Import Soul Wouldn’t it be nice if things just worked

16Jun/101

DIY Watch Repairs/Tools

Recently the clasp in my watch had randomly started to undo itself.  A bit of jiggling and fiddling and it seemed the cause was an internal spring of some kind had ceased to pull the buttons back into the locked position.

To open it you press the button on either side

I created this tool out of a piece of coat hanger to press in the ends of the spring pins to remove the clasp from the watch

The clasp mechanism after being removed from the band and its backing by removing spring pins with the above tool, The next stage was to unbend the four pins keeping the cover on, i forgot to get a photo after i had taken that off. (And yes the grime on it is quite disgusting)

As soon as I took the panel off a few little springs bounced out, and as i suspected they were broken and tangled. The photo is off one of the largest pieces next to a 5c coin for reference

This is the socket that the spring was supposed to rest in, unfortunately I didn't get an overview of the mechanism, but there was another similar socket on the other side

And here was the cheap and simple fix, having no springs anywhere near that size. I cut a tiny fragment off an elastic band.

The only remaining thing to do was to reassemble the clasp and re-attach it to the band and it worked, it now no longer falls off by itself. I'm not sure how long the rubber will hold up but until it fails im happy.

The closeup images where taken using the setup HERE

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  1. Just for reference, the two tiny chunks of elastic band are still going strong.


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