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Re: Follow-up on my Autavia 3646 Tachy

Hello Stephen,

: Please don't hate me for mentioning this Mick

Don't worry! We are discussing a watch which I really love as it is, except the red chrono hand.

Thank you for raising a point I forgot to mention in my initial post.

: but the dial has, to
: me, obviously been re-lumed.

I feared so, too, until I saw the images of this post: http://www.chronocentric.com/forums/heuer/index.cgi?page=1;md=read;id=44477


The first dial my be re-lumed, too (I don't think so). But the defective areas of the second dial show that the original lume was applied not as exactly as we would expect it nowadays. I could imagine that it was rather difficult to apply this thick viscous material in a triangular shape. Dots and even straight lines are easier to apply.

: They did a slightly sloppy job
: taking away the sharp edges of this watch model's unique dial
: with lumed triangles, particularly at 12:00 and 1:00. They also
: appear to "sit" too tall. That is always the danger of
: re-luming a watch.

: [....]

: Perhaps "in the metal" this isn't very obvious
: since these are big, high rez photos.

Well, this is high rez:

All the lume markers show this degenerated triangular shape. Please keep in mind, that this old luminous material gains volume while reacting over the decades. As the footprint of a marker cannot extend, the material grows in height and may blur the initially triangular form (why am I thinking of Erwin Wurm's Fat Cars now?).

I'm still undecided. Fortunately I like the dial as it is.

Cheers,

Mick

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