Post by Benchdweller on Oct 22, 2015 17:19:36 GMT -8
Back around the start of the year a guy contacted me about servicing a recent ebay pickup, a Squale 600 from the 60's that had suffered considerable water damage -
The gasket in the crown had disintegrated over the last 50 or so years and the watch had filled with water and stopped working. I pulled it apart and the movement cleaned up remarkably well with only a couple of rusted parts needing replacing. I was able to service the movement, replace the gaskets and relume the dial and hands, but the minute track that was printed on to the underside of the crystal was flaking off badly -
Being an old and quite obscure watch sourcing a NOS crystal was going to be impossible, so I came up with the idea of getting a decal printed and applied to the underside of the crystal. There's a guy on one of the mountain bike forums that I frequent who does custom decals and having used him before I knew his work was good, so emails were sent back and forth. Eventually two decals were printed, one clear with the minute markers printed on it which would be applied to the crystal, and then another in white to go over the top of the clear one. This is the final result -
I was happy with the result and more importantly the owner of the watch was blown away with it. Then a few weeks later the owner emailed me to say his mate had seen it and had another project for me, this time a rare Seiko 7a28 Yacht Timer that had suffered water damage to the dial -
The watch was working fine but the dial was a mess so the owner had a few options, start searching for a NOS or S/H dial which could take years given the rarity of the watch, send the dial off for a professional restoration that could ending up costing more than what the watch is worth, or get a decal printed and applied over the dial. The owner had seen the previous decal and so wanted me to get another custom one printed. I had my reservations as I doubted we would ever get the sharpness of the original dial printed on a decal and I was also concerned that the added thickness of the dial and a decal on top would foul the chrono hands, but after a bit of discussion we decided to try it -
It's obviously not as sharp as the original dial but the macro shot exaggerates this, under the naked eye it looked pretty good and as sharp as I could have hoped for. Its safe to say that it's better than some of the a/m Seiko dials out there.
Applying it to the dial was tricky getting it aligned up perfectly with the holes for the hands, thankfully I was sent several decals and after a few failed attempts it was on. I then had to cut out the applied hour markers with a scalpel plus a gap above each one to be filled with new lume -
The hands were re-lumed to match the dial and this is how it looks now -
The watch is now back with its owner and he's chuffed with how it turned out. It may not be 100% perfect but without the decal the watch would probably spend the rest of its life in a drawer and now it's back on the owners wrist. That's a great result as far as I'm concerned.
The gasket in the crown had disintegrated over the last 50 or so years and the watch had filled with water and stopped working. I pulled it apart and the movement cleaned up remarkably well with only a couple of rusted parts needing replacing. I was able to service the movement, replace the gaskets and relume the dial and hands, but the minute track that was printed on to the underside of the crystal was flaking off badly -
Being an old and quite obscure watch sourcing a NOS crystal was going to be impossible, so I came up with the idea of getting a decal printed and applied to the underside of the crystal. There's a guy on one of the mountain bike forums that I frequent who does custom decals and having used him before I knew his work was good, so emails were sent back and forth. Eventually two decals were printed, one clear with the minute markers printed on it which would be applied to the crystal, and then another in white to go over the top of the clear one. This is the final result -
I was happy with the result and more importantly the owner of the watch was blown away with it. Then a few weeks later the owner emailed me to say his mate had seen it and had another project for me, this time a rare Seiko 7a28 Yacht Timer that had suffered water damage to the dial -
The watch was working fine but the dial was a mess so the owner had a few options, start searching for a NOS or S/H dial which could take years given the rarity of the watch, send the dial off for a professional restoration that could ending up costing more than what the watch is worth, or get a decal printed and applied over the dial. The owner had seen the previous decal and so wanted me to get another custom one printed. I had my reservations as I doubted we would ever get the sharpness of the original dial printed on a decal and I was also concerned that the added thickness of the dial and a decal on top would foul the chrono hands, but after a bit of discussion we decided to try it -
It's obviously not as sharp as the original dial but the macro shot exaggerates this, under the naked eye it looked pretty good and as sharp as I could have hoped for. Its safe to say that it's better than some of the a/m Seiko dials out there.
Applying it to the dial was tricky getting it aligned up perfectly with the holes for the hands, thankfully I was sent several decals and after a few failed attempts it was on. I then had to cut out the applied hour markers with a scalpel plus a gap above each one to be filled with new lume -
The hands were re-lumed to match the dial and this is how it looks now -
The watch is now back with its owner and he's chuffed with how it turned out. It may not be 100% perfect but without the decal the watch would probably spend the rest of its life in a drawer and now it's back on the owners wrist. That's a great result as far as I'm concerned.
