The Mimo Loga had to go in because it was not winding properly. Turned out it was a damaged bushing on the barrel arbor (hope I got that right).

My watchmaker is semi retired, in his seventies and very knowledgeable. He’s serviced and repaired all my high end watches to my satisfaction. I’ve never had a previous lume loss on any of my vintage watches that he’s serviced.

I picked up my watch earlier today. It looked beautiful and now works properly.

I was wearing it and took a photo for WRUW. When I was examining the photo, I realized that some of the numerals had lost lume. By the naked eye, the damage was not really detectable.


Before


After


Closer before



Closer after


So, first — I am more than a little sick at heart.

But, I knew that the lume was very puffy and looked fragile, the way I’ve sometimes seen radium lume. In fact, some of it had already shaken loose and was dirtying the dial.

My conclusion: I’m not inclined the blame my watchmaker at all. Between how fragile the lume was/is and the need to at least get the accumulated dandruff off the dial face, some more of the loose lume came off. The watch needed service and this was a predictable risk/trade off.

BTW, the hands suffered no damage and the lume is already flaking not the dial again.


Old stuff is old. Even pristine looking stuff is still old. And worn out sometimes, like I’m feeling at the moment.

I’m inclined to leave it the way it is and accept what happened.

What do you all think? I particularly am interested in hearing from the watchmakers out there about their thoughts.

 

Not a watchmaker, but it wouldn't bother me so much if I was already suspected that the lume might be flaking off. Hope he was taking the necessary precautions with the radium.

 

Is that dial damage at 11/12? That would upset me if so

 

Hello,your watchmaker has damaged the dial...!.

 

My guess is the lume was so fragile that it was dislodged by a silicone dial protector.



Unfortunate but I guess difficult to avoid when it becomes so fragile with age.

 

I had a speedy in to a guy once who I didn't know very well . Bad idea . He took it upon himself to clean the dial with a rag or something and basically destroyed it. Wish I had a pic - maybe there's one buried somewhere - but I just wanted it out of my sight asap. Totally sucks.

 

Whew, nope. The crystal is rather scratched up and that mark was one of them.

 

It's a frustrating part of dealing with vintage pieces. Even experienced watch makers can't always prevent something like this happening to fragile dials. You never really know exactly how much care they took either.

 

Well that's better than the watchmaker I know of who literally washed a vintage 321 Speedy dial under a tap...

That's why I use dial protectors that are cut in such a way that they don't touch the lume...

I can't say what happened in this particular instance, however I've had watches in my shop that the lume and dial printing was so fragile, it literally fell off the dial not even touching it. I've also had lume pop out of chronograph seconds hands because the hand was on so tight that the hand came off very suddenly with a big "snap" sound, and the shock of removing the hand popped the lume out.

So in this case who knows, but from how fragile the lume was already, I'm inclined to say this was likely not his fault, but I don't know what precautions he took, or how the dial was stored while the movement was being serviced. I've seen watchmakers with benches that were several layers deep in parts and tools, including loose dials just sitting out in the open. For me the dial goes inside a container, that then goes inside a covered tray, so all is protected during the service. The hands and date indicator are also put in specific containers to prevent any inadvertent damage, like you see here:



Have you asked the watchmaker what happened? That would be the first thing to do...

Cheers, Al