IWC MARK XV DIAL

Hi,

Hope all is well in IWC world !

This may be an old question, however I have trawled the archives and struggled to find the info - 

Can anyone verify if IWC produced dials post 2000 that displayed the "t" symbol for tritium, however in actual fact used luminova and not tritium ? Thereby, is it possible that a dial may say it is tritium in error ?

Just wondering if IWC were using a surplus of printed "t" dials once they had switched products. The reason being, I am considering a 2005 "tritium" Mark XV, that has not aged at all - ie probably luminova, so wondered whether this could be odd or wrong.

Thanks...

Hi Andrew,

thanks for your response. Yes I am sure it is possible to have unusual occurrences with the composite watch components - in this instance the lume looks quite white, and does not have the creamy age of tritium.

However the dial shows the ‘t’ symbol...

Someone may have painted SL over the Tritium during a service of course...

I don't think that there is a dial marked 'T SWISS MADE T' that is actually 100% Superluminova.  There are partial dials, however, which are easily identifiable by yellowed hands and possibly the triangle, while the 3-6-9-12 "bars" remain bright white.

Another oddity that's out there are the few dials that were made that were supposed to be marked  'T SWISS MADE T' but were fully made with superluminova.  These are identifiable by the three shortend minute markers on either side of the 6.  Later dials only had two shortend hash marks on either side of the 6, since the obviously didn't need room for the T's.

I easily found pictures of all these with a quick image search, but I didn't want to post them since all the pictures were either watermarked or stamped with an online seller's name.  I haven't posted in forever, but I'm assuming that's against the rules.  I'll check since I plan on trying to be more active in the future.

Well, I have seen diverse IWC watches with aktive tritium lumes.

Those luminous material includes zinc Sulfate AND tritium just as energy.

If zinc Sulfate is lit up by sun or lamp, it lights up for a few minutes.

If it is dark, the tritium radiation lit up the zinc Sulfate, but not as intensive as sun light, etc.

The tritium ist ONLY the energy, but does not light up by itselves.

Tritium has a half-age of about 12 years.

Often this is used as a measuring stick for the durability of tritium luminous material, but this is wrong.

Even after this age is still energy into the tritium to light up the zinc Sulfate.

Good blends can still work as new after multiple times of half-life !

And YES, IWC prints "T" on SL dials.

This modern SL Mark XI dial as an example:

Here are some pictures of Mark XV dials that I referred to earlier.  Concerning dials produced with "T" markings that are superluminova, it is known that some dials, like the XI pictured, were produced for service, in SL, but marked with "T SWISS T" for the authentic look.

Here is a standard XV dial "T SWISS MADE T"...

You can see there that the hands are only slightly faded...which begs the question of how old the picture is that the OP saw.  It is not mentioned if the watch was seen in person or not.  Note the three 'short' hash marks on either side of the '6'...

Below is SL dialed Mark XV:

You can see here that since the "T's" are gone, there are only two 'short' hash marks on either side of the "6"...

The next pic is a 'transitional' dial Mark XV, with SL...

This is the oddity that I was referring to earlier.  Note that the "T's" are gone, since this is an SL dial, but there is still room for them with the three 'short' hash marks on either side of the "6"...

And a white dialed XV showing the blued seconds hand for good measure...

Eric

Great presentation of the XV dials. Learned something new today. 

Thanks Eric for catching a shot that white dial "blued" seconds hand. I now need to go and wipe the drool off my iPad.

Andy

Well - this has been fascinating!!
Just amazing what you can learn on these pages. Well done all who have contributed to this interesting topic