Realizing Goals With My Wittnauer

I wanted to share a meaningful personal project that represents a lot to me.
My very first mechanical watch - purchased back in the early aughts while I was still in university - was a 1945 Wittnauer military wristwatch. It represented a step up for me, getting away from Diesel and fossil watches. It was my daily for almost 5 years. My wife, then girlfriend, quickly noticed my love of this watch and as a birthday gift researched MoD NATOS and got me a G10 in Admiralty grey. But as much as I loved the watch I always hated the lume. Chalky mint green very poorly applied. Barf!

Fast forward to two years ago. I figured, maybe I ought to open up this watch and repaint that lume. Faced with trying to remove the movement and relume I bought my first set of watchmakers tools along with some cheap Asian movements to learn on. One thing led to another and I got sucked into the world of horology. Two years flew by and I never got around to this project - until this week.
Dial and hands cleaned, relumed, movement also serviced while I was at it, reassembled, and voila! This is what I call a Relume level up - haven’t encountered a Relume nearly as difficult as these old Arabic dials.

Needless to say I couldn’t be happier! Feels good on so many levels to have restored my first mechanical watch and learned the skills to do it.

I remember this one from a GTG. Looking much better now 👍

Amazing job! I love the NATO strap as well, very impressed your significant other was able to track one down.

Turns out she’s a keeper! 😜

Very nice work, congrats!
The dial (without lume) looks like new. How difficult is it to remove old lume?

Is that a different dial ?
The spacing between the inner track & W of Wittnauer looks different from 1st picture to the other dial.

Looks great with the relume. I am often against relumes but this one was the perfect candidate!

Great job 👍

Thank you. But wow, I can't believe you remember this watch. I didn't think it was memorable to anyone but me.

It was hard to forget that lume color!

In my excitement for sharing the end result I didn't share the inherent tragedy in the process. Removing lume is with great amounts of risk, especially in the case where it was sloppily applied like this one. The lume bled all over the outlines of the numerals and when removed pulled up quite a bit of the line work. Very, very disappointing but not unexpected.
But before taking the step to remove the lume, when I removed the dial I noticed a couple things:
1. Only the hands were radioactive. The dial was inert. Being from the radium era, it's obviously relumed.
2. Look at 12-o'clock. There is a redial mark (a nick in the dial to reference alignment when redialed).

Couple the relume and assumed redial with the lume pulling up outlines, I decided to have it redialed. I worked with Kirk Rich Dial in California. In conversations with him he indicated he had the original mid-century Wittnauer cliches. Trusting that was true, I'm pleased with the redial. As you've noted, the logo is slightly different proportions. Other than that, IMO, the print is spot on (maybe even more accurate...).