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M'Bob
·I’m sure many of you have had the experience of getting a watch, liking almost everything about it except that one small thing that just gets under your skin. It could be the bracelet or clasp, the bezel, that FOIS case back that digs into the back of your wrist…
Anyway, I like this bronze Seamaster 300, but for the life of me, I don’t understand the design choice by whomever to make the threading on the strap white. Why? Does it compliment anything on the watch at all? The contrast seems to draw your eye right to it, and what’s the point? Aren’t you supposed to gravitate towards the watch itself?
So I contacted our resident leather expert, @Duracuir1, for advice on what would be the best thread to substitute it with, after I got the watch in hand. He was correct that the ends were in fact glued under the strap liner, which made cutting, replacing, and re-glueing them a trip down a rabbit hole that was even too long for me, if such a thing were possible.
I rounded up some shoe polish with a color as close as possible to the strap, and started dipping the tip of a needle into the polish, and carefully dabbing it on the threads. This proved to be an exercise in utter insanity, so I had to figure something else out.
I thought about marking around the threads to keep the excess color off the rest of the strap, but how to do that without pulling up the surface of the leather? Then it came to me: what about cutting up a Post-It and using that? Maybe just enough adherence to get the job done, without trashing the strap surface. So I did a test on an inconspicuous spot, and went to work. First I masked, then dabbed. The brown you already see on the threads is from the needle attempt:
I let it dry, and here’s how it turned out:
It may require some touch-ups down the road, but it seems okay for now. Thanks for looking.
Anyway, I like this bronze Seamaster 300, but for the life of me, I don’t understand the design choice by whomever to make the threading on the strap white. Why? Does it compliment anything on the watch at all? The contrast seems to draw your eye right to it, and what’s the point? Aren’t you supposed to gravitate towards the watch itself?
So I contacted our resident leather expert, @Duracuir1, for advice on what would be the best thread to substitute it with, after I got the watch in hand. He was correct that the ends were in fact glued under the strap liner, which made cutting, replacing, and re-glueing them a trip down a rabbit hole that was even too long for me, if such a thing were possible.
I rounded up some shoe polish with a color as close as possible to the strap, and started dipping the tip of a needle into the polish, and carefully dabbing it on the threads. This proved to be an exercise in utter insanity, so I had to figure something else out.
I thought about marking around the threads to keep the excess color off the rest of the strap, but how to do that without pulling up the surface of the leather? Then it came to me: what about cutting up a Post-It and using that? Maybe just enough adherence to get the job done, without trashing the strap surface. So I did a test on an inconspicuous spot, and went to work. First I masked, then dabbed. The brown you already see on the threads is from the needle attempt:
I let it dry, and here’s how it turned out:
It may require some touch-ups down the road, but it seems okay for now. Thanks for looking.
