Watch Repair

My damned watch broke again. I've had this watch for years and it finally had a terminal failure. I didn't give up too easily, and I brought it back from the dead!

I've tried a few different smart watches, a Fitbit, and some fancier watches, but I always seem to go back to this one. It's easy to read, easy to use, has a well designed light to see the time at night and always stays upright on my wrist.

But the band popped out, and it was a terminal failure. The hole that the spring pin is retained in opened up, and the spring pin would never stay retained in the hole again.

I came up with a solution pretty quickly, and the repair didn't take very long.

This watch has an upper piece that can be removed by taking the four silver screw out of the face. And that was my ticket.

Using a pin vise, I drilled a hole all the way through the plastic housing of the watch. I did the same thing on both sides of the watch band. If it fails again, the band will have broken and not just the watch pin. I'll accept replacing a band. Once the holes were drilled, I cut the drill bit to fit across the watch through both drilled holes, just barely smaller than the whole watch across. I used cut drill bits because the tool steel that the bits are made of is very strong and shouldn't bend and fail over time. It's much harder than say a paperclip. Both are made of steel, but the drill bit is not going to bend. You can bend a paperclip by hand (I assume).

I reassembled the watch and bands, and this is the clever part, put the cover piece back on.

The pins are right up to the edge of the drilled holes, and the cover piece retained the pins in place. They can't go anywhere because the cover piece stops them from doing so.

I reassembled the watch, and I can tell what time it is yet again.