Reply With QuoteGreat looking watch but for me, unless you're desperately into vintage, I want my lume to glow meaningfully and for the hands and dial not to be marked.
i did say i liked the way old watches had the lume change over the years and i do to look at in daylight.
but this ones is 20 years old and dosent glow at all,though it does look quite lovely in normal light.it isnt looking aged.
[well the tip of the sweep hand glows thats all]
is that normal for this age?
i find myself only wearing it during the day and changing over to one of my sars or prs-14 when going to dark music venues as i can hardley read the time.maybe thats good as i rotate more.
but i would like some lume, is there anything can be done without changing bits or is it a case of leaveing well alone,wouldn't want to ruin it.
is 20 years ago the sort of lume that did change colour?
Great looking watch but for me, unless you're desperately into vintage, I want my lume to glow meaningfully and for the hands and dial not to be marked.
Can't remember when Omega went from Tritium to Superluminova but think it was mid 90's irrc
A search should reveal all.
Tritium glows well without bomabrding it with light.
Tends to decay ( fade ) after 7 yrs & is toast by 12 yrs from what I have seen on mine in the past.
A lot of pre mid 1990's watches had this.
Super-luminova requires exposure to daylight or a blast near a lamp for best luminosity.
Most watches have this material now & supposedly minimal health & safety issue compared
to Tritium.
I don't believe the Schweiss allow handling of Tritium these days.
If it were my 20 yr old Speedy Pro Moon, I would leave & enjoy the ageing beauty of an all
time classic. :)
Cheers
Well, there is another view; if it were a vintage car you would probably get it resprayed and restored-that's what I would do, get it back to original spec. Good luck with it anyhow.
cheers
Mark
Personally i LOVE patina'd old lume, makes a watch so classy and desirable IMO.
Screw being able to read it in the dark - we have lights and LED alarm clocks where i come from !! :lol:
A sensible voice of reason. :)Originally Posted by GraniteQuarry
Can't understand this obsession with lume personally. :roll:
Cheers,
Neil.
A sensible voice of reason. :)
Can't understand this obsession with lume personally. :roll:
+1 :roll:
+2A sensible voice of reason. :)
Can't understand this obsession with lume personally. :roll:
John, the watch looks wonderful. If you want great lume buy a modern watch (or change over to one when lume is essential). Re-luming that Speedie would be a mistake IMO. :)
Rich
Could not agree more :)
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
i see maybe i should go full lume :lol:
ime a little confused is my watch luminova or tritium?
Leave vintages as they are. If you want to read the hour by night, buy a H3 tritium tube watch and wear it during the night...That´s what I do... 8)
Okay, it's not the read-by-night that matters, it's the fact that it's old and, well, musty and needs renovating. With new hands. And dial if needed.
Nothing wrong with the look of a watch reflecting its age in my opinion + love that mellow patina that old lume gets.
Dave
You could compromise and have the dial re-lumed with paint of the same colour that the original has become now.
+3+2A sensible voice of reason. :)
Can't understand this obsession with lume personally. :roll:
John, the watch looks wonderful. If you want great lume buy a modern watch (or change over to one when lume is essential). Re-luming that Speedie would be a mistake IMO. :)
Rich
Ditchdigger,
:D If you do mess with it, you might consider having Omega in Bienne, Switzerland do it so you can provenance the post original work to the manufacturer if you ever sell it. Have anybody else do it and you are much more so degrading the future collectability of the watch, I think, and perhaps even your own ability to enjoy it while you yourself still own it.
Also, if you send it back to Bienne, you might just have them change out the hour/minute hands for new ones(while returning the nicely aged original hands back to you) and leave the dial alone as you only need the hands to glow in order to easily tell the time in the dark. With any normally designed wristwatch, like your Speedy Pro, the mind self-orients the 12 even in pitch dark when the watch is actually strapped to the wrist.
You can demonstrate this phenomenon to yourself by closing your eyes, pulling your wrist up close to your face as you would to carefully read the time or study the dial, guess in your mind what direction the 12 on the watch dial is oriented( :idea1:) , open your eyes, and that is right about where the 12 will be and easily close enough to tell the correct time in the dark from the glowing hands alone. With a very short bit of practice it gets easier, and after a bit longer getting used to it, you might see how the dial's hour marker lume is really more of a convenience than a true necessity and it's the glowing hands that count.
