A practical guide to spring bars
Selecting the right spring bar to match your lugs
I am surprised and horrified by how little attention spring bars have received since Jack Forster’s magnum opus on their history in 2016. As someone who has taken on my current moniker, I felt compelled to spring into action to right this wrong. I will try to fly through a compressed version, weaving through the forks in decision making when selecting a spring bar. I will try to tweeze out the important points. I usually get spring bars from Esslinger, unfortunately I do not get paid by them, in fact I’m their loyal customer. Ping me in the comments section with your spring bar stories.
Do I need to remove the old spring bars?
Basically, yes. If it’s a modern preowned watch maybe you can gamble and not remove them, especially if you are inexperienced with spring bar removal and worry about scratching the back of your lugs. If you’re like me, who has scratched hundreds of backs of lugs and is obsessed with changing straps and bracelets, you are going to remove the spring bars anyway.
I recommend that you always remove the spring bars from vintage watches. The more “original barn find condition” it is, the more likely the spring bars have deteriorated into a post-apocalyptic state. I’ve found plenty of rusted spring bars that broke apart during removal, usually separating at the joint and having the spring actually fly out, accompanied by crumbles of blue green wrist cheese. Don’t ever trust a vintage spring bar.
I would advise that if the spring bar is hard to remove, you might want to seek expert help. Some spring bars may be shoulderless yet inserted into lugs that have no lug holes, so they are extremely difficult to impossible to remove. Even stranger are “female” spring bars. I’ll discuss these various types as we go along.
Also, if you don’t know, “lug hole” is a generally accepted term for a hole that goes all the way through to the outside of the lug.
Thickness
A standard spring bar is 1.8 mm in diameter. This will fit most straps and bracelets. 1.5 mm is thin, 2.0 mm would be thick, they come thinner and thicker as well. You might consider a thin spring bar if you have a vintage watch with rather delicate lugs, but keep in mind that if you have lug holes a thin spring bar may simply pop out rather than settle into the hole. The thicker the spring bar, the stronger the spring, so the thicker one may be a more robust connection and may fit a bracelet better. Some Seikos have an extra thick spring bar of 2.5 mm. When in doubt, measure the existing spring bars with a caliper.
Flanged vs Shoulderless
This is very important. Flanges are the sticking out bits at the ends of the spring bars. It’s called double flanged because one flange is against the lug, the other one is slightly out so you can grab it with a spring bar tool fork and compress the spring bar for removal. Shoulderless, whether single or double, lay flush against the lug, and are meant to be compressed from the outside by the pointy end of the spring bar tool from the hole that goes all the way through the lug.
If there are no lug holes, use a standard double flanged spring bar. If there are lug holes, you can usually still use a double flanged spring bar but it may be a bit shallow in the lug. If you have lug holes, you need to find the right side shoulderless spring bar so that it doesn’t stick out of the lug hole. It’s more important that it’s wide enough that it will sit flush against the inside of the lug, and that the hole in the case is about the size of the lug hole (see discussion of Rolex spring bars below).
If the spring bar is all the way through and too long but otherwise fits, you can take a whetstone like you would for a knife, and grind down the end of the spring bar so it fits. Keep in mind that you need to do this with the spring bar removed from the watch.
Removing a shoulderless spring bar from a watch without lug holes is a huge PITA. Trying to get them out from the inside runs the risk of damaging the case. The lugs, if not integral to the case, can bend or even break off. In this kind of situation with shoulderless spring bars and a strap, you are better off cutting off the strap from the spring bar and cutting the spring bar with a wire cutter. If it’s on a bracelet, good luck, I have one like this and after a few hours decided to leave it on the bracelet. If you have any tips, share them in the comment section.
Quick release
Honestly, I’m anti-quick release. This is an unpopular stance so it suits me as a horological contrarian. I don’t like having a hole in my strap, it makes the strap feel less durable and more prone to wear. I usually can’t feel the pin sticking out, but the idea of it bothers my deeply held horological OCD. Finally, it feels lazy and too easy.
It doesn’t really matter because you’re generally not replacing these spring bars as they are a more recent innovation and come with more recent straps. I did replace one once and it was a huge PITA to get the pin sticking out at right angles into the strap.
Brand name spring bars
I don’t think it makes sense to talk about brand name spring bars unless they have some special features (see next section). If it fits, it’s fine. I haven’t bought one of those 200 spring bar kits on Amazon because I want to choose the exact specifications of my spring bars in terms of thickness, width, flanges, and so on so I can’t comment on their quality.
One exception is vintage Rolex, especially when there are lug holes. It just doesn’t feel secure and rattles around within the lug hole if you don’t get a special spring bar. I don’t know if you can get actual Rolex spring bars as a hobbyist but you can get Rolex generic spring bars which work just fine but are significantly more expensive. In return you get a snug secure fit and a fairly robust and well-constructed spring bar.
Gold spring bars, screwed in spring bars, curved spring bars
I don’t have much experience with these other than knowing that they exist. It seems foolish to me to have gold spring bars, they generally aren’t visible and it’s not great to have them in a soft material, and they are also disposable.
I have no experience with curved spring bars. I guess you need a curved strap so it doesn’t just flip back and forth.
Screwed in spring bars seem like a solution in search of a problem.
Telescopic spring bars
I’ve taken these out, haven’t put them back in. I’m not sure why these exist. If you do, please comment. I guess they fit a greater variety of widths? They are used for lug hole watches as they are shoulderless.
Female spring bars
You probably aren’t familiar with these unless you are deep into the vintage game. There are watches that have “male lugs” meaning that instead of a vaginal type hole, they have a sticky outey penis prong (I didn’t invent these terms). So the spring bars, in an infinitely more PITA fashion, are hollow at the ends to receive the male lug prongs. Ok that’s enough of that.