Hello,

I think I posted some not so great pics of this about a year ago when I first acquired it. Since it's time to get it sorted, I thought I'd post it again. I believe it will clean up nicely; I've got the crown covered but my one area of concern is the hour and minute hands.

My first inclination is to try and have the remaining lume stabilized and leave them as is. The hour hand is particularly lacking in lume but I think there's something to be said for trying to keep it as original as possible. I'd welcome opinions as to how to proceed:

1) try to stabilize remaining lume
2) source correct vintage hands (I assume this is not an easy task)
3) replace with cal 861 tritium hands
4) relume current hands

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Here are some obligatory pics:

 

I wonder if the hands are original?
If not then having them repaired and aged to match would be good.
If they are, I understand leaving them - but I would not.

 

Knock out existing lume and go skeleton hands or relume.

 

Pick up the cheapest set of hands you can find (even new) and get them relumed / aged then swapped. You can always keep these ones for later should you change your mind.

The last pair I bought were $39 on ebay.

 

+1

Makes sense

 

I really like the idea of stabilizing and keeping them intact.......but since that goes against the grain of spacefruit and oddboy, I would probably ignore me

 

For me... relume to match.

 

+1

 

Because of their deterioration, I was assuming they were original, or at worst, replaced very early in the watches life.

Thanks for all the opinions, keep them coming! Seems relume to match is the early general consensus.

 

I don't think reluming hands has a significant adverse influence on resale value and reluming them would markedly improve the aesthetics. Reluming plots on the other hand could more profoundly affect price in a negative way. Just IMO.

 

I'm fairly confident that nothing has been relumed. I think it would be unlikely that a relume would show such deterioration (hour and minute hands, 8 hr marker for example), and close up examination of the hands doesn't reveal any indication of relume. The overall unkept state and as-found condition suggests a watch that that hasn't been messed with too much. But point noted that the overall aesthetics would be improved with a relume.

 

I wanted to not post that, did something wrong. I agree with you.

 

Great watch, especially the case. I would keep it as it is, except a new flat-feet-crystal (which looks like worn 30 years every day ;-), a flat feet-crown and some cleaning.

If the hands are original (which I assume at least for the h/m-hands) I'm wondering about the lume-color of the chronosecond. Looks like new... If you like to relume them, you got a good template ;-)

 

+2

 

+3
Old lume will be a constant source of particles making its way into the movement.

 

Refill hands, but with non-glowing mass

 

Just because many hand lume is darker than the dial lume, doesn't mean that when they happen to match, that it is not original.

 

Just out of interest is the minute hand actually bent downwards at the end or is that just a refraction characteristic of the original flatter crystal ?
Reason for asking is I have a 105.012-63 and it also looks like the minute hand is bent downwards

 

I do agree; in this particular case, I find it hard to believe that someone would bother to relume only the chrono hand but would leave the rest of the watch in an unmaintained, generally untouched state.

 

It's just distortion caused by the crystal.