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Vintage Heuer Discussion Forum
The place for discussing 1930-1985 Heuer wristwatches, chronographs and dash-mounted timepieces. Online since May 2003. | |||||||
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If the watch is very early with single insert markers everywhere bar 12 o'clock, then the hands are the polished steel ones with the black centre inserts, like this:
The majority of the single insert marker watches would have come with the second execution hands though:
These are shown on the 1153 on the left, and are sized to match the width of the single markers. The third execution hands on the 1553 on the right are notably wider, and are sized to match the double markers used on later watches (1153s as well as 1553s).
So it's best to use hands that match the markers on your watch. However! Whilst I don't doubt that it was the intention to use the wide hands with the wide markers and vice versa, stock control and usage at Heuer means a pretty large number of watches seem to have left the factory with "mismatched" hands and markers, so this isn't to be taken as an indication that such a watch isn't original, just that they were allowed to deviate from the marketing ideal.
The next thing to keep in mind is that, apart from those first execution hands, the hands are keyed to dial colour, i.e. silver-dialled watches have different hands than charcoal/blue-dialled watches. Here are the hands used on a 73453 S:
Later hands get wider again, but the difference is less immediately obvious to the eye than it is on the silver-coloured hands.
Later on again, the 110.253/5s get different hands altogether, but that's another story...
So, the long answer to the original question, is yes the hands can be swapped, as long as the watches are roughly contemporary and have the same general dial colour (i.e. both S or N, it doesn't matter about the various greys and blues that N denotes).
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