Tritinova

[watchtung]

How does one confirm if you have one of these?

I have a explorer 2 and it glows with exposure to black light and it very barely glow with sunlight, it should be luminova?

Would tritium still glow with black light at this point from a 1998? If the glows fades fast after what would it be?

Trying best to determine what I have.


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[Dan S]

I assume you are familiar with how luminova responds; if you charge it thoroughly with UV, it will glow brightly for a long time. If it doesn't act like luminova, then it is tritium. Tritium may appear to be responding to UV (it can be hard to tell, because of the reflection of the black light) but it certainly won't glow brightly for long, if at all, once you stop the excitation (I'm not talking about a faint glow that you can barely see).

Bottom line is that they are hugely different, especially with respect to what happens after you stop the excitation. So don't focus so much how the watch looks while you are exciting it, but what happens when you turn off the excitation. And maybe you can get your hands on some watches from before and after the transition to experience them firsthand. It's obvious once you see it, but less obvious when described in words.

[springer]

Tritium has a 30-year life. If you have a 1998 watch that is tritium, it should still glow about half as bright as it did when new.

Also, tritinova is a concocted word that I only see on this forum. I have no idea what it is and can only guess it is a luminova dial that has markings at the bottom of the dial which indicate it is tritium. Dials are either tritium or luminova.

[watchtung]

Thanks. That helps me understand a little bit about tritium flow and that it could still glow after this amount of time. After your comments it’s safe to say it’s probably tritium with how quick the flow fades after excitement. They fade away quickly after 30 seconds or so while my Superluminova watches remain strong for minutes after.

Yeah the Tritinova term is something I just picked up along the way but it’s as you described a marked tritium dial but with luminova. It’s basically dealer talk to make something unique, like real estate agents making up new neighborhoods.


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[TuRo]

I think you are referring to the end century Tritium blank dials that where printed T25 but had luminova applied. I have carried out research and they first appeared in 1999 (when old stocks of dials were being used in the new horological legal framework for outlawed Tritium) and luminova was applied to these t25 printed base plates/dials, and were also found on the massive stocks of RSC stockpiled dials up to 2006 on their various service examples until the Swiss Mades became the only available production ones (after A and U Swiss of course) - The examples I have seen are a 16760 service dial 2003, 1999 original 16710, and a 2000 original 16610 plus a few dj and exp 1.
The lume affect is obvious as with a Tritinova Dial the lume is very bright (slightly blue but not superluminova blue) green and it hangs about for minutes….compared to Tritium which is yellowish green and reduces over a period of time (esp the older the dial is typically). One other factor…Tritium doesn’t need any initial ‘charge’ light (if you took it out a box in the pitch black) to have a very faint glow, Luminova does though.

[Dan S]

The half life of tritium is actually about 12 years. So a 1998 watch would glow at 1/4 of its original intensity (less actually, because the phosphor also degrades). This can be enough for someone with good eyes to see in a dark room if they let their eyes acclimate. But it's typically pretty dim.

[watchtung]

Thanks this is very helpful. I haven’t run into many luminova watches only recent super luminova and didn’t know if they “held their charge” or even if that hold time degraded over say 30 years.

Anyways I think it’s safe to believe it’s tritium for what I have based on all the feedback.


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