"Female" Spring Bars...

[Moose]

I have been asked to fit a new strap on a vintage wrist watch. It originally comes with a gold bracelet and he wants to change to leather.

The problem is, the watch lugs are not fitted with holes to accept standard spring bars, but instead has small posts, on to which hollow spring bars are fitted. Now, I have never worked with these before, but I'm struggling to find a way to fit a standard leather strap onto this watch.

The lug width is 17mm and if the strap is also 17mm, you can see my problem. I first have to get the strap over the pins in the lugs, and that's without trying to get the female spring bars compressed INSIDE the strap, to fit over the pins as well!

I have toyed with cutting off the posts and then drilling the watch lugs to accept standard spring bars, BUT... this watch is solid gold and Vintage and a wedding present, so you can imagine, I do not want to mess about with it.

Can anyone help with a good way of fitting a strap in this situation? The only way I can see to do it, would be to cut notches in the underside of the leather strap, to allow me to compress the female spring bars to fit.

(This picture is just to illustrate the lugs, not my actual watch).

Edited December 4, 2022 by Moose
spelling

[Marc]

You need to acquire some female spring bars, but be warned, they are not easy to track down and when you do you need to make sure that they are the right size for the diameter for the male lugs.

Cutting of the posts and drilling the lugs is not only challenging to do well, but will drastically devalue the watch.