: In over the past 10 years I have painted 100s of vintage watch
: hands and thought I would share some of the details of doing
: this here. Its not that hard if a few important steps are
: followed. First I will start with some before pics of the hands
: as I received them. Looks like they were hand painted with the
: hands on the watch as some of the paint got on the dial and it
: does not want to come off completely with any of the dial
: cleaners that I have....
:
:
: First I remove the hands and soak them in lacquer thinner for an
: hour or two to remove the old paint. Then I place the hour and
: minute hands under water to remove the old lume (I do not want
: any old lume dust around even if it is the newer type).
: Next, the hands need to be sanded with 600 grit paper. I have used
: some other hands to illustrate this (I had already painted the
: Heuer hands when I realized I should have taken a pic of the
: sanding op). The hour and minute hands can be held with tweezers
: but I use a reaming tool to hold the small hands and put the
: long end on my thumb nail to support it while sanding.....
:
:
:
:
: Most hands were not sanding originally when painted at the factory
: and that is the main reason the paint flakes or chips off. Its
: also a good idea to use a paint prep solvent to make sure there
: is no oil on them before painting. For painting I mount the
: small hands on straight pins that have been sharpened on the
: ends so the will fit and fit tight (so they don't blow off from
: the paint spray). For the hour and minute hands, I use wooden
: match sticks that are trimmed on the end so the hands will fit.
: These match sticks are then fitted on additional straight pins.
: I use an off white spray enamel (Ford Wimbledon white to be
: exact) for the small hands. They need 2 coats and in this case,
: the white is used as a base coat for the orange hands with 2
: coats of orange after the white. The most important thing is to
: spray the first coat just enough to cover, let it get tacky (NOT
: dry) and then spray the second coat (something I learned working
: in an auto body shop in another lifetime).....
:
:
:
:
: The hands need to dry overnight before handling. Next comes the
: lume. I use regular scotch tape on the front of the hand to hold
: the lume in place. The lume that I use is my own special blend
: and it is water based so I can add color of need be (don't ask
: because I do not want to give away a lot of work that went into
: it). For these hands, I want a vintage look instead of a bright
: white look aka Superluminova which is solvent based and hard to
: work with....
:
:
: this material needs to dry for at least an hour before carefully
: removing the tape. Here are the finished hands and on the dial
: too....
:
:
:
:
: and in the finished watch....
:
:
:
:
: Well, that's it. Is not hard but might take a bit of practice to
: get it just right. I think the hands make the watch. What do you
: think? Thanks, Craig