Hi everybody. I have inherited a dual-tone Longines ref. 4179, with the well-known 12.68z movement, which, according to Longines (and I would like to thank them a lot) has been shipped on 4th March 1939 to the Italian agent Ostersetzer. It was in quite poor conditions, but after a cleaning of the dial, a service and a new crystal, I think it is now satisfactory. Here's the "before" and "after". Hope you like it.
Nice watch but what happened with the small second hand? On the first photo it looks like it was original but on the after view it is replaced.
You're right. I noticed it when I came home and today I went to the watchmaker asking him to put back the old hands. I hope he'll succeed! I'll keep you informed
The watchmaker should have consulted you before swapping hands. It’s possible that the hands were bad.
It looks nice! I notice the 6 is also gone. Out of curiosity, what’s the process for cleaning up a dial this age?
UPDATE After some discussion with the watchmaker, the hands have been replaced with correct ones. He said the old ones were damaged. Here's the actual resul.
Thanks for the update. Given that this is your watch, what matters is that you are happy with the result. As a vintage Longines collector, I much prefer the watch in its pre-intervention state. All three hands appeared to be correct, though it is difficult to assess the minute hand as the tip is not clearly visible. Further, the dial retained its 6 o'clock hour marker. For reference, the current handset does not look correct, to me. The feuille-style hour and minute hands look too thin, and the second hand appears oversized.
Thanks also for your update. What a pity that it went a bit wrong like that. But it looks not bad, you can live with it and maybe there is another solution one day.
Very nice watch indeed... glad you are enjoying it. As some said, I too would have preferred it in its original state Now your watch looks very familiar