Hi guys, I am about to sell my 3590.50.00 (aka. 345.0022 or 145.0022), however, the proposed buyer has asked me if the dial is relumed as he has noticed that the lume on the indexes seems to be unevenly painted. I must start this thread by saying that if I knew or had the slightest suspicion that the watch was relumed I would of course has said this from the beginning in my conversation with him! According to the certificate the watch is sold June 1 1994 but from its serial number, 4827XXXX, I think it is made around 1992 or 1993. As the watch is in a very good condition and pretty young I find it very unlikely that the dial was in such a bad condition that it needed reluming. So guys, what is your opinion of it, has it been relumed or not? Here are some lume pictures of it, I charged it with light from a flashlight for about 30-40 seconds, it is some 10-15 seconds between each shot: Looking forward to your comments Best regards, Hans
Tritium lume hence charging it does basically nothing. What does a google search on watches of the same age tell you on lume application? I'm pretty sure that's normal for that era esp as it matches the hands perfectly.
Did the watch spend much of its life in a warm or sunny environment? It looks like other watches with proper lume that has degraded and become blobby due to extended time in conditions like that
40 second charge and dead by 1 minute is basically nothing. My tritium 76 holds for slightly less. A tritium that is no longer internally glowing can still take a small charge and you can get a bit of glow for about a minute. If that was luminova it would glow strong for at least 5 minutes and still glowing for long after that. I've got a 68 Seiko that I assume is not tritium or can take a charge like luminova and glows strong for 10 minutes.
No, a minute, or just a few second, is not nothing. There are completely dead lumes, including tritium, luminova and most radium, that stay completely dark because of complete degradation.
Well every tritium dialed watch I've ever seen tested either in person or by people on this forum seems to show that most if not all tritium dials on 145.022's will take a small charge with a flashlight but it will quickly die in under a minute even if the tritium is gone due to radioactive decay. Multiple people that have the same Seiko navigator timer from @1968 all show that the lume will still take a charge and glow for a few minutes and that it is an odd quirk on that model. I have not seen a luminova Speedy not take a glow that lasted strongly for at least 5 minutes. Radium dials I have no experience with, but I have seen other vintage tritium watches that will still take a small charge for less then a minute, obviously the lume was not designed that way, as the lume was meant to be charged by the tritium which has a 1/2 life of 12.3 years, not by a light-source as luminova is. I am not sure how fast the glow will degrade in "new" tritium, I do not think that the 1/2 life of tritum affects the glow directly, as gun owners see massive degradation in the glow after 1 decade and need to reapply. So the amount of Tritium left may not linearly affect glow ie 50% of tritium left is not 1/2 the original brightness.
Thank you all for your answers My timezone is CET (I live in Sweden), I posted around midnight and I have been happily sleeping until now, that is why I know how tritium degrades over time because of its short halftime time of only a little more than 12 years. I posted the lume-shots to "proof" that the watch has its original tritium-lume. I also assume that "relumers" do not use tritium when they do their work. Do you know if they are using super-luminova and just add color to make the dials patina? @abrod520 I do not know what environment the watch has spent its time in, as long as I have had it it has been far away from a warm and sunny environment, we do not have much of that here in the cold northern part of Europe I bought it from a German watchmaker but nothing says that the watch has not spent its time in warm and sunny southern Europe before I bought it. That my very well explain the degradation of the lume. To sum it up, no one of you thinks that the watch is relumed, right? All the best, Hans
It is the radioactive component of tritium lume which 'wears out', much less so the phosphorescent component so a charge with a uv torch should elicit a short term glow on all tritium based lume, regardless of age. Radium lume is the opposite, the Radium stays strongly radioactive and the phosphorescent part burns out so there is usually no residual lume at all by now. I have yet to see any S-Luminova that has failed in either of these ways, it seems pretty stable.