Wednesday.

I do wish I had taken a 'before' photo of this clock dial. It represents a good day's work. I was asked to restore the dial a week or so ago and finally got round to it yesterday. When I first saw the clock, all that could be seen of the dial centre were the figures one to twelve, obviously badly repainted a long while ago, and shakily done at that. The nice thing about restoring a painted  (long case) clock dial, is that when the 'repainted' figures are removed (using a mixture of methylated spirits and cream of tartar), the dial carefully cleaned and then dried, the dial is then 'lit' (I find TWO angle poise lamps perform this miracle) and then the original figures, the datework, second dial, and any maker's or retailer's signature become immediately visible. These are transparent and just very slightly proud of the dial. It is then the restorer's job to replace all the black that was once there using (in my case) Indian ink (Windsor and Newton's is probably best) and a series of mapping pens with different sized knibs.  I would love to know what the original dial painters used for the black dial paint, probably a gum arabic/soot mix; whatever it was it almost invariably fades in sunlight.  A friend of mine ( a fellow horologist) used to theorise that between the wars when painted dial long case clocks were of very little value, every small town had an elderly man who (for a consideration) would repaint the figures on a faded grandfather clock dial. To do this he used a half inch brush, an old tin of black paint, and a shaky hand.  I am glad to report (if you are reading this, Tim) that the dial is now as near to the original as I can make it.
One last item of interest is that the ORIGINAL dial painter had made one bad mistake, which was almost immediately corrected, but is still visible when the dial is 'lamped'.  I don't think it will show on the photograph, but the cross stroke of the X in the IX (nine) was put in the wrong position at first.  Ah well - no one's infallible.