Dial paint, I wonder...

[TUFF Stough]

Yes, it is obvious that sunburst or texture is done becore painting. I'm just wondering about very thin layer of paint... I noticed many seiko dials are made of aluminium so it can be anodized as well.
Recently I was playing with some scrap seiko 7005 dial and it was brass...
However, can offset print distribute such uniform and thin layer?
Pad printing is ok, it comes after that...
Also, let's speak about vintage dials, almost all of them have very tiny layer of lacquer, as final protection. It can be noticed when it goes to yellow or pops up somewhere etc... How did they did it?
Somewhere I found idea of rotational painting, e. g. Dial is rotating slowly and one oe two dots of lacquer are spread bt the impact of centrifugal force ...
Perhaps such thin layer is a matter of painting tool, nozzle on spray gun etc?

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for small surface such as watch dial, should not be an issue for offset method to achieve thin evenly layer. in commercial offset, we use rubber blanket to cover the cylinder for ink transfer. the hardness of the rubber roll or blanket also determine the quality of ink distribution. in offset printing, there are 2 different types of blanket, conventional and compressible. for flat ink, conventional blanket is the proper one since it contains very little pores on its surface. it's also cheaper than the other one.

but for watch dial, i don't think it requires such high tech machine just to apply flat ink on it. just a primitive rubber roller and a flat surface can do the trick.

the ink properties is the most important item for the ink distribution. the viscosity, rheology, pigment loads, etc.

i have no experience with vintage enamel dial, but i seem to watch somewhere that it is coated with acrylic powder, then baked in oven with hi-temp so the powder is melted and covering the dial surface evenly. kindly refresh my knowledge.

Thanks, very informative
Will do my homework these days

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small tool like this should be able to do the trick.

[djolemag]

Will try to find it for test... Thanks a lot for great help and info

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