6 Best Spring Bars Replacements For Your Watch [Guide]

6 Best Spring Bars Replacements For Your Watch

The spring bars are the crucial safety link between you and your watch. Most watches are equipped with spring bars, and these are the safety point that keeps your bracelet or strap attached to the watch. If the spring bar fails or breaks, your watch will fall off your watch, potentially breaking it or losing it forever.

With that said, the spring bars are small but crucial parts of your watch. This makes it extremely important to have high-quality spring bars, but also to check them regularly, and change them if necessary in order to save yourself from a potentially very expensive mistake.

To help you, we have therefore listed some great spring bars and spring bar sets. But before we go into those, let’s look closer at spring bars and what sets them apart. The last thing you want to compromise with is the spring bars for your watch.

What are spring bars?

A spring bar is a small bar with springs inside that is attached to the lug of your watch. The spring bars are used to hold a strap or bracelet in place and attached to the watch. Since a bracelet or strap is attached from two sides, a watch will be equipped with two spring bars – one on each side.

The spring bar has a spring inside so that you can compress the spring inside to make the length shorter, allowing you to attach it to the lug, and as the spring is then released, it is locked into place. To remove the spring bars, you should ideally use a dedicated tool to do it properly. Some spring bars are more difficult than others to access and remove, but for some spring bars, it is possible to remove with, for example, a toothpick, although it is advised that you have proper tools when doing it.

Best spring bars for watches

Below, we list some high-quality spring bars. Even if you are not in need of spring bars at the moment, it is advised to keep some spring bars just in case. Since these are relatively cheap, it’s not a huge investment. A tip is to buy a spring bar set that includes a large number of spring bars of different sizes. This is great to have on hand since it will mean you always have access to a wide array of spring bars that should fit any watch you may need spring bars for. This is why we will primarily recommend complete spring bar sets.

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SE Professional Stainless Steel Spring Bar Set (360 PC)

This spring bar kit includes 36 spring bars in a wide array of 18 different sizes. The set includes spring bars of the following sizes:

Different sizes (mm): 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25

There are 20 spring bars per size.

The wide array of spring bars means you will likely have just what you need for most watches.

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iStrap Watch Spring Bar 300pcs

This is another spring bar set with a large number of spring bars (300) and a wide array of sizes (18). The sizes include:

8mm 9mm 10mm 11mm 12mm 13mm 14mm 15mm 16mm 17mm 18mm 19mm 20mm 21mm 22mm 23mm 24mm 25mm 26mm 28mm. Each size includes 20 spring bars. The spring bars are made of stainless steel and have a double flange, allowing for a better grip when removing and inserting them.

The set also includes a small spring bar remover tool, making it great value for money.

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EFIXTK Spring Bar Tool Set with Extra 6 Tips

This spring bar set includes 1 X Spring Bar Tool, 6 Extra Tips, 72PCS Watch Pins, and 1 Tweezer. This is really all you need to change and replace spring bars. Perhaps the ultimate spring bar set that offers great value for money. The several tips for the spring bar tool make it easy to remove and change the spring bar depending on the type of watch you have.

A review states ”Extremely good value here! Tools in the kit are of extremely high quality. The spring bar tool itself is nice and comes packaged with additional tips. Included ESD-compliant tweezers are a nice addition. The included assortment of spring bars seem to be of pretty nice quality,” and we definitely agree.

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Wellfit Watch Pins – 4 Pack Stainless Steel

This is definitely one of the better-quality spring bars you can buy. The spring bars are much more solid and robust than many others, which is a great idea if you want to be completely sure about the quality and longevity of your spring bars.

The set includes 4 spring bars, and you can choose between 16, 18, 20, and 22mm spring bars. They have a double flange – a ”Double shoulder design”, which allows for a better grip for removing and inserting the spring bars. This spring bar set is definitely one of our top recommendations.

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HEAVY DUTY SPRING BAR 1.8mm thickness

This is another set of spring bars that we definitely recommend. The reason is that they are sturdy, reliable, and of high quality. They have a thickness of 1.8mm and are available in a large number of sizes so you should be able to find a set that fits your watch. The set includes a packet of 4 spring bars. The spring bars are available in the following sizes: 32, 30, 28, 26, 24, 22, 20, 19, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, and more.

