Hi all
Searched the forums but could not find the answer even if I'm sure that it's has been discussed previously. When looking at an index wi a loupe is there anyway to distinguish the difference between tritium and luminova? On My Rolex watches I have compared the indexes with the white printing of the dial. If they are slightly warm in color I think it's Tritium. I don't know about Omega (there might be something similar) but Tolex produced som Swiss T25 dials with Luminova, so that's why you need to be a bith careful if you want Tritium. Thoughts?

Regards
Peter

 

If Omega has T's before/after Swiss Made, it's tritium. If not, it's most likely luminova. Speedmasters made the switch in the early 90's to Luminova. I think the earliest are Radium. Not sure if this helps you...

 

Under a loupe. Tritium is grainy and matte, usually ranging from beige to custard yellow to brown to even dark green. Some may not glow under intense light, but for those that do, it is just a short glow. (After removing the light source)


Luminova is smooth and shiny, almost always stark white in colour, and under intense light will shine very very bright for a very long time. (After removing the light source).

 

Luminova can be any color... looks at a multitude of retro inspired Omegas....

The easiest way to check is charge it with a flash light. If it's glowing strong after a minute it luminova. If it fades out before 15 seconds and you can barely see the lume in the dark after a minute it's Tritium.

Yes there are mentions of Rolex marked as Tritium but left the factory with luminova from the transitional period I assume would be @1998

Pre late 50's you could have Tritium dials not marked T also. I forget when the law went into effect. As far as I know no Speedmasters where Radium.

All but the earliest Speedmasters are marked correctly. Anything after about 1960 would be marked T Swiss Made T with a change over to Luminova about 1998. Unless it has been relumed. Hence the first paragraph and a flashlight.

 

2915-1 through the early 2998 references had radium dials.

 

Here is a nice brief article put out by MWO today about the use of Radium and Tritium on Speedmaster dials.

http://www.moonwatchonly.com/omega-speedmaster-moonwatch/moonwatch-only-reviews/speedmasters-dials/

 

Just to further muddy the waters, there are several Omega lines from the 70s-90 which omit the T's around the Swiss Made even though they used tritium dials, the Pre-Bonds, early Bond Seamsaster, early Dynamic gen III and several others are examples, though as noted above, Moonwatches do follow the T= tritium rules. MWO definitely states that the very early Speedmasters used radium lume, most manufacturers transitioned away from Radium from 1961-1963

 

But wouldn't that be illegal? The T's were there because they believed tritium posed a threat in some way, no? Are there markets that they shipped to that didn't require T's maybe?

 

Yep - just one example (early 25318000) and I have serviced many that had tritium dials/hands and were not marked:



Cheers, Al

 

There is a big difference in the structure of the material and i am not sure if SL will age with time. This is a macro shot from my Enicar Aqua Graph.