12/27/2023 0 Comments Measure radiation from radium watchesThen depending upon who you are determines how nicely they treat you. Like a ships clock for instance I've heard stories of people going day Canada for watch show coming back to the US and getting pulled aside just for the possession of one ships clock with radium hands because the detectors at the border able to pick up something like that in your car. Maybe I should work on military watches oh wait they have like 1 million times the radium of a normal civilian with each. Then conceivably you're going to find that almost everything that fluoresces before a certain age is probably radium. It's very clearly labeled radium but it's not labeled touch it and you'll die they weren't afraid of radium back then. Then yes they did make some actual radium and refilling kits there was once one in the material house that I managed to acquire. Or when you are buying old watchmakers stuff it used to be the feel the hands in they had a wax substance you'd melt it and you put that on the hands and I was thought that was all newer except once again the Geiger counter got really excited so maybe it's not that new. But otherwise it could be a card of hands made last year or whatever you can't tell. If you're looking up brand-new hands on a card with the way they used to come if you move the hand a little bit C can see underneath on usually the radium ones you will see that the paper is a darker color. But slowly bring it up near the packet of brand-new watch hands I have and it starts to pick up where though there is more and more of them in the wood bursts get closer and closer and then it sounds like a rapid machine gun fire.īut it does bring up a problem my brand-new hands that look brand-new how old are they? The fact that the Geiger counter makes an interesting sound tells you that they must be reasonably old. In other words if I turn the Geiger counter on that I have about every 20 to 30 seconds there is a little pop sound some random piece of something flying through space. It's really nice of you get a sensitive Geiger counter with audio. I'm going to invest in a Geiger counter, and vow to never work on radium dials I'm just careful when working on it (seal the dial/hands in a bag) I have a Universal Geneve with radium, but I'm leaving untouched. *With some "more valuable" watches, people want the original patina of the dial and hands. Change the water, do it again until no reading on the geiger. I only use a teaspoon of water each time, then soak it up in to a tissue and bag it.Įverything disposable used gets sealed in plastic bags and disposed in the household waste bin. For hands - I put then in a very small plastic bag/container and a blast in the ultrasonic. To remove dots from the dial I used wet cotton buds. I cover my work surface with cling-film, I wear a mask and latex gloves (probably not needed). Glad I checked.Īfter plenty of research, I decided it's OK to work with radium (I try to avoid the watches*), but taking the following precautions (probably more than I need to) : I have a "Pocket Geiger" so I can check any suspect watches - I didn't expect this mid to late 60s watch to have radium. I sometime work on radium watches- I've just removed the radium from the dial and hands of a 60s Rotary.
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