The spring bars have double Flanged which allows for easy access and easy installation.

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BARTON Watch Bands – Spring Bars 

The last set of spring bars we recommend is Barton watch bands spring bars. These spring bars are also of high quality and have a diameter of 1.8mm, making them sturdy and non-flimsy. The spring bars come in a set of four and are available in the following sizes: 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24mm.

The spring bars have double shoulders at each end which allow for easy grip and easy insertion or removal.

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Spring bar sizes

Note that different watches require different spring bar sizes. This includes both the thickness but also in width. A larger watch will generally have wider lugs and thus need wider spring bars. It will only work to have the correct size spring bars for your watch, so firstly, you need to identify the lug size of your watch.

Usually,  a simple Google search will reveal what spring bar size you need. Search for ”Your model+lug size” or ”Your model + Lug width”. You can technically also measure the distance between the inside of your lugs, but a Google search should do the job and give you an accurate answer.

Usually, watches have a lug width of 18 to 24mm, but they can be both smaller and larger. Most men’s watches have a lug width of either 20 or 22mm, but make sure you find your exact size since it is not possible to, for example, use 21mm spring bars on a 20mm watch. It needs to be exact. This is why it may be a good idea to but a spring bar kit with lots of different spring bars in many different sizes. This allows you to have access to the exact spring bar size your watch needs, whenever you need it.

Why change spring bars?

A spring bar is a small metal piece with a spring on the side that allows both ends to contract and go in and out from the watch’s lugs. Just like any mechanism, it will eventually be worn out. Just consider the fact that a bracelet is held in place via two small spring bars. Naturally, this will cause a lot of wear and tear on the spring bars. Over time, the spring bars may even fail and break, resulting in the watch falling to the ground. It may even potentially lead to you losing your watch if you don’t notice when it falls. With that said, changing your spring bars for a new one occasionally is a great safety measure to ensure that your watch sits securely fastened on your wrist and does not risk falling off.

In my opinion, it is a very affordable guarantee as well (and definitely well worth it).

Spring bar tool for changing spring bars

To remove or add spring bars to your watch, the easiest way is to use a high-quality spring bar tool. You can read our complete guide to spring bar tools here but below are two of our favorite and most qualitative tools:

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Bergeon spring bar tweezers 7825

These tweezers from Bergeon are extremely qualitative and are much better than regular pen-style spring bar tools. This is also the tool that we use here are Millenary Watches. The benefit of a tweezer is that you can grip the spring bar from both ends at the same time, which avoids scratching the watch and offers a better grip. It is built with fine forked tips to enable reaching narrow openings as small as 1mm. In addition, Bergeon is, as you may know, one of the most reputable, if not the most reputable brands and manufacturers of professional watchmaking tools, meaning we can expect some serious quality.

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W&S Spring Bar Plier Tool

This spring bar tool is technically more advanced than the one above. The reason is that it also allows you to adjust the width of the gap via the adjusting screw on the inside. This keeps the opening locked in one position and thus further reduces the risk of slipping. Since the spring bar is closed at a certain position, you avoid, for example, losing the grip and can thus achieve greater precision and keep your watch safe.

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How do you put a spring bar on a watch?

For a guide on how to put spring bars on a watch, please refer to the video below. The tool used in the video is the Bergeon 7825.

Choose qualitative spring bars

Believe it or not but there is actually a huge difference between the quality of different spring bars. And when you have them in your hand, you’ll actually be able to notice the difference. The cheapest alternatives tend to be made of cheap metal and feel quite hollow and low quality. Whilst these spring bars will do the job, they will not last as long as high-quality, robust spring bars.

The latter is the type of spring bars you want to go for. Whilst they cost slightly more, spring bars are still very affordable and a set of good quality spring bars is a well-worthy investment for the safety of your watch.

Spring bars for lug holes

Whilst, in most cases, the only thing you need to think about is the size of the spring bar, there is one more thing you may need to consider, which is if you have so-called pierced lugs on your watch. Pierced lugs mean that your watch has holes in the lugs all the way through. In these cases, you need spring bars that are specifically made for this type of watch. Spring bars for watches with spring bar holes need spring bars that have no “tongues” but instead are completely flat in order to fit into the lug holes completely.