On some Smiths watches they used special crowns, crystals and spring bars. What is not generally known is that these were not manufactured by Smiths themselves but were usually supplied by the relevent case maker, Mong, Dennison, BWC.
After the distribution of the small amount of reserved stock Smiths held for these models up to about 1970/1971 it became general practise for repairers to fit suitable generic parts. The actual manufacturers of the crowns, crystals and spring bars are now no longer in existence.
We endeavour to do our utmost where the originals are no longer available to supply suitable generic material based on our product knowledge and image resources from catalogues and advertisements from the period.
Sometimes we have to modify existing generic crystals to fit the two special Smiths case bezels and sometimes we fit larger winding crowns than those originally fitted, especially to gold cases, but we always try to replace like for like, for example, gold cases will be fitted with rolled gold winding crowns rather than cheap gold plated ones, and where at all possible dust proof winding crowns will be fitted rather than ordinary ones.