Stolen from a website. 1) It has faded naturally to a different colour. Note that the fade is often from black to brown, but can be from any original colour so long as a material change in colour is evident. Also note that the change must be brought about “naturally”. This can be through exposure to the sun, natural ageing or indeed any other natural process. Baking it in an over most definitely does not count as natural. 2) A tropical dial needs to be almost uniform in its fading. Sometimes a watch dial gets only partial exposure to the sun and this results in a clear fade but only to some parts of the watch. To be a pure tropical dial, the fading should be uniformly and evenly spread across the whole dial. 3) The change in colour should NOT be due to water (or other) damage. This is not to say that various types of damage can create very unusual dial outcomes - indeed, often attractive - but this would not be considered a tropical effect. These are simple rules and by no means cast in iron. However, by adopting such a simplified methodology, one gets a fairly clear picture of what is and what is not a good tropical dial. End theft. So what can you do if you break the "no bake in the oven" rule? Well I thought I'd like to see and I had a sacrificial rolex dial. After some experimentation I figured out the time between not brown and burnt. Did it with both the hands and dial with my 5517. So it looked like this: Got the dial right but the hands don't look right. Watercolors and lume time. Its harder to get the lume to look raggy old than it is to do it perfect on the hands. But I got some raggy look and after a couple tries I think I got the color about right. Did a pointy CG look to this one with 2mm springbars. Needs fixed bars but don't have the proper bits yet. So buttoned up it looks like it has been in the desert or forest on campaign. Neat project. Something different.