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Waltham C.D.I.A. US Navy Aeronautical Clock "Click" to Login or Register 
posted

Here is one of my aircraft clock's just got this clock stand for it.It was made for the US Navy in WW2 they made this model from 1941 to 1944 it was the last size 37,8 day movement waltham made.It's a Civil date indicator aeronautical(CDIA)clock-waltham 37 size,8 day,24 hour,15 jewel.
 
Posts: 523 | Location: Northern California in the USA | Registered: November 23, 2008
posted
Thanks Mike.

I like your CDIA - it is in very nice condition. There were an estimated 134,000 CDIA clocks made in the course of 13 production runs from September, 1941 through October, of 1944. They were used by both the Army and Navy and you can find them with either all white markings on the dials or a combination of white and green like yours. I don't think one color is more common than the other from the number I have seen of each. Ebay is a good place to pick these up as there always seems to be at least a couple there all the time.
 
Posts: 872 | Location: Baltimore, Maryland USA | Registered: September 20, 2004
posted
That dial is a wartime radium numerals and hands with the rest Munsel green. They were never white in military use.

Civilian owners have since had their dials refisnished with white numerals and hands both to match existing modern dial schemes as well as the dial refinishing companies running dials they've been sent for refinishing under a geigercounter. They will refuse them at the door and send them back to you for you to strip and send back.

They used to strip them for you immersed in water but anymore they just stamp the package with a red radioactive stamp and let the owner deal with stripping it. Still have one of those envelopes from a "hot" A-11 dial I sent to Precision Dial once.

In their original wartime configuration, they're not radioactive enough to worry about for the user. However, when your job is to daily mess around with these things in the process of refinishing them, it is prudent to have them stripped. Exposure does add up over time but most of the 1940's radium on a dial is well spent by now.
 
Posts: 5 | Location: Dallas, Georgia in the USA | Registered: August 11, 2014
posted
The WW2 radium itself is not spent by now. The half life of radium 226 is 1,601 years. In the 70 years or so since then, it has decayed very little. What has happened is the zinc sulfide with which the radium was mixed has been oxidized (burned) by the radiation to the point where it no longer glows. It was the zinc sulfide's reaction to the energy given off by the radium that created the glow, the radium itself does not glow. The total amount of radiation from such paint is not huge, but as Tim says it can become an issue if you work with it with your hands on a daily basis and even more so if you try scraping it off and wind up breathing in some radium dust, or touching your fingers with radium dust to your mouth or nose from doing that. The radium dust in your lungs or your stomach is not a good thing.
 
Posts: 872 | Location: Baltimore, Maryland USA | Registered: September 20, 2004
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