Where do I get a watch’s leather band replaced? A jeweler? How much does it usually cost? It’s a cheap watch so I don’t want to pay much.
Most department stores sell replacement watch bands. So does Amazon. They go for anywhere from a few bucks to a lot, depending how fancy you want to be.
Last time I needed a watch band replaced the gal in the jewelry department at Walmart changed it for me. Took her about 30 seconds. I think it was an $8 watch band. I can usually change them myself in the same amount of time if the spring doesn’t go flying across the room.
I buy my watch bands on Amazon because I need a thin, long one that’s not always in stock at Kohl’s or Wal Mart.
As **racer72 **noted, it’s hard to work with the springy pins and there is actually a special tool you can buy to make it easier. I purchased one of the tools so I could do it myself.
A department store jewelry counter will have one of these tools, as well as a bunch of replacement watch bands, and will do the work for you. IMHO unless you buy the tool, it’s much easier to have a store do it than to do it on your own.
There’s a wristwatch kiosk in an area mall (yes the mall is still here but has missed their last multimillion $ mortgage payment and is scheduled to be sold on the courthouse steps) and they have changed the last 3 bands on my talking atomic watch (and changed its battery 3 times) over the last 9 years.
As long as the original question has been satisfactorily answered, I’ll share a mundane and pointless (but related) tidbit of my own: I usually end up replacing the watch, not the band. I’ve had the same Speidel “Twist-O-Flex” band on my wrist since the mid seventies. It’s gone through around a dozen watches, though!
I never found it that hard to replace bands myself. It just takes a very fine tipped knife or similar instrument. You just have to put the spring through the band, put one side of the spring into its slot at an angle and them compress the other side flush with the band until you get it maneuvered into the area near the second slot so that the spring remains compressed by contact and then just maneuver the band until the spring matches up perfectly with its slot. It will decompress and hold it in place just like new. Repeat for the other side of the band. Done.
And then when you realize that you’ve put the buckle half on the wrong side of the watch, you do it all over again!
I generally use a very small screwdriver; the kind that comes in a little plastic case, usually with four or five tiny flat screwdrivers and two tiny Philips. I use the smallest flat one.