I've had a Dial at a refinisher since September of 2010.
I had opted for 'Exact refinish' - 'Collectable Watch' which is an additional charge.
Yesterday I received notice that the Job was done. 4 Months later.
Give Me an honest opinion of this refinish.
Thank You, My thoughts exactly....
admittedly the Dial was a challenge with multiple layers of color but this is hardly a 'Collectable, exact refinish'.
IMO
* In fact I don't think it's the same Dial, note the notch on the lower edge of the original which is missing on the finished Dial....
In reply to Thank You, My thoughts by FifthAvenueRes…
Sorry Mark, that looks like hot stinky garbage. Thats definately not the same dial. The bottom corners are rounded off on your dial. The refinished are sharper. And of course the notch missing from the bottom.
Either that picture is just really low quality and it's making it look sucky, or that dial is really sucky.
In reply to Sorry Mark, that looks like by plainsmen
I am not clear who did this job....but I would like to bring up dial refinishing as a topic....whcih I will launch to get some feedback. I have had really bad experiences with International Dial over the past year. Most recently, they took four months to refiinish a 1960 President (Arrowhead or Asymetrical) dial. It wasn't that bad but had a couple scratches and I wanted it perfect. I sent it in for "Exact" Refinishing and a month later they still hadn't even started because the said, "We needed confirmation you wanted Exact." What? Are you kidding. I ordered Exact, I wanted Exact...why the need to confirm? So then three months later they finish it and send the dial back and it's done in a Butler finish...whereas the original dial was more an off-white. I had another one, and took a photo of the two side-by-side and wrote to Rob/Elizabeth to complain. AS USUAL they didn't respond. $45 for an "Exact" dial refinish and it looked like crap. The font was wrong, letter spacing wrong, and color wrong! Not only that....they covered the gold hour track dots with luminate paint and didn't put in where it belongs - on the outside edge of the gold arrow hour markers! I had hands done that had to be re-done, and it took him six months to finally get them back to me. The usual turn around has been three to four months in most cases. Their quality is really questionable. Service is awful - the never respond to e-mails about anything. Time to collectively take action or find a preferred restorer who will service our needs.
Whilst I am not condoning the downlisting of any business, it is interesting to hear the experiences of others, especially when it relates directly to what alot of us do when wanting to get our watches redone.
It is obviously an important part of most watch restorations and needs to be done by a company that can do it right 9.9 times out of 10.
I hope the company in question can fix the dial and help you restore an old beauty back to her original status...not make it worst.
bourg, this public forum is exactly the place to air out problems with vendors. This dial should never have been sent out, especially close to 2 YEARS later, and it appears that it isnt even the same dial. Any vendor that advertises online, and is mostly supported by online activity, should expect their services to be discussed ONLINE. Im sorry, but if they had done a stellar job on the dial, we would all be happy to praise them as awesome and great gods of dial work, and the FREE adverrtising they would get would certainly help their bottom line. As such it is, crappy service and product, should also be aired out, and should also have an effect on their bottom line.
Im not sure why you have a problem with this, but any HONEST, QUALITY vendor has no problem with their services being discussed here, or anywhere...word of mouth, or in this case forums, are the best or worse and oldest mode of advertising there is and any good business will profit, or suffer based ONLY on the quality of their work and services.
That being said, if the 3 year old that re painted this dial makes it right, then we should see those results posted, and praised just as prominately as this was.
In reply to bourg, this public forum is by shooter144
at double the cost of Internat. dial the cost would be over 100 dollars you have to take in the account of the fact that some watches aren't worth the cost...so you can either leave the dial alone, since its original to the watch anyway..or go to some place that isn't going to charge an arm and two legs to get it done..if your going to keep the watch forever than its ok but if you are trying to alteast make your money back well then a cheaper company is the only way to go..and if they fix it at no charge for less then standard work well no problem,the only problem of them redoing is the down time..which i have been waiting on one for awhile now myself...which i don't think you gentleman are going to like, because its not an factory color to the watch but a factory color that bulova did...which,off topic the dial is going to be something different than all the blacks and original color...i just hope it come out nice..