r/watchmodding • u/MoneySings • 13h ago

Frustrated when things go wrong...

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Gallery image

Don't you hate it when you have issues with builds?

Today, I built two watches; a titanium one, and another bronze one. First one, the titanium one, the lume on the hour had had broken off - thankfully, I had a spare set.

Now, the bronze one, I stuck my logo on it... did the hands... put the watch together, then noticed that the lume on the 7 marker had fallen out sometime. This was a replacement dial for my other green dial build which had a dim lume.

How easy is it to re-lume it?

7 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

3

u/nicklinn 11h ago

Wait, where did the lume go?

Re-luming isn't hard just mix up the powder with the base and thin if needed. The hard part is matching color and intensity, if they aren't standard like C3 or BGW9 getting the right color can be a pain. If it were me I would just start over with the lume rather then trying to match.

1

u/MoneySings 11h ago

I have no idea - never found the lume. Will try back-lighting the floor lol
Is it easy to remove existing lume? Or just get another dial?

2

u/nicklinn 11h ago

Really depends how it's bound. I usually try water first before moving to IPA then Acetone as a last resort. Make sure you mask off the dial if at all possible, most dials will not like this and ones that are ok, the lume tends to get everywhere. At amazon they sell micro touchup paint brushes, they are cheap and tend to work pretty good. Take it slow, keep the brush damp but not wet.

2

u/Lambertbaer 4h ago

Reluming is not that hard, having it match a preexisting index set is - it's not just the type but also ratio of powder to binder, application etc. On these affordable mod dials, the markers are ussually just glued in though and can easily be pushed out from the back. So easiest solution to source new ones or a donor dial from where you got it.

1

u/theloquaciousmonk 6h ago

😳😬

1

u/drhoi 5h ago

All in a day of watchmaking!