I had a discussion with an experienced member if you can attach Speedmaster subdial hands incorrectly meaning the bottom side is on the upper side. I was told that this is impossible due to the design of the hand.

But from time to time I see subdial hands which look 'wrong' to me like the hour SD hand below.
You see the running second as a comparison.

What do you say?

 

These hands have a tube on the under side which is a friction fit on its respective arbor. The tube extends through the hole in the dial to reach the arbor. It is not possible to put these hands on upside down. I have no idea what you are seeing.

 

This might help...here is a photo of an hour recording hand, same hand, both sides:



There is a tube that is riveted to the flat parts of the hand, and it extends on the underside of the hand. The prominence of the rivet tends to vary over time in my experience, so some are very obvious like this one, and some not so much.

As you can see, the underside of the hand is unfinished, so it's unlikely that someone is putting a hand on inverted.

Cheers, Al

 

Hi Al,

I see what you mean, thank you very much for that very good explanation!

 

From what I have observed the hour counter sub dial hands are flat like the OP example until 1962 (my ex 105002-62 pic below). Rule is the same for Speedmasters and other Cal 321 based chronographs like 105.001-62 (see also pic below of one I sold) . Anything -63 onwards tends to have the raised bump in the centre like the one posted by Al.

One of my favourite tells for a good original example is seeing this flat hour counter hand. You know straight away the hands were swapped at some point if not.

It might be that some early batch -63 Speedmasters have the flat hand but I have NEVER seen one with it.

 

Thanks @Sharp for that observation!

The flatness of the hour counter sub dial hand compared with the other sub dial hands was exactly what I couldn't understand...