It happens with much newer watches than that - i.e my Breitling SOP :cry:
I have thought about this with respect to my recently acquired 90's Tudor sub. It has more or less no lume on the dial and hands but interestingly the newish looking bezel pip has pretty good lume. It was overhauled by Bexley last year so I imagine they put the pip in but left the dial and hands alone. After much thought I agree not to mess with it. The hands already have a really nice creamy colour but the lume markers on the dial are a sort of dirty grey colour. I hope that in about 10 years time it will develop the lovely creamy look of the really old vintage subs.
This is a '66 321 Speedy. Lotsa' wabi.
I would never relume it. The character that it took all these years to acquire would be gone.
I suggest a cheap watch with tritium tubes if you want to read in the dark!
Just my 2 pence…Joel M
http://home.comcast.net/~fmusler/321ontan.jpg
20 years old? And the watch is still made? It does not need to be treated as a classic in my book. If you'd like to wear the watch in the evening, but the only reason you aren't is because of the lack of lume? Then get it restored. I'd go with Bienne too. And you might as well get the dial done as long as it's there, though the tiny little pips really won't have much of a glow within 20-minutes. If I recall theirs is a pris fixe repair policy. That is, they charge on the watch age and type, irregardless of what is done (which I believe covers dials and hands if requested), so you might as well have them make it like new (though you should not have them polish the case).
With the pips of the dial - on this particular watch - being so small, any "antiquing" of the lume is nearly unnoticeable, so it should be little concern for aesthetics, unless you are picky. And even then you'd have to look close. What might matter is the "aging" of the entire dial itself. Some older black dials tend to take on a very dark "chocolate" tone, which some find pleasing. But, I've only noticed this with 30-45 y.o. watches (not saying it doesn't happen to younger, just haven't seen or noticed it myself). If yours has take this color, and you like it, then think twice. But not because of the lume (IMHO).
Again, if you are not wearing and enjoying the watch in the evening because of the lume, then seriously think about having work done. And again, have the work done by Bienne, as they (unlike another well known swiss brand starting with "R" and ending with "X", still have a good reputation (or did last I heard)). But, of course, have them return the original parts to you also.
My 2 pfennigs (or whatever the euro equivalent is now - centi-euro?)
One of the reasons I really like my Seiko White Helmet is that apart from the tiniest mark of corrosion on the minute hand (you need a loupe to see it), is it looks mint yet it's decades old. I have a 45 yo Zenith El Primero chrono, one of the first. It looks good. Though the lume has faded it isn't obvious in that it hasn't gone brown. I just couldn't bring myself to wear something that looked as if it came out of a boot-sale box. Sorry. I should add I don't mean the OP's Omega is like that: it's a lovely piece even now.
I like the aged look, I'd leave it alone. I have an early 2531.80 which has similar ageing and I think it looks great.
If you are going to pay Biennes prices + the cost of the original Speedy it would be cheaper/easier to buy a new watch in the beginning. :roll:
Watch looks fine, lume is overrated and if you want a watch to look new buy a new one.
Cheers,
Neil.
My thinking also, if it was your only watch. Most normal folk would find it weird, the idea of buying a second watch to wear at night so you can preserve the coffee-coloured patina and all the apparently world famous history behind those little scrapings of lume. Sorry.
If it's one of a collection, though, I see much less reason to update it for the sake of updating it as its condition looks pretty good for its age.
...but what do I know; I don't even like watches!
Bienne's charges are based on the calibre of the movement, not age, and that cost include mechanical service, case restoration and replacement hands, crown pushers. A new dial would be an extra charge. So the cost would depend on the calibre, and I would suggest it wouldn't be any less than £200 (without dial).
Keep the watch as it is, and as Neal suggests if you need something that glows brightly at night spend the £200 saved on a Casio Illuminator :)
[quote="Toshi"
Keep the watch as it is, and as Neal suggests if you need something that glows brightly at night spend the £200 saved on a Casio Illuminator :)[/quote]
Or take a torch with you (£1 from the £1 shop!) and put the £199 saved into the watch fund
(I'd settle for aged lume over working lume anytime.)
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
much better idea :D
sounds like good advice it looks good and i have other watches
i wore my jsar last night and nearly brained a girl waving my arms around,but ideal for low light :lol:
It looks very much to me like the dial says "T SWISS MADE T", so that's tritium.
thanks i wasnt sure
Is the lume completely dead? I was walking around in the dark last night with my Tudor on and noticed that after a bit of getting used to the dark I could read the time no problem, even see the second hand going round. I was really surprised by this because previously I had tried putting the watch under a lamp but all this was doing was charging up the bezel pip so much it obliterated any light coming from the dial and hands. I really love these tritium dials now because unlike SL it doesn't die after several hours and the dim yellow glow is really quite lovely. In fact this has really made my day :)
Isn't there some conventional lume in tritium paint?
