vintage watch with broken crystal

[gMays]

I've got a 70s vintage watch with a broken crystal that I would like to repair myself. Where should I buy a new crystal and what tools do I need? How would I go about removing and replacing the crystal?

[Tmuir]

It depends on the watch and what style of crystal it is fitted with as to what tools you would need to replace the crystal.

If you can post photos of the watch we could probably give you a better answer.

If you are thinking it will be cheaper to do it yourself it probably wont be by the time you have bought the correct tools.

[jdm]

If the watch is not of much value you could try with improvised tools. first open the watch, remove the movement, try to press out the old crystal with you thumb.

Possibly a better idea, there are some battery change shop that also do this kind of work, at most you would just need to order the specific crystal yourself..

[Ishima]

" Possibly a better idea, there are some battery change shop that also do this kind of work, at most you would just need to order the specific crystal yourself. "

Don't mean to be argumentative but as someone who works on a watch repair branch it always perplexes me when people bring in watches with their own parts, I'd rather they didn't. If you can get the part, so can we. and we can be much more confident it's the right part. I simply don't see there being any reason or benefit to obtaining a part on behalf of the repairer. 

But to address gMays, as Tmuir says if you post some pictures we'd be happy to help. 

Edited January 26, 2017 by Ishima

[jdm]

5 hours ago, Ishima said:

Don't mean to be argumentative but as someone who works on a watch repair branch it always perplexes me when people bring in watches with their own parts, I'd rather they didn't. If you can get the part, so can we. and we can be much more confident it's the right part. I simply don't see there being any reason or benefit to obtaining a part on behalf of the repairer. 

Note well, I wrote "battery change shop", not "watchmaker shop". Often these are simple shops where they can have the tools and the manual skills, but not the knowledge and the patience needed to find an original part or even one that fits well. So you do them just a favor bringing the part to be fitted. And honestly there would be nothing wrong doing the same even with a true watchmaker.

[Ishima]

I'm not sure how one would have the tools and knowledge to do a job but not source a generic part, but in the case of an original. OEM part I suppose that's true, I just didn't know that's what we were talking about.