About our equipment
Some of our printing plates, as well as other equipment, are
as old as the early 30s!
While working on your dial, we use the same traditional surface
refinish techniques that were developed by the Swiss and American
watch industries in the early 20th century. Such techniques
include the famous 'Hamilton
Butler' finish which is a plain silver plated finish, and
the Swiss 'Argenté'
- a white surface with pearled effect. Those techniques refinish
the metallic surface with natural applied treatments and coatings
that longers the lifespan of your dial.
Our printing plates are made of quality steel, hardened to 68
Rockwell.
In our catalog, we have an extensive collection of thousands
of prints with exact font and size, covering most of the Swiss
and American brand names, including: Omega, Tissot, IWC Schaffhausen,
Longines, Rolex, Patek Philippe, Cartier, Waltham, Bulova, Gruen,
Elgin, to name a few, as well as a large selection of symbols,
tracks, indexes, sub seconds and other special prints.
If we do not have the exact print for your dial, we can probably
match a similar one using a combination of other prints. We
can also match an exact print or make custom prints if necessary.
All the materials we use in the refinish process are
environmental friendly.
Watch Dial Refinish
We offer dial
refinish services for vintage and newer watches, both for
ladies and gents.
In addition, we offer pocket
watch dial restoration service for dials with non-enamel
background.
Some of the dial refinish services we offer:
| Surface and texture related: |
Print / Other services: |
 Embossed
figures |
Swiss
/ Switzerland prints |
| Luminous
figures |
24-Hrs
print (13-24) |
| Golden
Inlaid figures |
Calendar
print |
| Applied
figures |
Power
reserve print |
| |
Pocket
dials |
| Dual
tone surface |
Sweep
seconds track |
| Copper
/ Silver / Gold plated surface |
Chronograph/Telemeter
track |
| Pearled
track |
|
| Color
changes |
|
| |
Luminous
dots |
| Diamond
setting for Rolex and others |
Mother
of pearl dials |
| Rhinestones
setting |
Foot
soldered |
| |
|
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Watch Hands Refinish
In addition to watch dial
restoration, we offer hands refinish services.
The services we offer include:
|
Hands re-plating Gold 14K Yellow/Rose |
| Hands
re-plating Silver / Nickel tone |
| Hands
color change / polish |
| |
| Luminous
hands refinish |
| |
In all of our luminous
hands and luminous
dots refinish projects We use only Super-LUMINOVA®
- a non-radioactive, non-toxic and environmentally-safe substitute
to the earlier materials. We have three major color variants:
Green, Yellow and Blue.
Luminous
Hands History
Luminous hands technique was first introduced around World
War 1, when Swiss makers applied a luminous material on skeleton
shaped military hands to make the hands glow in the dark. It
was discovered that mixing Radium with Zinc-Sulphate would cause
the surface to show a glowing effect. In fact, the reaction
between the materials caused them to glow regardless of exposure
to light and hypothetically, a watch with such hands could glow
in a sealed drawer for years. These glowing
hands and dial
luminous dots soon became popular in most gents pocket and
wrist watches.
Radium is a hazardous radio-active material and after a cycle
of 20 to 5o years exposure it would destroy the Zinc-Sulphate
on the mix and the hands would eventually cease to glow for
good. The fact Radium was a dangerous material was discovered
only in the late 20s, nevertheless Swiss manufacturers continued
to use Radium in the process of making luminous
hands till the mid 50s, when Tritium
filled hands were introduced. The later material was also
found to be a harmful material and was soon replaced by a new
Japanese-Swiss joint revolutionary development known as the
Super-LUMINOVA®
- a photo-lumiscent (light sensitive) pigment paste.
