hour markers and most severely around the logo with letterings missing.

Most will be thinking of sending it for a complete re-dial. Many collectors and dial restorers will agree.


Nope not just yet, it may still have a few years left on it. With a hammer and a knive on my hand against my dial guys; no guns in this city; ( in reallity challenging and begging them to work overtime on this) we now have perfected a way to properly save a damaged dial without completly reprinting it. All the letterings are left original , just a touched up original dial.


Basically, we use ultra fine air brush painting technique to fill in the chiped out area in matt black and then try to blend in the surrounding area. A technique mostly used in automobile body shop repair.

Once that is done, the tough part is to fill in the missing letters or minute markers. As many of you know that we already do complete dial reprints on old dials we have a set of the correct printing dies.

We then add droplets of white paint on the corresponding damaged area on the printing die and then carefully aligns the machine to do a partial print on the dial. And abacadabra you now have an almost undetectable touch up of a valuable original Red sub dial.

The biggest giveaway is the re-lume, I still have not be able to source good tritium luminous but it is something I am investigating.


The whole process sounds like the restoration of a Rembrandt painting, no we have worked out a efficient way to do it so it does not cost alot more than a general repaint.