Corps of Engineers IWC Cal 65 H6

Hi Jimmy,
You got me!
About 7 years ago, I was the first author of an article : Experiments With Radioluminescent Dials From IWC Watches.
For that article I did a lot of research, but I did not found that gamma-rays were capable to color glass. Glass is for a large percentage SiO2 and by adding elements such as Sodium, Borium, Calcium etc. the properties of glass and its melting point are changed. Enamel is for a large part glass but contains more minerals and elements than glass. Physically enamel will act very much as glass . I know this from my experience, when I worked as a young chemical assistant in a glass laboratory, at Philips, Eindhoven, The Netherlands , from 1963-1970.
Back to the "burning". The color of the stains , caused by Radium-226 paint is brown, varying from amber to dark brown. This is in concordance with the facts that you show on the old enamel dials.
The match ends : 1-0 for Jimmy.
Remarkable is the fact that I read about the reversibility of the coloring.
The "burning" effect can be reversed by putting the colored glass(enamel) in an oven at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for a couple of hours. In such way the "burning wound" developed during half a century, can be "burnt" away. I guess no watchmaker has ever tried to do that with an affected dial, but it would be worth to try this! Further , your quoted article makes clear that the affected material is obviously not radioactive and you thouht differently.
That is minor. (looking for a return match)
Kind regards,
Adrian,
(alwaysiwc).

Hi Adrian, I read that paper of yours, Experiments with Radioluminescent Dials from Military IWC Watches, with Hans Goerter and Roland Claessens as co-authors a long time ago, but I must admit, I wasn't looking for any faults or omissions at the time. I knew that glass could be couloured if subjected to Gamma rays, as I had read about it before, just as a matter of interest, but I couldn't remember where I read about it...Thank god for Google ;-)
For those of you who would be interested in reading the paper, here's my copy;-)
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If you prefer to download a pdf copy EXPERIMENTS WITH RADIOLUMINESCENT DIALS FROM MILITARY IWC WATCHES...

My respects for this paper...

By the way, I didn't think for one moment that the dial material was radioactive, I knew it was the Radium, which still had to be present after the decay of the ZnS ;-)

It takes a lot of courage to publicly admit that one was misconcieved, you're in good company, Alan Greenspan admitted to the US Congress that his idea of an unregulated market was wrong...I respect you all the more for it ;-)

Best Regards

Jimmy

excellent summary, gents ! im collecting mil. watches for over 20 years and have seen a lot of these. mostly burned into the glasses. but that is because the mil. watches had more black dials and there it is harder to spot. next to the numerals there is often decay from loose particles. and there have been discussions about the danger of old radium dials in the past. the wrists of the pilots were not that much in danger due to the thickness of the movements. many of the WW 2 cases were non-steel cases. steel was needed for the war effort. maybe the most" Radium Burn ", ive seen, was on a glass of an Longines Divers watch from 1942, made in very small numbers by a silver smith in london as counterpart to the Panerai`s from the German and Italian Combat Divers. Massive silver case and very thick radium paste on the dial. the hands had a caramel colour......kind regards from australia. achim

Dear Achim,
In another thread called "Dear Forum, I would like to know...", I expressed my "reserve" towards apprentices, Discussions and Comments : 1.
Some Forumers said that among these apprentices, there might be collectors or/and experts, who could contribute to our Forum in terms of knowledge, experience etc.
What a great surprise to recognise you here as the German expert on military watches, now living in Australia. Several times you have provided significant data on military watches, if I asked you. I would say welcome to the Forum and please share with us your vast knowledge on IWC military watches.
Kind regards to down under,
Adrian,
(alwaysiwc).

Adrian, Jimmy, and now Achim!

What a great source of expert opinions we can all draw on and learn from here.

Achim, we look most forward to your posts on this forum and in particular of course to any IWC specific information you can share too.

Welcome aboard, from "down under"!

Sorry to drag up this old thread, but just for completion, here are the measurements of the IWC watch, measured directly at the dial at 12:00 with a Gamma Scout, as used in the nuclear plants in Garching, Germany.!

As you can see, it's fairly hot, at 23.65 µSv/h but the Hamilton I showed as a comparison is the burner, at 60.24 µSv/h

Hope it is of interest.
Jimmy

That´s an interesting information Jimmy, at least to me.

