Spring bar advice

I just bought a vintage Omega and it came with spring bars with no ridges so I was unable to remove them using a spring bar tool no matter how hard I tried. I was able to remove the fold of the strap and will glue it back so that’s not a problem, but I ended up filing the spring bars so that I could remove them. I’m pretty sure these spring bars were intended for lugs with holes on the exterior. Did I make a mistake and for some reason Omega watches came with this kind of spring bar?

I suspect those are not Omega spring bars. Those are, as you suspected, for lugs with holes...

Thanks Al!

I was at the Omega boutique in Vancouver a few days ago to get some spring bars for my Railmaster. They sold me some, but also told me it would be the last time because they are no longer allowed to sell them to the public.

I invented a story for them for illustrative purposes “I swim in salt water and want to replace the spring bars annually, as a preventative measure” and was told that the tech would replace them for free if they were failing. So I guess that the moral of the story is to ask for free spring bars every year along with a water resistance test.

As noted above, it is possible to buy high quality spring-bars online that are not branded by Omega or any particular watch manufacturer. A decent watch supply house will sell them if you look around. As one might expect, they aren't cheap, but also not $5 each if you buy in quantity. TBH, I've never had a properly installed spring-bar fail (I understand that it does happen, I'm just speaking for myself), so I tend to think that the concern about quality is a bit overstated, but I still buy the expensive ones because it's a small marginal cost.

When fitting a spring-bar, I find it important to focus on the diameter of the tip, which can be more important than the diameter of the bar itself. I like the tip to be snug inside the lug hole if possible, to reduce wear and tear over time from jiggling around. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to know the tip diameter from the sales listing, so you might have to do some trial and error.