It takes our eyes a looooong time to adapt fully to the dark (ISTR being told up to 40 minutes) so that would explain it.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
true we call it nightvision in the army
and we allways had to take it into account on night ops
He says he already owns the watch, i.e. it's not a new purchase, so it's just a refurbishment that he is looking into - much cheaper than buying a new one.
Bienne's charges are based on the calibre of the movement, not age, and that cost include mechanical service, case restoration and replacement hands, crown pushers. A new dial would be an extra charge. So the cost would depend on the calibre, and I would suggest it wouldn't be any less than £200 (without dial).
Keep the watch as it is, and as Neal suggests if you need something that glows brightly at night spend the £200 saved on a Casio Illuminator :)
Actually it is also based on age of the type of movement (I perhaps used poor syntax above), or I suppose a better word would have been the age of the caliber since it was withdrawn from service. It clearly denotes in their brochure that older movements/calibres, of a given type (straight mechanical vs. chronograph vs. quartz) are more expensive to have serviced. Though I suppose that the 1861 is considered a current movement so would be on the least expensive range of chronographs to have serviced.
You are certainly right though about the dial and hands not being part of the included service, at least from the brochure that I have in hand. I suppose I was recalling at least a couple of instances where people have said Bienne had basically rebuilt their nearly ruined watches (I believe they were SM300s) from basically scratch, which included new dial and hands; the only original item remaining being the the case itself. Though this was roughly 7-8 years ago, a little after they were first acquired by Swatch (before any major changes were decreed from the top), so I don't know what has happened to their shop policies since then.
The luminous pips on the Speedmaster are so small, and the lume in the hands so thin (I have a 29 y.o. Speedmaster so I know of what I speak) that unless they are glowing furiously from relatively fresh 3H (or recently light exposed Luminova) there is little chance you could see them unless your eyes were absolutely dark adapted (or unless perhpas you're a teenager - but once you hit middle age forget it). The Tudor has those nice big indices and hands... well, I think they speak for themselves. Of course the problem with tritium (3H) is that they pretty much die as the radioactivity exhausts itself. Which, depending on the size of the indices can be a few years or a couple of decades. Luminova should glow well for a few hours after light exposure for as long as you, your children, or your grandchildren own your watch (barring chemical/water damage).
[quote=Mike K]He says he already owns the watch, i.e. it's not a new purchase, so it's just a refurbishment that he is looking into - much cheaper than buying a new one.
[/quote:30jqaq6e]
I realise that.
It's just that lume freaks are always better off buying new IMO.
The type of folk who hide under the covers with an LED torch etc :lol: will never be satisfied with an old watch. :wink:
Cheers,
Neil.
As far as this specific Speedmaster goes, the only sensible thing to do is leave the hands and dial alone, imo.
If the question is in relation to my Tudor it seems clear to me that the bezel pip is a new replacement and definitely some type of SL. It glows really strongly after a burst of several seconds under a lamp. The dial on the other hand doesn't respond at all from charging under a lamp. It is marked T SWISS MADE T so is definitely tritium and the glow whilst very faint is a weird dirty yellow colour, nothing like the modern lume colours.
Yes there is - zinc sulfide (with various metal "seed" impurities) - which is the old "non-radioactive" luminous paint of most of our youths that only glowed for ~10 minutes after a strong light exposure. But it also has the property of continuously fluorescing when continuously excited by radioactivety from tritium or radium, so was, and is, used in "radium" and "tritium" paints (if permitted/available). In tritium watches the zinc sulfide is often still good even after the tritium is "used up", so can still glow even after 30 years, but really only in a limited way, i.e. for 10 minutes after light exposure from "stored light", and not from zinc sulfide/tritium. The zinc sulfide in "radium paint", either because of the particular chemistry between the radium salt and zinc sulfide, or because of the harsh effects of the radiation, usually fully degrades after 20 or so years so usually doesn't glow at all, and in fact, in my experience, turns dark brown and/or flakes away.
Cheers Mike, that explains why my Tissot will light up a little despite being 34 years old since AFAIK there was no SL back then, it does fade very quickly though. I guess I just can't see the dial and hands on my Tudor light up because of the sheer quantity of light kicked out by the bezel pip when it gets charged up.
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