Hello everyone,
I would like to have an opinion on this dato compax, specifically the dial.
It seems original to me but I would like a second (and third, 4th , etc... !) from the experts!
Thx

 

Look at the mark between 3 and 6 on the minute subdial. The watch was sold a few years ago with the seemingly original hands*
http://www.watchprosite.com/?page=wf.forumpost&fi=712&ti=809058&pi=5447328
There were blued hands available on this model but they were more slender, though these look pretty good on the watch IMO*
The dial looks good to me*

*not an expert

 

Spot on. And nice detective work . Gilt markers = gilt hands

 

Thank you Sensei.

 

The dial is refinished.

The most obvious indicator is the misaligned "Dato-Compax" script, which encroaches on the chronograph hour subdial.

 

From Sala. Is this also a redial?
I see other examples where the script radius doesn't match the subdial...... Hmmmmm

 

Dare I say - perhaps? But it looks a lot better positioned than the OP's example. No encroachment.

I also would like to point out that the subdial hands all seem to be mighty short - though I've seem some UG's with seemingly short hands before.

Any comments?

 

Neither are redials, but they are not UG's best works either. Having been one of the most prolific watch manufacturers of their time, their quality control wasn't always up to snuff. Here is the same dial from Sala that Rman showed:



In this one you'll notice that the "Dato" of "Dato-Compax" is slightly higher than the "Compax" and the "Geneve" of "Universal-Geneve" is slightly lower than the "Universal" whereas those two things are oppositely true on the OP's dial. These slight discrepancies are within UG specs.

 

Open and closed sixes within same tachy scale as well. What were they thinking...

 

Wow,

Hard for me to believe, still. It's pretty shoddy work.

 

Is the 7 of 27 in the minute counter correct?
It seems odd to me as well as the overall font of the dial but I am not sure...
I would be great to see other Dato pictures

Edit: Ok, I was writing this while it was already discussed above...
Thanks Jordan for the information.
So finally, how can we be sure of a dial being a redial or not if UG had such imperfections in their dials? ^^

 

One way is to pay special attention to the font. If you find other examples of the watch reference with the exact same font, you can have some bit of evidence of it being legit.

The more example you can find with the same features/font, the better the chances of it being correct.

 

That's a very pertinent question, but to be fair to UG you'll find inconsistencies on dials from the 40's even by the big 3. Dial manufacturing took a major leap in the 50's as far as consistency is concerned imo (I can't really attribute that to anything historical and factual, just something I've noticed). I can live with the inconsistencies because when UG gets it right, they really get it right. Their watches from 50's and 60's are great too, but the reason I like their 30's and 40's watches the best is because of the warmth and organic nature of these dials. Hand-finished movements aren't perfect either (not saying that's a good analogy )

As far as evaluating the "correctness" of these dials, it's more of an artform than a science.

This is my primary way of sussing out redials, but like LouS mentions, even Sala's book has a ton of incorrect examples in it. With a lot of practice you'll start to see the consistencies within the inconsistencies. Mistakes will be made, but that's what's great about this forum - the collective knowledge here often times exceeds any reference book out there.

 

I spent a lot of time online looking at every possible picture that I could find of Dato-Compaxes as well looking at Sala's pictures (I own the book as well) and I tend to believe the dial is original.
In all cases I saw there are inconsistencies in the 7s, and in all cases the same way round: not crossed in the date and hour compaxes but crossed in the minute compax as well as the tachy scale.
In all cases I saw there the "swiss" printed at 6 o'clock in the dial.
And this specific dial is indedd pretty much the same as the one at page 326 of Sala's book. Also in this example the sub-dial hands are a bit short (well in the book example I would say the minute subdial hand is plainly wrong actually!).
This is why I thought the dial is OK but I wanted other opinions as well, you cannot be too sure! Thx!
Now though, you worried me about the hour and minute hands. To be honest they look to me even more "fitting" than the ones that were originally fitted on the watch when it was sold on and they look a lot like the ones of Sala's example...
Which ones do you think are actually original to the dial? I have seen all sorts of hands on these Dato-Compaxes even though very few were made (and documented).
Also, in case the original hands are definetively the stick ones, do you think they are possible to source or next to impossible?

 

None of the UG Dato registers have concentic circles and seem to be very uniformly smooth in appearance? All of ny UG chrnograph have concentric circles in the registers ! I dont own a dato compax. They are really rare ?

 

In reality if you look carefully at the picture in the OP there are concentric circles in all the sub dials, as I agree it should be.
Dato Compaxes are indeed relatively rare, introduced in 1942 they did not sell well because in 1943/44 UG started selling the more famous Tri Compax that had a full calendar and also the moon-phases on top of the date and it was immediately a huge commercial success and meant that the Dato Compax did not sell well being out shined but the Tri Compax.

By the way the Dato Compax is also the very first chronograph with a date indicator, as I think the Angelus Chronodato started selling a few months later (even though the Chronodato - or Chronodate as it was first called - is still the fist chronograph with full calendar indicating day, month and day of the week).

Also, the Dato Compax in the OP is now mine !! I should receive it in the next few days and I also managed to get hold of the same golden stick hands it was originally sold with onwatchprosite! I will now have both set of hands.
Apparently they guy that sold it to me (a dealer) said that the previous owner had UG itself to provide the set of thicker leaf blue hands that watch is currently sporting because "he liked it more that way" and hence they are also original UG hands even though they post date the watch by several decades... Regardless if this is true or not I kind of have the best of both worlds as I will also have the original gilt stick hands if I ever want to change them back but I also prefer the look of these new thicker ones.
I'll post some more pictures once I get physically hold of the watch.

 

Careful there... my "expert" dealer told me a lot of things until I was better educated than he.

Jury is still out on the dial... but there's no doubt in my eye that the sub dial hands are too short in addition to the previously noted inconsistencies.