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Just to inform fully on the health dangers, Radium assumption must be sizeable and continous to be dangerous. Nothing happens with the occasional manipulation on a single set. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium

If the age/make of watch indicates to you that it is Radium-lumed, be careful removing itand avoid inhalation of ingestion of the materiel. Good Luck, RMD

Just finished watching the video on watch hand re lume and I just wondered, is it better to remove the old, possibly radium, lume off the dial or to paint over it Thanks andy

I think it is all ceramic. I believe the term is "Fat Lava". This has apparently become collectible, so if you have any garish pottery from the period, you may find it is worth more than you thought. Incidentally, some of the glazes used contain uranium, which is unsurprisingly, mildly radioactive, so grab a nice red or green example, and you have something to store all that used radium and tritium lume in. Collect enough and you can get yourself on an international "watch" list of an entirely different sort.

I wouldn,t soak, radium absorbs acetone or water based liquids, gets runny and spread all over the reflector.Melt the crystal remaining in the groove, with a heated needle. You should be careful not to touch the reflector with hot needle. A screwdriver blade wide as the groove works better. Just melt and bring out the crystal in pieces, continue the same for cleaning the groove.

I’m happy I was able to bring back to life the blue color from the hands without affecting the old radium. Everything is now intact and ready for another “spin in time”.

I dont know. I did come across a pretty good documentary though during my pursuit to decide called the radium girls. I have two other 7750s to build up. 1 will be adding in the day wheel. Because some of the hour markers need to be refreshed ill probably elect to repaint. If you have any suggestions on product let me know. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

I suspect that when new, the watch face would have looked more like this. The lume is most likely radium based, and this may have been optional. There was probably a lume free version, with white digit colouring I would suspect.

i studied this quite extensively since i use to have cancer and received radiation treatments, and i work on vintage military watches which always contain radium. Radium can not be absorbed through the skin so touching is not much of a risk as long as you are not licking your fingers or picking your nose after handling a radium dial. but there are two ways to absorb radiation from lume. 1: Ingestion- through this process 80% flushes out from digestion. 20% gets absorbed into the blood and is distributed to organs and eventually will metabolize in the bones like calcium. It will then break down over a period of months in the form of both alpha and beta. 2: Inhalation- 100% absorbed through the lungs then 20% broken down through liver. 80% will metabolize in bone. it will still break down the same way but will take longer because more has been absorbed. so contrary to popular belief radium will not stay in the body forever, therefor limiting how much and how often you are exposed to it will determine if you are at risk. the story of the radium girls. these women who would sharpen their paint brushes laced with radium with their lips to keep the tips sharp for luming watch dials ingest a whole lot of hot radium per day. at least 100-200 dials per day, then they started realizing that it would glow so they thought it would be cool to use it as make up. and not all of these women ended up with cancer. so short answer is a definite NO! do not worry. just use gloves and a mask if you feel like you want to be careful. and DONT lick the dial LOL

As long as you washed you hands and didn't ingest any, you will be OK. Yes you should be careful with radium watches, some prefer not to touch them at all. If they are just cheap old watches, personally I wouldn't open them. They relatively safe as long as you don't open them(or wear them all the time) - the glass and case will stop the alpha, and as long as the radium isn't plastered on, the gamma shouldn't be too bad. I have worked on a few, but only after extensive reading-up, and taking (probably more than necessary) precautions. I bought a 'Pocket Geiger' counter and when working with radium wear face mask, gloves and make sure that I work in a 'sterile' environment. Try this article : http://www.vintagewatchstraps.com/luminous.php

I recently bought a few old cheap watches to work on and I believe some of them have radium on the dial and hands. Yesterday I accidentally touched the dial with my fingers and opened up the others to inspect them.. Should I be worried? Should I not work on watches with radium on them?

Sorry for the delayed response everyone! Thanks so much for all the information!! Haha yankeedog and andyhull, I will do my best to resist the urge to lick the dial. I have made it habit to use finger cots at all times when taking down or assembling a watch. I will maybe add a mask when dealing with potential radium dials to be on the safe side. So as far as cleaning the movement, is there any precautions needed there as far as pre cleaning any potential radium dust from the dial, I don’t really want anything like that in my cleaning solutions, or am I being to paranoid?

Way back in the day , the ladies who painted radium dials had all sorts of health problems.They would sharpen the point of their brush by putting it in their mouth. As a precaution, wear gloves, wash hands and do not lick the dial.

Just by a chance I happen to work at a company dedicated to handle low, medium and high level radioactive waste. I haven't really followed this discussion before about 226Ra (Radium) but can only agree in the conclusion Andy has presented here. As long you wear good protection like nitrile gloves and don't lick on the dial or at your fingers after you handled the dial or hands you shouldn´t be worried. As with any hazardous material one should use common sense when handling it. A simple respiratory mask will be enough protection if you are afraid you are in the risk zone to inhale 226Ra. Even if you have had protective gloves when handling the dial or hands always wash of your hands with soap and water. I usually leave the residues of 226Ra on the dial after a slight cleaning of the dial with Rodico. Most often it goes away from the dial hands when cleaning them and therefore gets stuck in the Rodico. If you worry about the radiation from the residues on the Rodico: then just put it in a jar with water. Water is a good protection against radiation and we also use it as protection when handling high level waste from nuclear plants. The small amount from one or two watches will not contribute as any source for radiation that significantly will affect any living been. One have to keep in mind when it comes to the thing with "The radium Girls", back in the time some people still believed radium was a miracle cure for anything and they didn't see any harm in painting not only their teeth but also use it as makeup. Radium is a poisonous chemical. 226Ra mostly contributes with alpha and beta radiation which has a short reach and limited penetration ability, the small amount of gamma radiation one get from a watch is very hard to detect since the background radiation in the most cases is probably higher. To detect alpha and beta radiation from radium you have to use specialized equipment calibrated to 226Ra. These instruments are not commonly available at Ebay. Just buying a cheap gamma detector which is not calibrated for the use to check your watches is in my mind just a waste of money since the most people haven’t got any training in how to use them or the understanding in how to interpret the results from the measurements. So just be cautious and aware when handling this kind of watches and I think the most of you can sleep without worrying about radiation hazards even if you like me are collecting watches from the time period when dials were painted with Radium. P.S If you see something like in the picture below in your watch then you should be a little more cautious.

