Hello All

I recently received my Hamilton 932 back from a dial repair. Lindell has done this work for me and the results are outstanding. Lindell gives 110 percent of himself to this hobby and to IHC 185. I cannot the express my gratitude enough for his help and dedication to us newcomers. I only hope someday to be able to repay him for his generous ways.

Now to show the repaired dial.

I can't believe this is the same dial.

Doug

Here are closeup pictures.

I have tried to show as close as possible the changes in this dial. I am sorry for the color differences but I have installed a new light source that is more true. I hope this gives you a better idea of the quality of Lindell's repair. I think nor would I say this is a repair that will hold up forever. However at this time in history it does display the watch as it once was. As long as I admit that a repair has been done (and I would) there is nothing wrong. Lindell has done a beautiful job, love this watch, Hamilton 932 movement number 229 very much and want to display it in as close as possible to orginal.

Thanks,

Doug

Thanks Lin for sharing your technique and thanks to Doug for starting this topic. He is obviously happy with the results and, by posting, shows there is no intent to decieve.

Ron

Nice job Lindell

Nice job I have never heard of useing spackling but it looks great. What is your secret to cleaning a dial I have heard many ways even to the point of ultra sonic cleaner but I have also been told that might damage it worse. Can't even see the hairline!!

Very impressive, Lindell!
Cheers!
Joel

The close-up photos are even more spectacular than the originals. I am MOST impressed.

I have used the appliance paint but, as you know, it tends to dry with a noticeable depression, even if you put a big gob in the chip.

One question.... if you are leveling the Spackle to the dial surface... doesn't the touch-up paint tend to sit up on top of it? How do you get everything to be so level? IMO, that's 75% of the problem... getting everything at the same level.

Lindell

When you had the dial off this watch did you notice
if the watch was 16 or 17 jewels. I have heard speculation about these watches actualy being 17 jewels. Just thought I would ask.

Doug

Lindell, have you ever given thought to doing this for a living? I have a Ball 18s dial that could use this kind of TLC. (grins)

BEAUTIFUL job!!

Regard! Mark

I seriously doubt that your 932 is 17 Jewels.

As I recall, Doug... your watch was at the beginning of the run (very, very early) and, therefore, would have been 16J. (and you'd want it that way).

Lindell, that is masterly work! Beyond excellant!

I was going to say that this technique is really a fresco. I looked up the technique and learned that a fresco is done on fresh wet plaster. You painted on dry plaster, so it is "a secco". Still I think Michealangelo would approve.

I don't know if your watch will end up in a museum in one or two hundred years. Of course, they would know it was a repair, but was it a repair done at the time the watch was commonly used or a hundred years later?

I know of an outstanding carpenter and wood carver who restored the case on a very nice tall case clock. He recently saw the clock in a high end auction advertised as all original. He could not convince them that he had rebuild the whole left side of the hood including the carvings. He had to show them his original drawings to convince them. He did the right thing and they then did the right thing by correcting their claim.

Don

I worked on a dial today, another Hamilton "contract" dial that matched the movement.

This dial will look fine with the bezel on... but it is no where near the almost invisible repairs that Lindell can do.

But... I'm learning more all the time and I'm convinced that when my "rookie" errors are eliminated, that this will be a good repair process.

Is anyone doing this besides Lindell and me? This process requires only a razor and materials from any hardware store (cost is under $10.00). A wearable Loupe is also a good idea.

Lindell,

It's taking me awhile to catch up on all the good information in the archives, but that is really one great looking dial repair job.

Bob

I bought this nice old Rolex last year and have recently been developing my skills at dial repair. I have found that just as difficult as getting the repair flat, is the problem of getting a proper shade of white. I tried Krylon appliance touch up, Rustoleum appliance touch up, white epoxy spray paint, two different samples of white nail polish, etc. Another problem I ran into was the hardness of the dried paint. The nail polish that had the closest match to the white of the dial, turned out to not be very hard when dry. That made it harder to sand and harder to polish. Anyway, I used Lindell's spackle undercoat process and things went well with the filling and polish. The main topic of my discussion has to do with a technique I came up with to deal with the double-rail minutes track that goes around the outer edge. Repairs get a lot more difficult when you have to put graphics back in. The following pictures will show how I was able to put back the minutes track on this dial.

Here is a shot of the dial prior to filling with spackle and painting with the white nail polish.

This photo shows the filling and polish. As you can see, the color still wasn't just right. I corrected the situation just a bit by adding a dab of black nail polish to the white polish for the final coat. I also found out something else the hard way...during the polishing process, it is quite easy to fade some of the graphics lying close to the repair. Compare this shot with the previous photo to see what I mean...yuk!

Now, for a very big problem. How do you draw two concentric lines and have the lines line-up at both sides and be no fatter than the existing lines on the dial. I decided the best way get the job done was to use a scrimshaw approach. I would scratch in the lines, then fill with either shoe polish or water soluable india ink. After having a nice gloss on the patch, using a coin as a template, I made my first attempt. This was going to be a one-shot deal...get it wrong, and you are back to repainting and polishing the patch. Like I said previously, starting out on the one side is easy, but hitting the line exactly at the other end is a super hard. Well, I didn't even come close Had to refinish the patch and rethink my approach.

This photo is out of order, but this is where I was testing to see if very fine lines were possible with a scrimshaw approach.

This photo shows the final solution. I dug out my old compass set from high school mechanical drawing class. Using the compass with a needle point on each arm I was able to precisely scribe these two very difficult concentric curved lines. The finished repair is not as good as it could have been because I caused some fading of some of the graphics around repair when I was polishing the filled area. The IIII and IV needed touch up and I was a little sloppy with it, but when the paint dries I should be able to sharpen things up a bit by doing some judicious scraping. There are also some hairlines that refused to clean up prior to doing this repair. Hopefully, they will be less noticable when the watch goes back together. The one thing I am very happy with is my little railroad track that I was able to put back on the repaired area.

One final shot of the tool and the almost finished dial (still needs a little touch up). Note, the repair is between chapter 4 and 5. I'm not super happy with the final repair, but I learned a whole lot and hope future efforts turn out a lot better

Lindell outstanding job! I can not say anything more that has not already been said. My hat is off to the master.

Nice job Bruce and a great tip about the compass.

Nice job thinking out of the box! Very ingenious method for replacing the RR tracks

In the process of scribing my "RR track" I chose to go with the black shoe polish option. Even though the black india ink worked great in test samples, I was worried that if I used it on this Rolex dial some of it may have been sucked into one of the nearby hairline cracks (that would have been really bad!). That was far less likely with the polish. One other note: it was critical that the one leg of the compass stay put when the compass pivoted to swing the arc, especially when the second line needed to be precisely parellel with the first line. To accomplish this, the right type of wood block needed to be used. I decided that maple was ideal because it doesn't have soft and hard striations of grain. It is also hard enough so the pivot hole would not distort before the second line was scribed. It is also necessary to bore two very precise holes for the dial feet to slide down into. Final shimming was done with some very thin pieces of Rodico...didn't want the dial to do any rocking at the wrong time. Hope someone else out there will find all of this useful.

Bruce, very very well done and much appreciate the sharing with us.

Good going Bruce! Using the compass like that was brilliant.