Is this ever done even when there are no issues with lume on a vintage piece? Just to ensure that no issues arise in the future?

 

While I'm not a watchmaker, I did ask mine the exact same thing about a year or 2 ago. He advised against it for several reasons. 1) Meddling with vintage hands for no good reason is never a good idea. 2) "stabilizing" adds a bit more thickness to the hands. He couldn't guarantee that the minute/hour hands wouldn't scrape.

So, no, I didn't do it.

 

I typically only stabilize lume if it is showing some problem. Here's an example - hour hand lume is cracked:



Minute hand also:



Chrono seconds has one corner that's pulling away:



Hands are ready to be worked on:



Applying binder to the back:



The comment that this adds thickness is puzzling to me. The layer of binder that is applied is so thin, that it really doesn't affect the thickness of the hands or their ability to clear each other in my experience. This is right after applying, and once it dried there was really no more thickness added than you would add to a wall with a coat of paint...it's not significant in terms of hand clearance in my view:



Now if I see just one hand that has failing lume, and the others are fine, I will typically do them all. The thinking here is that if the hands are generally the same age, then if one is starting to go, the others are likely getting there as well. But if all the hands are fine, I usually don't do anything unless a customer specifically asks me to.

Cheers, Al

 

Thanks Al. I didn't understand the remark at the time and your post helped clear that up!

 

Thank you, Al. Does stabilization change the color or tone of the lume in your experience?

 

No - on hands the lume is applied to the back side, so it really doesn't affect anything. Applying it on top of lume on the dial is a different story though...