I think @Philou was just asking about the availability of trit' for watch reluming - he wasn't specifically asking about dial/hands

 

Tritium isn't that dangerous, at least if it's not inhaled or ingested

 

Won’t help

 

What will be with all these dials in 50 years? probably will need a lot more relumes by then, so why leave an example ugly now?

 

Well to explain myself a bit more, naive as I am I thought tritium was banned like radium and relumers were only using luminiva based compound. Apparently I was wrong and tbh I think it's a bit scary from a collector point of view because I can't see how to spot a tritium relume if well done.

Edit : to be clear, I don't mind a relume if it's clearly stated when selling the watch

 

The hands on the OP watch could be original Omega part with original lume, but they look like service replacement.

The way to tell is that the Chrono hand is a tad shorter than the original.



Notice the hour hand is a tad thicker.


and the lume "window" on the original minute hands is a tad longer and is closer to the tip.




The dial lume in the picture looks pretty convincing to me. Need a super close up macro shot to see the texture of the lume.

This week I have seen (in hand) a 105.003 with a re-lumed dial by LAWW.
They actually showed it to me to ask my opinion of what I think about the quality of the work.
It was nice, but not perfect. To a trained eye it is very easy to spot the re-lume job. And it doesn't react to UV light to the same level as an original lume dial does.
And again, I've seen it in person, in my hand. Not through pictures.

 

Can you please élaborate? Thanks

 

i can't speak for Spacefruit, but I think he means that a lume test (edit: with UV light) isn't definitive. It will help, certainly, but with the quality of relumes these days, and the fact that some artisans are using tritium, the redone dial behave in very similar ways to original lume.

 

Got it - thought there was more thanks!

 

While I personally prefer stable re-lume to flaking original, pricing seems to heavily favour original tritium lume. This looks too good to be true, so it probably isn't but that wouldn't stop me wearing this happily. It can also avoid questions from others why you don't buy a new watch out of sympathy.

 

Here is my 145.012-67 for comparison (direct sunlight vs. post-strong illumination test).





And here along with my 105.012-66 HF

 

Such a clean dial, is it a relume? It looks very similar to the watch in question.

 

Nope, it's original lume. Here is a closer look at the lume itself.

 

Can't comment on the lume, but the macro photos above are heavenly.

 

I might be being stupid, but if it's original lume and tritium has a half life of 12.5 years, should it still glow so strongly? Or did they not use tritium and instead something else?

EDIT: Or did it glow like that because of something you did to induce that...

 

It isn't the tritium that glows. The tritium is purely the energy source to excite the phosphor luminescent paint. As long as this paint hasn't been damaged it can still be excited by another energy source.

 

Hi,

You are right, tritium has a very short half life. However, tritium was useful only to constantly irradiate the zinc sulfate which is the luminescent material.

The pictures provided were taken after a super strong light exposure and collected during 10-15 secondes revealing the glowing effect of the dial/hands combo.
By the way, you can see it on the third picture I provided (with my two Speedies visible) as the second hand is blurred as the collecting time was of about 10 seconds.

 

You were faster than me

 

Ah I understand, that clarifies a lot of confusion I had. So the tritium is what helped keep it glowing constantly, but without the tritium, as long as the base paint is intact, you can induce it to go glow even if it's just brief.

Thanks.

 

You got it