Before You Buy An Antique Clock, Use Your Geiger Counter!

When I was a kid I used to buy radium paint at the hobby store and I painted all kinds of stuff. There was no fear or knowledge of it back then.

There are so many on Ebay these days, I can't say whats good but I imagine any of them would be fine for detecting Radium levels.

Fran Blanche

Horologists can be quite cavalier about radium and mercury exposure.

Fran Blanche

97% alpha 3% gamma, typically.

Fran Blanche

The unfortunate bloke with giant head must have either swallowed a stick of dynamite and taken the blast like Wile E. Cayote. Or bought too many radium clocks of Russian eBay? Poor fellow.

Where did you find that clip of the guy with the giant head?

Langel

A couple of years ago I purchased a M1 Garand and a Mauser C-69, the were both shipped via UPS to the FFLs place of business. He told me that both had just been left on his porch, the C-96 even came, most helpfully with a box of .30 Luger ammo, even though it's chambered in .30 Mauser a completely different cartridge. Delivery companies are mostly uninterested in obtaining signatures.

Stephen Woods

I suspect they prohibit the sale of knives because they can't do the age check required; knives are an age restricted item. There's not really a practical way for them to force sellers to use a courier that has age check verification (or to actually mark the packet properly).

Chris Crowther

This reminded me of something written by Arthur C Clarke - I saw my first atomic explosions when I was about fifteen years old. It was in my own bedroom, and as only one atom at a time was involved, damage was minimal. I’d been reading how the great Rutherford had studied the disintegration of the nucleus, in the days long before Geiger-Muller counters, by counting the scintillations produced by alpha-particles on a fluorescent screen. “Why, I can do that!” I realized. “I’ve got a source of radio-activity on my wrist.” So late that night I burrowed under the bed-clothes and waited ten minutes or so until my eyes were completely dark-adapted. Then I took a low-powered magnifying lens and stared at the glowing numbers on the dial of my watch. It was true; the faint glow was not continuous. It was made up of myriads of tiny flashes, and I knew that each one marked the impact of an alpha particle on the phosphor. How amazing that a single helium nucleus could carry enough energy to be detected by the unaided eye!

David Peaker

Ebay in the UK prohibits the sale of Knives- but radioactive clocks are fine!!

Mike Hughes

Various rooms and the ground at the old site for our company were contaminated with the radioactive material they used for luminous dials in days gone by. At least one of the meeting rooms had a maximum exposure time. The site is gone and is now a housing estate. I do have to wonder if they properly filled in the deep bunker or if that's going to end up being hilarious for someone in future.

Chris Crowther

oh boooo...

I have an old clock with radium letters but it is only an alpa emitter isn't it?

I have some old radium glassware thats pretty cool. Also a little piece of Trinitite that is an interesting conversation starter. Id imagine the glassware is safer since it can't really flake. That one clock was really scary with the flaking paint. I could see my 12 year old son taking it apart to clean it for me, or breaking it from running through the house. That could be fatal, or at minimum life altering. Id imaging the cleanup would cost a mini fortune too.

I'm phoneposting atm, but if you search "The Dollop radium" on YouTube, it'll be the first result.

OzRetrocomp

Yes, it wasn't just all polonium-210, lol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko

Peter Knazko

If you could send a link that would be great.

Peter Knazko

Fran, as you pointed out, many military aircraft instrumentation from the 1940s-60s used radium paint on their dials and pointers. The ladies who worked in the plants that actually painted the dials were instructed to sharpen the brush with their lips to get a very fine point when painting dials. You can read about them by entering "radium girls" in Wikipedia. Naturally, most of them died of cancer and helped reveal that radium paint was truly lethal. It took a long time, much too long, to designate it as a lethal radioactive substance. Even the physical buildings and properties where the dials were painted wound up being highly contaminated, requiring expensive cleanups of the properties. When the radium dials were finally considered hazardous, the military suddenly had thousands of used and unused radium dial aircraft instruments they had to painstakingly remove from stock as radioactive waste. Naturally, too many had been made by then and retrieving all of them was impossible and you can still see them on eBay from time to time. The problem was that there was no other light-emitting paint that could even compete with the radioactive radium. So a lot of companies who sold radium contaminated devices claimed "We didn't know, these have been made for years." As you said in your video, this material stays radioactive for an absurd amount of time. I used to own some of those old radium instruments, but got rid of them decades ago. It's tragic that so many women had to die to prove radium paint is lethal. This reminds me of Monsanto's PCB oil they developed for large utility transformers and capacitors, along with all kinds of other applications. Like radium paint, there was nothing close to PCBs that had the super-efficient properties of cooling hot utility transformers without catching fire as competing, simpler oils could. They then used it commonly in florescent light ballasts, paint and smaller capacitors. They knew that continued exposure to it caused a variety of cancers and health issues, but ignored them because the PCBs were such a huge money-maker. When we FINALLY figured out that PCBs were truly nasty, the banned production in 1979 and now we're left with decades old transformers and florescent light ballasts that are considered hazardous waste. Like the radium's half-life, the artificial carbon compounds that made up PCBs would not break down for thousands of years. It's even hard to get rid of with giant arc furnaces. It pollutes the rivers and land formerly next to transformer factories and it's so hard to get rid of that they simply cannot clean up some sites. So, your radium dials were just another compound that we knew was harmful for years before it was finally banned. Thanks for the Russian tip! One more reason NOT to visit abandoned Russian military installations. As if I needed a reason? Great video! People see so many of these that they think they are harmless. But would anyone want a highly radioactive alarm clock just feet from their head when sleeping at night? With radiation, it's how much you are exposed to over time that's far worse than a brief encounter with an old clock. eBay probably, honestly, doesn't know these things are so awful. You did the best you could to warn them. And it's a great reminder for your patrons to avoid these things. Thank you!

Matt Wietlispach

If you're interested in hearing more about radium and clocks, listen to The Dollop episode "Radium Girls", which is about the women that painted clock and watch faces with radium in the early 20th century. Worth checking out.

OzRetrocomp

I had no idea Soviets used so much radium.

William Alsing

Any suggestions on getting a Geiger counter or other radiation detector that's good enough but not overly expensive or exotic?

Jason Olshefsky

Interesting! No idea it was so common. Do watchmakers pay any special attention when repairing old clocks...?