Really stunning amount of radiation ?!

A while ago I have checked a Radium Minerva, it was about 5 µSv/h.

But I have used another Gamma ray detector ?!

That very intensive radiation fits to the burn signs on the dials.

Thanks for those technical details.

Hi Jimmy,
The radiation is (nearly) as strong as it was 100 years ago, because the half time of Radium 226 is 1600 years. If your Hamilton is emitting more, the Radium concentration in the paint is higher or the distance of measurement was closer, or both.
Kind regards,
Adrian.
p.s. Did you visit our watch friend H. L?

Hi Adrian, I am waiting for him to finish my Stowa B-Uhr, the IWC B-Uhr he has finished...I'll let you know when I am picking them up ;-)

Jimmy

Holy moly Jimmy! I had thought I understood the entire discussion and in particular Adrian clear message that after 100 or 50 years not much has happened to the radium radiation levels. But man, seeing that actual reading on the counter HOT HOT HOT !

I'm not going to sleep with my COE next to my bed no more!

Hi Mark,
Just 2 remarks which are important to know , but which are not scaring.
1. The real danger for Radium 226 is the lack of knowledge about the physical properties of this glowing substance. Yes it is true that antique watches loaded with Radium have not significantly lost radiation power after 100 years.
But the real danger is that many old watches do not glow in the dark anymore after a century. This is not due to power loss of Radium as has been said but to the Zinc Sulphid paint with which the Radium has been mixed. Radium just turns on Zinc Sulphid to glow in the dark but as a consequence of continuous bombing, the molecular structure of Zinc Sulphid has been destroyed and the glowing stops!
2. Radiation power is equivalent to the square of the distance between the source ( the watch) and the receiver (the owner). Suppose you receive a certain dose at 30 cm distance from the watch. When you double the distance ( 60 cm), the dose will not be reduced by half but by 1/2 x 1/2 is 1/4.
If you triple the distance to 90 cm. the dose will be reduced to 1/3 x 1/3 is 1/9 of the original dose.
Take home message is : do not wear a Radium watch continuously and do not put it on your bedside table, but there is no need to exchange the dial for a SuperLuminova one.
Kind regards,
Adrian,
(alwaysiwc).

Hi Jimmy
Now back to the watches:
Here is another couple like yours:
The c.65 was built in 1917, the c.52 in 1916

How cool, nice watches you have there Hans-Georg, do you have the rest of the Corps of Engineers watches, or do you only collect the IWC watches?

Regards

Jimmy

No these two are the only ones in my collection. But I observed that the the Corps of Engineers watches are not so often in the market now.

Regards
Hans

Hans, am I glad I got these a few years ago ;-)

Just one comment:

It is an illness of the time that all COE-watches became polished.
The where blackend and should remain black.

Some of them are still back at teh inside ore at the section beside the movement.

Please, when you find a black COE keep it black !

regards

Ralph

It is, however, possible to re-blacken the polished cases of COE watches using liver of sulphur jelly.

This is true, but I think the engraving was most probably done after the blackening and so it was a bit "shiny". Reblackening the complete case blackens also the engraving....
I'd be happy to see once an original blackend case ....

regards

Ralph

It is POSSIBLE, but you/your watchmaker/your jeweller needs some EXPERIENCE trying to re-blacken sulphur jelly.

My watchmaker (being an experienced watchmaker, but no silversmith experienced in restoring vintage silver) tried to re-blacken a CoE. Fortunately I was cautious and gave him the worst case I had. The result was that the top layer of the silver scaled off. You could peel it virtually like an egg! After that experience I visited a guy restoring medieval sacred precious metal items from churches and he knew the right concentration and the right temperature.

So be careful!

Regards

Th. Koenig

Why do you think the stamping was made after blackening?
I assume the stamping was made at the factories, and not by the COE. If this assumption is correct, then it is more likely the cases were first stamped and then blackened.
BTW, I assume the purpose of oxidizing COE silver cases matte black was not to have shiny objects on the front-line, that could attract enemy fire.

There was an old-timer artisan in the Lisbon area who was a master at restoring watch cases, and an expert in oxidizing silver with the old-fashion liver of sulphur, not the gel on sale today.
Unfortunately, mainly for him, he died a couple of months ago. His craft has been lost.