All about refinishing dials - seeing the folly of my ways

As I live in Northern California, and am currently trapped inside my house for the past several days because of the raging fires and the ton of smoke that is in the air, I am left with no recourse other than to post a bunch on this forum - but maybe I can help a few members out by advising to

"only refinish a dial if you want to take a big risk".

It took me several tries, using different dial refinishers, and much experimentation to only achieve marginal results at best. Finally, I would see the folly of a refinished dial. In the end, nothing beats an original dial, even if it has some flaws/patina or is imperfect. Here is a compendium of my direct experience. I will only show the refinished dial results.

1st example, a 1957 Connie. A decent job from a US-based dial refinisher, but the cross-hairs are a no-go and chronometre was spelled wrong.



2nd example, I found a beautiful 18k bumper chronometre that had an excellent case and a great movement. The dial was very poor, so I sent it off to a Germany-based dial refinisher. Here is the result. Not bad, but printing is too thick.



OK, let's try this again. Found a really nice 18k rose gold Cal. 30.10 automatic. One more time, maybe it will turn out good . . .



Ah-ha, finally a decent result. But don't look too close - you will see the flaws.
Tried two more and they turned out just OK - this 1943 chronograph



This was the best refinish job ever



Missing "Swiss Made" on the bottom of the dial left me wanting and I let it go - even though a really nice 18k yellow gold case with a Cal. 321.

Overall, a good experience for me and lots of $$ spent though. At this point, I stopped doing projects (buying sub-par examples and then spend time and money trying to improve them) and just focused on buying the best all-original examples I could find. Yes, I had to pay more for them, but you know what they say . . .

The best advice I can offer, is to always try to find a nice example with an original dial. You can go from one extreme to another in terms of price. There are still many nice examples out there for under $1,000, or even $500 - you just have to be patient.

Look at this mid-1950's Seamaster Calendar I purchased a few years ago for about $400. It's not perfect, the case has a few dings, BUT - the dial is original. Yes it has some age, but I think it also gives it some character.

The steel Chrono dial looks like a Bethge job.......kind regards. Achim

Thank´s for sharing, very informative. 😀 👍

Chronometer 😁

Super topic, thanks!

Thanks for the informative post and photos. Just curious -- I'd have a tough time accepting the misspelling. Did you ask if that one could be redone or for your money back?

Great reference post---thanks!

Yes, I called to complain but did not get anywhere. If I wanted it redone I would have to send it back and then pay the full price again. I said forget it and moved on. Lesson learned - be very, very specific about what you want done and submit clear diagrams/pictures. Then there is a chance the dial refinisher could still screw up. It's a risk.

You are correct!

To any non-collector, those are awesome re-dials and beautifully done.

I only had one re-dial done in all my years of collecting, it was a Rolex Prince from the 1930s, the dial was not in the best of shape, but acceptable, and the dial did not have the word, "Prince" on the dial. I sent it off to be professionally re-dialed and it came back looking great, but, I later found out that all Rolex Princes did not have the word "Prince" on the dial, my OCD kicked in and I sold the watch and picked up another with a little better dial and the text I wanted, not perfect, but beautiful in its imperfection.

Good information.
Really makes me think about a couple of watches that I should just really leave well enough alone. Thank you for sharing

Your story suggests it's a bad idea to have an Omega redial done by anyone but Omega itself, which seemed to work out for a recent poster here, relatively costly as it may have been, with his father's treasured but not especially collectible watch that had already suffered a hideous redial.

Amazing post, it's always a dilemma. Can I ask how much you were charged for each redial job?

I think if I wanted a dial refinished on an Omega, I would send it to Bienne. Whoever they have doing their work seems competent from what I've seen on here. A few of the redials received by the OP I would call "crap" just because how horrible the lettering is.

That said, I had a dial from a Hamilton sent to a US company. Since it was already a bad refininishing job, I thought I had nothing to lose, and it came back looking better than what was there before, and the lume was redone as well, so I was OK with it.

The Omega factory does not refinish dials or make dials. All outsourced. I had 2 dials done in Biel in the 90's ; had to send both back because of lousy work. Not a good option then. If they have your dial and exchange it, perfect. If not, i'd not ask them to refinish it. Kind regards. Achim

You must admit it is no longer the 90s. The few recent ones seemed good.

But anecdote is not a synomym of data.

That was sort of my point. These dials didn't look like copies to me but new manufacture.