Rolex

This article aims to answer a very simple question; Is the Geiger counter a reliable tool in the evaluation of radiation on a watch dial? It is a very simple question, yet the answer is anything but simple. I will give two versions of the answer; a short ...  

1) Fact - Rolex used to lume their watches with varying amounts of radioactive material. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes very little. Hence today, those watches that received a lot will tend to emit a more, whilst those watches that received virtually none wil... 

I have a TR 900 which glows like hell... Before getting it, I looked at the luminous indexes with a lot of attention and a big magnifier... No relumed at all... I started to Wonder how it was possible, and I found the responsible: Binders! Best, Nicolas

I have seen a dealer argue that because a lume didn't "glow" under UV, therefore there could be no radium left. Well, if the binder had disintegrated, there would be no glow. Bottom line..... there has been an enormous amount of BS spread over the radioac... 

No message body

The TR 900 was made in 1964. Guven the short life of the Promethium 147, militaries could be interestedin finding a solution to give their indexes some luminous.

.....so if a substance with a very low half-life is used, replacing the binder will have no impact..... ....unless the decay is into something that has a longer half-life.... and that is also possible

no , especially if you don't use it properly .. LOL LOL LOL

don't forget the old wise proverb : " no knowledge is better than a small knowledge ! " LOL LOL LOL more serious comments on this monumental post from Joe coming as soon as possible ...

That's why I like to check with my own F>>>>>>>> EYES

Thanks for a very informative and interesting post Regards John

An excellent discussion, which brings to the light a multitude of interesting factors. a pleasure to read and share 100% your own conclusions. thanks, i really liked a lot. best, Chris

a lethal thing :) Great post dear Joe One for records for sure Best D

There are so many factors, so many things we are still discovering about our dear vintage watches, Rolex or not, which should lead us to a certain prudence and a big humility. I tried to dig the topic of radioactivity, I gave up. Ok, there are some import... 

Top top work 110% correct Well I hope Philip reads this and holds his hands up, but I doubt it :)

--food for thought for all!!!!!

Tested many watches over the last 3 months including a Rolex 6538, 6610, 6200. I used the Radex 1212 Geiger counter which I purchased off ebay for £100 (there were on offer a couple of months ago Lol wonder why ) and a lot of people seem to be trying them...  

...  

...  

"Radium-226 has a half-life of 1600 years, meaning that after 800 years its emission rate will be halved." Shouldn't this read, " Radium-226 has a half-life of 1600 years, meaning that after 1600 years its emission rate will be halved."

thank you...will correct it

Joe, thank you very much for that excellent post! It is very rare these days to find scientific rather than emotional approaches to critical issues determining the value of our watches! Thank you for that!

The use of Geiger’s, its method of application, the resultant observations, outcomes and the development of assumptions and conventions have been discussed for some time, unfortunately IMHO too much was taken for granted. More recently as others have delv... 

please accept a public " many thanks John ! " for the excellent work you have done since many years on this stuff : without your contribution lot of things would be still unclear. chapeau !

Welcome to you and thanks for posting. It is indeed on the back of so much research from others that we gradually learn. And, as Marcello states, you have been a leader in promoting this subject for a number of years. It is on the back of research from pe... 

Its very much appreciated, rarely does one get the opportunity to make a small contribution to the knowledge base and understanding of a particular hobby that has been under the microscope for so long. It's nice to follow in the footsteps of many who have... 

..Really enjoyed every single paragraph ! - Thx for this splendid work ! Best, hs

Like probably quite a few people, here and elsewhere, following the discussions on VRF about the use of this machine and the 'outing' of watches based on it's results back in November I decided to purchase one also and go about checking all my watches and...  

....so basically your findings appear fairly similar to mine. Readings of between zero and double-digits with no apparent logic on what does and does not score high radioactivity detection. I am sure others will contribute to this learning database, but f... 

of different compound emitters " LOL LOL LOL

Thank you for such a detailed and scientific study on this subject. Well done my friend. BRAVO... iceman

....this is a subject that needed to be addressed in a straightforward and factual manner. Collectors deserve to be provided facts rather than have science misused. Thanks for your words.....

thanks for the great write up, another reference post on the forum. Unless you use gamma spectrometry, you cannot identify any kind of radioactive element. Especially with a Geiger counter, which was not invented for that purpose by the way. The Geiger co... 

....a subject that needed addressing

such a perfect work but .. in order to add further salt .. here is an extract from a document made in the 70's by the US NRC ( discovered by our special agent Fatboyharris ) about modifcations on half-life of radioemitting materials by binders : ''It is g... 

Baron, I concur with the physics conclusions and arguments that you expressed. i must admit that I've never tested watches. ;) Regards, MTF

And thanks to Roberto for giving me the heads up! John Harris has been banging this same drum for a while now and when the Geiger originally surfaced a few years back as the new tool of choice for collectors, certain men of science such as Keith C. and ot... 

I t wasn't until the revised International Standard for luminous dial materials released in 1975 was there any International requirement for all dials to be marked with the luminous material used. Prior to that from the 1967 International standard, only d... 

now I'm dead beaten after too much dancing ... LOL LOL LOL

Thanks for your comments and opinions. They are always welcome. I can think of one good reason why I would not want to remove the plexi off my radium dials....well, several maybe. First, alpha particles are quite dangerous in terms of biological impact. I... 

