Can vintage dials be cleaned/polished?

This is how “redials” begin.

"You should only attempt to clean a dial if you're prepared for its destruction."

Quote (as I remember it) is attributed to somebody called @Archer, a man who knows what he's talking about regarding this issue.

You only try once. 🤬

If there is loose debris, it can often be removed. Anything else is a risk. I don't see anything on that particular dial that would be worth attempting to remove.

That is a perfectly acceptable patinated dial. Many collectors would not be troubled by it and a certain degree of patination, fading, spotting, discoloration, etc. is expected with vintage watches. Although vintage watches with mint or nearly mint original dials can be found, they are the exception and not the rule and this accounts for the plethora of redials that are out there.

At the risk of repeating myself, I don't see anything that would be significant enough to the naked eye to risk damaging the dial. But everyone has different standards.

If you're so inclined and not risk-averse, ask your watchmaker to clean off the gunk that you apparently see and post some "after" photos. If it is truly some foreign matter that is attached loosely, he may be able to do it.

Frankly, I feel that there is a bit of a disconnect between your photos and your comments. You show a 60 year old dial that is really nice, and mention gunk and discoloration. If you are really bothered by such minor imperfections, you may want to consider buying vintage-style new watches, or only buy absolutely pristine vintage examples, which are obviously much more expensive and hard to find.

Doing anything other than removing loose debris is a risk, which is why I did say that you should not clean a dial unless you are prepared to destroy it. One issue is that dials came with different coatings and manufacturing techniques, so difficult to know for sure what a dial can handle until you try. Sometimes trying leads to very poor outcomes, so caution is required.

Some things can be cleaned certainly, but in my view dials like the one shown are the type that worry me the most when cleaning. Something like a Speedmaster dial that I showed in another thread recently that had rust stains on it, was much less risky to clean...



But I took my time and went very slow with this...and I know that the dial finish in these is very robust compared to the sort of lacquered dress watch dial the OP is asking about.

Well the first thing I do when cleaning a dial is to have a lengthy and very frank conversation with my client. I want them to understand the risks and possible damage that might happen, and usually the request to have me clean the dial stops there. In this case, the customer was accepting of the risks, and my confidence in cleaning this dial was much higher than it would be for a lacquered dial. In addition, the round portion of the small seconds hand would cover damage in the unlikely event that it happened in this case, so there are a lot of factors that go into making this decision to clean.

In my own experience, if the dial is matte or glossy hasn't really made a huge difference. For example the old silver dials that you find say on ladies watches from the 20's, those have dials that are matte but can be cleaned quite aggressively, and they come up quite well.



One risk with matte dials is that you can "flatten" the matte surface with even light pressure sometimes, and it will create a small spot on the dial. But by the same token some high gloss dials can be scratched really easily.

I clean dials using these sticks...



They don't leave any residue behind (like Rodico and similar products can) and they are tacky enough to lift dirt, but usually don't lift lacquer unless it's already so loose it's falling off. This is a part of what I used to clean that Speedmaster dial, but the rust stains would not just lift off. I used a piece of peg wood, and cut the end to look like a slot screwdriver blade, but I cut it very thin at the end. This makes the end of the peg wood sort of "feathery" with the wood fibers, and I used that to very gently sweep over the rusted area, and it slowly came off the dial with zero damage. The sticks were used to pick up the material once it was loose.

Delicate work, but it can be done.