Anyone know a source of damaged 1580 date discs?

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I’m about to buy a 1580 date disc for my Cal.565 but getting a decent one in the right colour is proving to be a challenge. I have one in my sights but the numbers are not 100% perfect.

I’d also like to try the option of a white letters on black background but those are definitely NLA.

I’ve bee through this with a 1962 McIntosh Tube Preamp I restored as the front panels for those are also NLA and I managed to recreate them and even 24k gold leaf the lettering.


So this is a much easier task once I’ve done the artwork and tooling to make sure the print can be done perfectly. The issue is finding suitable discs to do the work on. I’m a bit loathed to potentially ruin a $200 date disc to test and the only ones I can find on eBay that are decently poor condition are the curved 1500 varieties.

Worst case I’ll have to buy another $200 disc and try it on that, but was hoping someone might know of a source of discs so bad that they thought no one would ever want them that I could buy with the hope of developing a restoration process.
 
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I have a bunch of regular date disks. Some damaged. Most are curved to fit the dial. I discovered in working with the 56x movements and laser cutting some dial blanks that the curved disks do not work well. So I have been speculating on if it might be possible to laser etch a blank. I was going to try this for a 752, but a nearly complete movement showed up recently for the price of a date ring.

I also learned that in cases like 166.067 which I got a week or so back that a flat dial will not fit into the case, since the stem does not align as the movement needs a curved dial for clearances. There is no chance that the 752 will fit with the flat day ring. The cheapest I have seen a 752 date ring is around 50USD. I think oFrie had some foreign language disks when I looked once.

I also acquired a 166.0202 case then discovered that it was for a 1010/1012 movement. (forgot to check the caliber before bidding.) What is curious is that I have some 134x quartz movements and cases. So it looks like there may be some interchangeability in the quartz era stuff. The date rings though are scaled different.

Not seeing as many rusty parts assortments listed. Perhaps I bought most of them last year. This week I missed out on several lots which went for close to what the parts houses list the parts for. The trend seems more to part out the movements and sell the parts individually.

This is my latest aquisition. I am still awaiting for it to arrive.



Now if only there was a guide for dials and dyles...
 
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I hadn’t even considered having them laser cut. The 5XX movements also have a recess in the back of them, but I could machine them on my mill and rotary table.

I might buy a good one and have a look at making them from scratch.

 
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I’d also like to try the option of a white letters on black background but those are definitely NLA.
That would be 72205601580N, and they are definitely still available from Omega (and no where near $200).
 
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That would be 72205601580N, and they are definitely still available from Omega (and no where near $200).
Oh really. Well that blows my theory completely out the water then. Shame none pop up on the used market as I still don’t have an option to purchase one I assume from Omega