WIS folks: adding tritium to a watch?

Porksboy - where do you work? I live nearby and have a small but growing mechanical watch collection which surely will need servicing at some point.

I think some of you are confusing tritium with phosphorescent paint.

Tritium is useful because it requires no activation energy, unlike phosphorescent paint. It is a radioactive isotope. Tritium has a half life of around 12 years, so those new night sights for your Glock 19 will be half as bright as they were new in 12 years.

On the other hand phosphorescent paint is MUCH cheaper than tritium, but it requires a light source and only glows for a few hours before requiring more light. A set of tritium night sights is over $50 (for 3x 1mm circles of tritium), where as the paint is under $20 for a whole bottle.

So, can you make Glock sights from an EXIT sign without MIBs coming to get you?

pretty sure, those exit signs are around 150 bucks though, better make plenty of uses for them, its just like working with plastic. Im also assuming since they are fire exits they wont be any more harmful than normal plastic if you overheat it.... dont quote me on that though. Ive been looking around for some blue titrated plastic, haven't found anything worth it.. radiation is way cooler if its glowing blue (unless you are a ninja turtle)

also, don't eat bananas http://radlab.nl/radsafe/archives/9503/msg00074.html

Neither Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of California, nor the Department of Energy recommends eating bananas.

Dr. The luminus on those tends to not hold a "charge" after 15 to 20 years. Sounds like yours hit that window while in storage. I can fix that for you, my recomendation is to have it done at the next service. I would use the Super Lumi on it. New Rolex dials have Super Lumi now. Some purists like for the older watches to have the old compound and be unmolested. Go figgure.

Nderwater check your PM.

Thanks, porksboy. I haven't had it serviced in a while. It's been doing pretty good, but I've been taking better care of it. I don't pull motors while wearing it anymore, for example. I prefer not to ship it. I used to use a Chineese guy in South Houston for my repair work. He wasn't "authorized" by Rolex, but he had genuine parts, worked on them alot and was an excellent watchmaker/jewler. He rebuilt my band for me by melting the gold out of the middle, rolling it out in a strip, and then cutting/welding the strip back to the middle of the band. Charged me like 2 bills for that. He also did my last 2 crystals (the drop incident and the welding slag incident before that) and a cleaning.

Anyway, the next time I need some work done, I'll see about getting some Super Lumi on it. I plan on keeping it another 30 years or so, after which I won't really care.

I just want to say, I found a government source that says the current price of tritium is $100,000 to $200,000 per gram. Assuming $150,000 per gram, that's $68 million dollars per pound. I don't think that's very grassroots.