How to change my watch strap

You are able to change the look of your watch completely with a new strap. With the right strap you can upgrade not only the style of your watch, but also your whole outfit. It also gives you a new sensation when wearing your watch. Below you learn how to change the strap of your watch with the help of a simple tool.

First of all, we recommend that you check how the current bracelet or strap is attached to your watch. Most watches have a spring bar on each side, which is inserted into the bracelet and clamped between the holders of the watch case. The term spring bar is derived from its mechanics. In order to be clamped and locked between the holders of the watch case, it must be retractable like a mechanical spring. Every spring bar has this basic mechanism.

There are three different ways in which a spring bar can be removed from the watch case – depending on the type of bar or the way it is fastened in the case. With our tool you can easily change the bracelet via each of these three ways. In the following, we explain how to replace the watch strap depending on the case.

In some watches, the holes for spring bars go straight through the case so that they are visible from the outside of the watch case. The main difference to the most common variant mentioned above is the way how spring bars can be removed from the holder of the case:

1. The sharp side of the spring bar tool is required to release the watch strap from the holder. With this side you press into one of the holes on the outside of your watch case (see photo) until the spring bar jumps out of its hole.

To insert the new strap, proceed in the same way as described under 1. Here it is important that you use the existing spring bars for your new watch strap since they are usually slightly different from conventional spring bars. In more particular, they are slightly wider at the ends to completely fill the holes in the watch case.

Quick-release bars are becoming more and more popular and are often used in newer watch models. Premium brands such as Nomos Glashütte now also use this quick-release system as standard. In essence, it is a mounting with a conventional spring bar, except that this spring bar has a separate protruding pin (see spring bar in photo).

A particular feature of these quick-change spring bars is that they make it possible to change the strap very quickly and that they require their own holes or recesses in the strap (see photo). In this case the watch strap is replaced as follows:

1. To release the strap, simply slide the spring bar’s protruding pin to one side.
2. Now you can push the spring bars out of its old strap. Make sure that the pin does not get stuck in the hole of the strap. The best way to do this is to use the spring bar tool.
3. If you place the flat, fork-shaped side of the spring bar tool on the protruding pin of the spring bar, you can push the bar into the new strap.
4. The next step is to insert one side of the spring bar with its new strap in the hole of the watch case (see picture).
5. The protruding pin must now be pressed into the direction of the inserted side to compress (contract) the spring bar.
6. With the spring bar pressed together, the watch strap can now be placed completely between the holders of the case until the spring bar jumps into place.