Adventures in strap making

yande

Great work, and thanks for sharing.
I have been researching tools and methods for straps these past weeks (for once I did not just jump straight in) so very happy to come accross your thread here. Very impressive. Even skimming through the 8 pages it is easily seen how much you have improved, especially your stitching. I'm tossing up whether to buy one of those cheap kits on EBay, or to buy better quality tools, one at a time from a reputable retailer. I want to make sure I am going to stick to it.
I bought a strap around 8 years back from either here or another watch forum that was made from "Boots that trod the mud of the Somme in WWI" which you can see pictured below. It was a shame that the leather split where it was bent to accomodate the Buckle. 2nd pic. Hence it hardly ever got used.
This thread also reminded me of a strap seller from Asia on EBay. His straps were predominately made of strange exotic skins, not really my style. His reply to a Negative Feedback reply of "Fake" was... "No one fakes chicken skin!" 😁 I thought that hilarious.
I've bookmarked this thread. Thanks again.

DaveK

I think it was @STANDY who made a key fob out of an old watch strap, maybe you can salvage a piece of that cool leather too. There will be enough for a fob or to make some zipper pulls for a favourite jacket or backpack...

janice&fred

What no pretentious BMW key on the ring? 😁

janice&fred

Yea but you gotta boat with a motor. mine has oars.

Duracuir1

I made my first strap of 2021 and delivered it to my jeweller and close friend. He had asked for the buckle piece to be extra long and wanted 18mm lug width. It should have been 19 mm minimum.

He strapped it on and is happy with it “as is”.

Then he handed me an old custom made gold watch. I would describe it as a cocktail watch if there is such a thing. All gold, including the bracelet.

My wife tried it on and it fits perfectly. She is keeping it. The watch does not work. And her eyes are not as they used to be - she thinks I am still good looking!

She will wear it Andy Warhol style.

My friend offered me the watch for free, in exchange for a pile of leather straps that I have made for him over the years.

He simply wanted to save it from the crucible. Me too. If we could only know the story behind it.

He agreed to weigh the gold and I will give him market value.

Syrte

So an update on this, while I’m quite sure I’ll end up giving to Doctors without borders too, I’ve made two contributions in honor of this strap,
-one to Wikipedia which is providing excellent free information to all and which is begging for help because most people it seems aren’t prepared to help finance ventures which seek to provide quality information, as if it were a given;
- two to UNICEF because they’re just helping so many families worldwide on everything.