Heat blued watch hands ?

[mlaskin]

Can anyone in this terrific community make heat-blued watch hands? I have a watch with chemically blued hands and would like the real thing. Who here can perform that service? Many thanks, in advance, for any leads! Michael Laskin

[Emilio]

Binbin can produce steel hands I think. I'm not sure if he is active on this forum already (he is on the old one)

[Tanukjaju]

[mention]Emilio[/mention] , [mention]binbin[/mention] has been here. I’m leaving him a mention so he sees a notification to click on this thread.

[binbin]

Hi Michael ,

I have a few 3646 and Cali style hands left from a group effort that was put together a few years ago.

If your looking to make one pair of unique hands, that could be very costly. You might be able to hand make 1 set, but having them made for you will be expensive. Best to see what is out there that is close to what you are looking for and modify them to work.

Maybe post a picture of the style here. Someone might have seen what you need.

Cheers,

[mlaskin]

Can chemically blued hands be treated so that they can be then blued by heat? Can they be stripped, plated, and then blued properly with heat? I am curious.

[binbin]

It would depend on the base metal they are made from.

Good results can be obtained from 1095 carbon steel. The issue with 1095 steel is that it is hard to form/make the hands from. Most newer hands now days use a brass or aluminum type material as it is easier to stamp/form the hands in mass production.

I tried to blue a few of the cheaper hand sets with mixed results. Nothing matches the steel hands.

I'm not too sure how the plating idea would work out. Can you plate carbon steel? You need to polish the hands to a high polish to get a nice blue effect. You would have to take that into account for the plating process to make sure you have enough plating remaining.