I have an Elgin 539 wrist watch with the hack function. The dial on this is funky. Can anyone point me in a general direction for dial cleaning.

picture 2 from a different angle. You can see the funk a bit better

Hello Bruce try a #2 pencil eraser just don,t rub too hard works pretty good.

For a softer touch than the eraser try Rodico. Do not even think about using any kind of solution to clean the dial. If it is too bad, have it restored, but it does not look that bad to me.

Don

Don, I'm certain you have excellent reasons for your aversion to dial cleaning in a solution. I have only run into trouble when I try to get the solution to do too much. In the rare case I have made a dial worse, it involved a dial that would have been destined for a refinisher anyway.

This particular dial is, I agree, not in too bad shape. The two problems I see are, first, a bit of radium burn that indicates the watch hands were set at a few minutes to eight for an extended period of time. Second is the dingy tone of the radium itself in both the hands and the numerals. Sadly, although a simple cleaning in solution wouldn't hurt, it wouldn't help at all either.
-Cort