Don’t worry about radium dials. I used to handle them for years and I have not grown two heads. This is just one you have found. You need to remove the hands and dial and take a good clear photo of the keyless work. That is the way to I D watch movements.

Hi everyone! So I found this guy lying in the bottom of a pile of parts watches and was wonder if someone could help me identify it? I would like to dive in and fix it up but I have a bit of a concern when it comes to the possibility of radium dials. I see so see what looks like luminous dots at the hour indicators but I don’t know what it is. Any thoughts would be great! Thanks!

In another life, I was a crew member of a nuclear powered submarine for 2+ years. On my first deployment one of the nuclear twidgets who worked on the reactor came into the senior petty officer berthing area with a geiger counter. After taking a couple of readings, he zeroed in on me. My watch with radium lume was setting off the compartment radiation counter. My watch was confiscated and placed in a lead container for the duration of the patrol. I was told to take it home and not bring it back aboard afterwards. I was also told that the radiation emitted wasn't in the least dangerous to me but that it posed a pain in the butt for the on-board radiation monitoring system. I'm assuming that he knew his subject matter. In any event, I sold the watch and bought another so that I could have a timepiece on my wrist while working aboard.

Beware of inhaling the radium dust from the dial and hands. The half-life is 1600 years. In the body it goes into the bones and irradiates the bone marrow all your life. The radon gas that comes out is not really bad, also the direct radiation is not dangerous at a some distance.

Just FYI, I picked up an FTLab headphone jack geiger counter, I can't vouch for it's accuracy, but it is picking up significant counts for the watches I own I know to have radium lume, and little to no counts for those I know/hoped to not have radium lume. Very important to use it with your data and wifi disabled, was picking up some worrying levels of radiation before I copped this. Almost set a match to the place!

If you want to read a more scientific assessment of the toxicity of radium specifically as opposed to ionising radiation in general, this might be of interest -> https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp144.pdf Do bear in mind though that infrequent exposure while working with a few watch dials, if you use sensible precautions is till relatively low risk. Low risk, does not mean no risk, so do take care to minimises exposure.

There was a discussion recently here on radium do a search and see if you can find it. The problem with radium is it burns out the phosphorus relatively fast it is still radioactive for a very long time and depending upon how much you have it's not good for you. Then military dials and hands tended to be much much more radioactive than the civilian stuff.

It would appear that some have had in the past on the hands and numerals (radium?)

Would these dials by some chance have markers that glow-in-the-dark like with radium perhaps?

For vintage watches that the hands may have radium lume on them and they are not painted I just drop them into a small jar of acetone and let it dissolve the lume. I then remove the hands and tip the acetone (about 20mills only)into my jar of spent cleaning fluid which is left in the corner of my shed to evaporate down and then the heavier parts like turps that dont evaporate are stored in a container to go to my local council recycler that takes oil and paint thinners. The little amount of radium in it is of no risk as I don't touch that many old watches and it means I don't have to worry about dust coming up from the hands when I remove the old lume. I do take care even with the movement and case and ensure I wash my hands after dismantling them for cleaning and usually wear finger cots too.

Be aware that even if the dial no longer glows, it is still probably radioactive, since the half life of Radium is around 1600 years, and other transuranic elements are probably present with similar or longer half lives. The hazard is relatively low, but you should still take care. If removing old lume, wear gloves, and a mask, and keep the old lume in a paste form by using some form of barrier material, water, while it may leave marks is probably OK. Something oil based may be better, and any solvent that evaporates rapidly may transport the particles into the air. The amount of material involved is pretty small, and the radioactivity present in a single watch dial is not a huge amount, but it should be treated with respect to avoid ingesting it. Skin contact, while ill advised is less hazardous, if you do get it on your skin, wash it off with plenty of water and soap or hand cleaner. In this sense, it is similar to things like asbestos, lead and mercury, all of which you are likely to encounter in the environment naturally, and all of which present a small, but not insignificant environmental hazard. There is an interesting article on Wikipedia -> here <- particularly the section on safety. The hazard is greater when the material is on a more industrial scale. This article might be of interest in that respect. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-34862223 In summary, treat with respect, but don't get too paranoid, just exercise suitable caution. Slightly off topic. If you are interested in detecting radium and other radioactive particles, you can obviously buy a suitable detector, or if you like a challenge, you can build your own, using a geiger tube, or even a pin diode. Google keywords "open source geiger counter." or "pin diode radiation detector" I have a bunch of old pin diode based dosimeters in my junk pile, which I intend to convert into counters when I get a bit of spare time. See here for more -> http://www.stm32duino.com/viewtopic.php?t=3322