extra lume??

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andyp4x4
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extra lume??

Post by andyp4x4 »

Hey all- Anybody have any thoughts on extra lume. I am tempted to send mine out and have some superlume applied to the hands to improve the night visibility. Any thoughts??
Regards,
AndyP
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Hans
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Re: extra lume??

Post by Hans »

Personally I would never do this, it will cost you money and will very likely destroy the original look of the LE Kingfisher. For me the brightness of the lume is not the most important...
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John
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Re: extra lume??

Post by John »

I don't have problems with the lume either.
At night I have alarmclock to look at, or :schlafen:
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Re: extra lume??

Post by Daz »

:lol:
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Re: extra lume??

Post by President »

Enjoy Spain. Did you score any pics of beach babes ? :lol:
andyp4x4
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Re: extra lume??

Post by andyp4x4 »

Good advice gentleman-Thank you
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Re: extra lume??

Post by joerattz »

Andy, I actually considered doing the same with mine, but decided against it in case something went wrong with the lume job. Daz, I disagree with you on the artificial light for the lume. I spend most of my time in artifical light. I work in an office setting where I am in artificial light for 9+ hours (minus 1 for lunch) and then I leave into the darkness of the night. I want a watch that can have some lume glowing after being in artificial light. To me, that's real life conditions. I know it may not parallel a real diving scenario where you may be out in the sun and then dive, but for my real life, I want normal lighting conditions to be enough to make the markers and hands glow. My Seikos have no problems with this at all.

So like you mentioned, I considered re-luming my LE. Here is a picture I found with some blue lume:

Image

http://www.bobthayerjr.com/watches/028.htm

I contacted that guy to ask him about blue lume and he didn't seem to know what I was talking about. Made me think he was exaggerating the work he has done. In that picture, the lume looks great. But, Hans' pictures make the lume look good too, so you never know how it would have looked in real life.

I am still puzzled by all this because either superluminova is real crap and severely (almost fraudulently) over-hyped, or Chris is designing something making the lume inferior, or the manufacturing of the lume is inferior. Every Seiko I have has significantly better lume than the LE. Something is wrong. I know lume is more important to me that many others, but I think Chris needs to resolve the problem because I can't imagine the pilot doing well if it doesn't glow any better than the LE does.
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Hans
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Re: extra lume??

Post by Hans »

A lot has to do with the thickness of the layer of superluminova. Rolex uses the same superluminova, but with a really thick layer.

Pictures are impossible to use as an indication how well the luminova works. Even a luminous paste that hardly works can be depicted as brightly shining. That's just a matter of which shutter-time you use. If you use a really long shutter-time you can make the faintest star in the sky shine as brightly as the sun...
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Re: extra lume??

Post by Daz »

:lol:
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El Tiempo
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Re: extra lume??

Post by El Tiempo »

Another thing to consider besides a botched lume job is the water resistance. When I looked into getting my Seiko relumed, they would only guarantee resistance to a depth less than the watch was originally rated. Since I had just had Seiko replace all the seals and pressure test it, I declined.
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Re: extra lume??

Post by Hans »

That is a good point, not everybody can check pressure until 1000ft/300m
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Re: extra lume??

Post by seaclose »

I really can't see the problem here.

The only time I need to look at a watch when I'm in bed, is to see if it's time to get up. If it's dark it's not time. :lol:
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Re: extra lume??

Post by Russ-Shettle »

andyp4x4 wrote:Hey all- Anybody have any thoughts on extra lume. I am tempted to send mine out and have some superlume applied to the hands to improve the night visibility. Any thoughts??
Regards,
AndyP
Andy,

I don't think adding extra material of the same thing is going to extend the time of illumination. What you want to do in order to achieve what you want is replace it completely with Tritium.

Russ
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