Thank you very much for the education! One point on which material was used... Since several different dial maker delivered to Rolex during this period of time... It would be interesting to know which maker used which material. Best Blomman

....and i am guessing nobody on the planet does either.... But it is a great question because it would seem most likely that the various different suppliers used various different materials...making it even harder to provide some kind of standardised rule... 

manufacturing process. Dials were originally supplied fully lumed,. by the dial manufacturer but towards the late 50's and certainly by the early 1960's we know that Merz and Benteli (M&B) were applying the lume to the tritium dials and hands not the ... 

Yes, very interesting. Best Blomman

Sadly it also reminded me of the tragic plight of the Radium Girls. RIP.

And yes. It has no place in Rolex collecting. It seems it has been a that there are some who use to justify their position but remains without merit. It has all to do with financial gain/favor. Thanks for the great report. Bill

...agree 101% with Baron. I'm relatively new to the vintage Rolex world but there is one thing I'm learning quite fast: a crappy watch in the hands of a guru becomes gold no matter why, and a golden watch in the hands of the guy next door can become crapp... 

2 things I would like to point out here, why is the Vintage Rolex forum deleting post's like this it is a valuable information we all still like to learn and this subject needs to be addressed. Also there is someone here who is owed a massive apology the ... 

Not to put words in your mouth. Just want understand your POV. A watch was wrongly classified due to the miss use of the geiger. And unfortunately the seller suffered as well as the would be buyers both deprived of the pleasure. Thank for your thoughtful ... 

My Rolex 6200 was put up for sale at Christie's in Geneva in November 2014, the day before the auction a certain dealer put a picture of the watch up against a Geiger counter and took a picture and posted it, the picture was taken in a way that was either...  

.....if technology is going to be used in the verification of a watch, it MUST be conducted using professional equipment and by a professional who understands the science. Absent that, any observations by watch pundits seem to be redundant. Of course, des... 

I'm not surprised at all ! no real argument behind .. just an endlessly attempt to brainwash people. this is the most disappointing matter !

ANYONE who holds themself to be an expert in vintage Rolex and who also argues that the Geiger is useful MUST defend that position. A failure to defend the usage poses many questions. Some will make inferences....I genuinely hope that a counter opinion to... 

unfortunately it does show a clear lack of character on the Persons who preach the geiger. Too bad they are not engaging thru constructive dialog on this but instead, they choose to delete the article in VRF. Shame on Them. Iceman

there are so many fishes in the sea ... LOL LOL LOL

You got a very interesting and detailed write up on watch radiation. I am not a radiation expert or with IAEA but work in radio-pharma industry. The GM counter can detect the basic three + one type of radiations (alpha, beta and gamma + x-ray thought not ...  

Thanks for your comments. Very helpful. I have a couple of things to add to what you stated..... There are way to convert GM counter uSv/hr reading to Bq if you know the calibration source radiation material and the efficiency of your GM counter for the p... 

see wikipedia for an explanation.................................what is the established norm of the sample, what is the range of standard deviations from the norm, which would indicate whether something is an exception to the norm etc, etc, etc. It is no... 

......I am still waiting for someone to tell me just how decayed the Radium-226 that was used in the 1950s was. Had it been decaying for 10,000 years prior to being applied by Rolex to their dials....maybe just 5000 years? Maybe it was brand "new" with no... 

We all know sample size can affect a lot of things, u can play around with sample size just to achieve the p-value u desire if u use it for comparison or hypothesis testing. Beside u need to assume samples are all homogeneously/normal distributed, indepen... 

A better test here may be using a chi-square as yr is more like a categorical "yes or no" radiation detected on watch dial to begin with. Unless u r measuring how high and low level of radiation, then some other instruments/equipments and tests like simpl... 

.....its good to raise these issues. Here is where we differ..... 1) A specific Rolex reference may have had its dial produced by different dial manufacturers. Rolex used multiple suppliers. Similarly, Rolex used numerous suppliers for the hands on their ... 

Well, chi-square was suggested for using simply "yes or no" radiation on watch dial which is categorical as you mentioned that you cannot accurately measure the radiation on the rolex dial just using GM counter due to the fact that you do not know the bin... 

.....rather that its result would not be useful.

You are quite right there are many ways of testing samples, Binomial distribution is usually used in the testing of samples to ensure compliance to manufacturing tolerances on a production line. The issue about sample sizes is IMHO further complicated by ... 

.....scientifically, there can be no conclusion. LoL Unless, of course, someone knows differently...... slightly louder LoL

Well with so many unknown, then more we should use infer statistic to draw a conclusion, well that what scientific community ( forget to mentioned I used to work in one of asia top university for a period of time doing technical work and involved in a han...  

.....i took a Geiger reading through the plexi...then placed am 8mm aluminium shield over the plexi. The emission was reduced by about 80-90%....presumably the beta radiation being blocked.

Background (fluctuate below 1.0uSv/hr) [URL=] [/URL] Detecting radiation emission from BALL Aviator (T100 rating) [URL=] [/URL] Detecting radiation emission from BALL Engineer Hydrocarbon (T25 rating) [URL=] [/URL] ...  

Forgot to conclude, GM counter can indeed be use to check for the presents of radiation on watches, just like X-Ray can be used to detect fr cancerous mass in the body. But if u want to know the extract type of radiation then u use other instruments, like...