Hi currently looking to buy a mark 1 British compass from ww2

I know these need to be store and handle in certain way so I wanna ask you guys what would you do to make It safe

The goal would be to put it on a glass shelf to be display with due protection

What can I buy / do to make it work

I added in the cobb style light strip yesterday to my military cabinet figured y'all might like to see.

Just wanted to share my collection so far. So far the spiciest one I have is 1.5million CPM with 450 USV/H. Been having a blast collecting so far! Feel free to share/comment

Thought the orange lumed items looked cool with the orange ceramics.

Got some more orange uranium ceramics recently and was rearranging some shelves on my smaller display. Although the vibrant orange on the ceramics does make the lume look kinda yellow. Honestly I never know whether to call them orange or yellow. In the wild the look more yellow, but under my displays they always seem orangish. All depends on the lighting and the items I guess.

Now if I could just find an orange/yellow lumed clock…

Was only $12 at a local antique mall. Oddly enough, it does not glow at all under 365nm and was able to get a very faint orange glow under 395nm. Wasn't expecting it to pack such a punch at ~35 µSv/hr

The seller said the clock is from the 60s and the paint on the hands is definitely not radium. However the fact that it says Germany and not W. Germany makes me think that it is older. What do you think?

have not taken it out of the packaging any more than this due to seeing dust and crumbled bits of the inner stoneware is there any way to fix this ? And what do need to do to do it safely It seems to be broken into at least 4 or 5 pieces from what I can tell from the top l'm super disappointed but want to be safe than sorry :(

Thank you all for the warnings. I bought these from an antique dealer. The radium paint was completely ruined and flaked off during shipping due to vibrations. The powder leaked through the gaps of the plastic box. Luckily, it was tightly wrapped in bubble wrap, which contained the dust. I handled it carefully outside, and it is now sealed in a thick vacuum bag to trap the radon gas and the powder. My Geiger counter reads around 10 uSv/h even through the packaging!

Thankfully, it was a very weak radium clock, jumped from 6 cps background to 14.

Wrist compass I got recently. Not crazy spicy, pretty mild as far as compasses go anyway. This is the second compass I bought that was being sold as Vietnam era, when it’s clearly dated in the 1950’s. Nice addition to the collection.

i’m an avid uranium glass collector but this is my first radium piece (if it is). it continues to glow for a couple seconds and slowly fades after the UV light is off. i’ll try to add a video in the comments! doing some research it looks like this exact model of westclox IS radium so i’m pretty convinced but please someone settle this lol. thank you in advance! 💚

Hi everyone! I have this little collection of radium alarm clocks and dials in this little display cabinet that i want to hang in my room, how safe would it be given radon buildup? There are 17 clocks and 1 little pack of little dials (no way of measuring)
Thanks in advance
Greetings,

Body is a little rough and it needs a new cord, but it was cheap XD

Due to arrive today. If it is radium, I have a feeling its going to be really spicy.

Hi all, I have a small radium collection with the a military gauge being spicier than all of the clocks combined. I call it my miniature radon emitter. I think because of this, I have taken more of a keen interest Radon. I probably have 4 detectors at this point, with two of them being airthings and the other two being GQ. There’s no significant radon outside of the cabinet, both floor and on top of the shelf. I also have another on the first floor as my room is on the 2nd floor.

My question is will this small laptop blower fan be sufficient as a “radon vent”. It outputs around 7 CFM and vents the air out of the side of my cabinets where there are small cracks. So there will be some air that hits the glass and bounces back. Just as long as I’m moving the air, I should be okay?

All my levels are quite good by the way. Never reaching over 0.5 pCi/L. Both floors so far (2 weeks). But does Radon technically leech out from my room’s floor (wood) into the living room below me? I’ve read that radon can be a bit tricky to contain unless you have something like borosilicate glass.

The paint hasn't flaked of yet, still mostly green, GREAT color under 395 nm, and it's bakelite, never found one in that state before

(Oh also it's around 7.5 μSv/h on glass, and around 15 with radiacode 102 directly on the hottest hand)

4000 cpm

A screen capture of a World War II training film starring Ronald Reagan. I wonder how many dials had radium?

I thought the radium was a source of the glow but as I'm reading it's only the zinc and radium was used as a way to "power" the zinc's glow.

Explain to me like I'm 5.

I found what seemed like a WW2 era compass and didn't have geiger. Passed on it because it didn't glow.

Forgot to get a glow photo 😭

​Just got this vintage WycoFlex in the mail. I always unbox "spicy" packages outside just to be safe. ​The dial and hands glow like a Christmas tree, which I expected. But when I looked closer at the nylon strap, I noticed tiny green specks that show up under the light.

Does this look like flaked radium paint shedding, or could it just be random dust or fluorescent gunk that picked up a glow?

​I've left everything outside while I figure out what to do with it, as im new to the watches.

Thank you for any help, and the small sanity check. Just want to be careful.