This cover fits snugly over the mechanism and can be pulled off using the tip of a knife, screwdriver or tweezers, being careful not to touch any part of the mechanism or you may damage it. You will now see a plastic spacer/protection cover which is used to absorb shock and prevent the mechanism from moving around within the case. Now use a very small flat screwdriver or a blunt knife and wedge the tip or blade underneath the cover and push down, as a lever, to snap it up. With the correct technique, it is also quite easy to remove these covers.įor a snap on cover, you’ll first you need to locate the lip on the back cover. To remove a screw off cover, a long nosed pliers can usually be used, put the two tips of the pliers into opposite notches and press the watch down to grip the cover and then turn the cover off.
To remove a cover with screws, use a small screw driver to remove all of the screws and the cover should come free. This tutorial will focus on snap on covers since these are the most common. Snap on covers have a small overlap or lip somewhere around the perimeter under which a tool is used to lift the cover off.
Screw on covers usually have a pattern of notches (typically 6-8) equally spaced around the outer perimeter of the cover which allows a tool to grab the cover and turn it. Covers secured with screws will obviously have a number of screws around the perimeter. You can tell the difference by looking at the back cover of the watch. Snap on covers are by far the most popular covers on modern watches as they’re generally cheaper for the manufacturer to produce, followed by screw on covers. Watches typically have one of three types of covers, covers secured with screws, a screw on cover (the whole back cover turns into place) or a snap on cover. The images here are shown with the newspaper removed as the print distracts from the detail of the image.
Start off by placing your watch face down on a magazine or newspaper, the paper will prevent the screen from getting scratched while you work on it.