Hands

[atkin68]

I think nothing has given me more pure fits of expletive laden rage than irreparably buggering up an expensive, long lead-time pair of hands. Of course it is always my own fault, and I've learned many vital lessons in this hobby from those costly mistakes. The hands I get from NW are the best I've used, followed by Athaya's. But as noted, they're expensive relative to the risk of ruining them, and yet I find that the cheap hands available on Ebay and elsewhere are either the wrong styles, or too short for my 38-39mm PAM dials, or just too shitty to be worth even their cheap prices. I'm referring chiefly to hands that approximate the look and feel of vintage pencil, double-pencil, angelus styles that NW and Athaya sell. I have found a couple on ebay that, for my trial and error processes are OK - not great, but they look ok and I can afford to make some mistakes with them. Here are the ones I've found:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133588520824 - These are not bad, especially for the $8 price tag. But it always makes me wonder why these cheap ones always seem to be rose gold. Why not just gold? Oh well.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/184482552640 - These are kind of cool, I can make them work on stuff I build for my wife and daughters. The quality and fit/finish is actually better than most others. Price is right. Again, rose gold. Why?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124710249511?h ... SwAZVgkkgy - Not bad. A little too much lume area versus metal, but the price is right.

Wondering if anyone else has found good sources for inexpensive but reasonably good vintage style hands of this kind? When I'm feeling confident and I know I've got the right fit and movement, I use the good ones from Gordon or Adrian. But when I'm trying to match hands to something funky like a cool pocket watch movement that has unusual hole sizes, it is good to have some cheapies around to experiment with broaching/resizing, and/or experimenting with ageing.

Thanks!
Dave

[Emilio]

Thanks for sharing your experience with us

[hako]

Of it is abzulenken where H3 CP is enough, I personally think the hands of eBay, Wenping’s or the like do the job.
What I discovered was that irrespective of coating or colour, they are all made of brass. Just carefully sand of the coatings, age as usual and you are good to go.