Nope, were not talking dials made of stone here, nor are we talking drug infused designs, so if that is what you were expecting, well, you might be disappointed… and justly so… considering this page is dedicated to dials on which a stone wheel was used to texture surfaces, it might not be that exiting reading for most folks. For me though, the results of this technique open up many possibilities…
There is a short back story for this topic…
February 2024
A fashion watch acquired inexpensively on Ebay mainly for the movement, a Seagull automatic with power reserve, day and date complications.
I love the case, love the markers and the big date window, but I can’t put up with the fake guilloche or the flat minutes track on the dial… the hands, I might be able to live with…
I wanted to see what the dial would look like if I scribed through the paint on the dial in the depressions of the pressed guilloche, so I spent a half hour under the microscope practicing with a carbide point. Just another experiment… The laser cut, supper shiny Rousseau logo got pealed off, and I did some letter engraving practice in its place…
I like the shiny brass in the guilloche lows much better… the pink on the subdial hands is an improvement as well, but what happened to the hours and minutes hands???? Over all, there is better contrast and a much more human feel to the time gage… should have kept the date window frame!
I’m OK with this transformation, but there is plenty of room for improvement. So no real surprise that this watch finds itself in the Stoned Dial department for further modifications…
December 12, 2025
The stoned dial idea emerged originally from an experiment on a case… “What will it look like if I scar a stainless steel case with very small touches of a high RPM, stone cutoff wheel?” I have a lot of Nino brand cases, so I gave it a shot… I did a quarter of the case, and what a pleasant surprise!! I did the rest of the case with the exception of the area immediately next to the crystal.
The bevel between the face of the case and the side of the case blended in too much, so a few passes with files, oxide paper, and Maas on a stick put a fine shine on those edges. I completely love the effect!!… but it might be better with the roughness being ever so slightly reduced. A bit of polishing brought the high marks to prevalence…
… so I think to myself, “why not the dial as well?” And the first stoned dial came into existence! A brass disk linearly grooved with light touches of a cutoff wheel, the highs polished bright than lightly oxidized with gun bluing solution.
December 22, 2025
Practice makes better, so out come the dials from 2 project watches. One, the Rousseau in the story above, the other, a vintage day/date from the early 1970s…
and the same technique on mother of pearl…
January 2, 2026 (first time I’m dating anything 2026)
Continuing on with the stoned dials, here is a sequential look at the hand engraving of the power reserve indicator track for the Rousseau mod.
There is still a bit of work to be done on this piece, but it already is looking much, much better than its silver original…
January 11, 2026
A bit more work done on the stoned dialed watches this past week…
I decided to experiment a bit further with the dial in the stoned Nino case… I am going to build up a thick coat of laquier on top of the dial, then sand it flat and pollish it – this should give it a texture under glass effect, similar to a GS dial. It is going to be a longish process consisting of many short sessions of topcoat buildup and sandings. The photo shows the dial after 4 coats.
Further work on the day/date dial includes the filling in of indices cutouts with garnet bound in lacquer.
The top half of the photo depicts an unsuccessful method, where the garnet sand was sprinkled onto the lacquer filled indices from the top. This resulted in the embedded garnet over hanging the sharp edges of the cutouts, softening the effect too much for my taste. Sprinkling the garnet from the bottom yielded a much better result, but required a difficult cleanup on the back side of the dial.
Im trying to talk myself into carving a logo for this dial, but I might just leave it as is… Now, what to do about the handset?