Gilt Hands Real or Not? how can you tell?
 

Hello Club members,

I have an on going conversataion with other watchmakers such as my self. That the way to tell if you have a pair of gilt hands is to see if they or magnetic. I know that some of the gilt hands I have seen being sold for big money are not magnetic and wanted to know the real way to tell, or at least start a post about it.

Thanks
Michael
The watchmaker

Thanks Michael that's great advise!!:thumbsup:

Would you mind telling us a bit more about your training, and experience? (sorry if I missed it somewhere else)
I'm always interested in how you guys became, and do what you do!! :joy:

:cheers:

Anything gilt would have gold, and gold is a diamagnetic element.

This means gold would have a very weak repulsion to magnetic fields.

Gilt hand how to tell
 

I have been told that older gilt hands coverd in gold, true ones will be magnetic but the new one that are platted are just that and are not magnetic the older ones sell to collectors for $500 to $1000 New one are much less I have a collector and friend who has purchased the higher priced ones and none are magnetic and not sure if there suppossed to be or not from that era of watch hands. Its a good thing to know how to tell the differance between old and new.

The older hands from back when don't know exactly when they changed over were gold plated on steel all the new hands are 18k gold so magnets don't work and Hello Michael hows things going just finished 5 16 hour days burnt out again working rest of the weekend as well. Rik

A magnet will stick to the older steel hands that were just plated.. The newer hands that are all gold have no ferrous metal in them so a magnet will not stick to them........

Interesting discussion :cheers: