Search the Community

I have had this watch band floating around here for awhile and thought it might be a good time to do a how to make, along with one of the methods I use when I only have a small job to edge coat. The original band was inset with some short hair skin of which I could find no suitable substitute so as the picture below shows I managed to talk her into using crocodile. At this stage I have cut out all of my patterns and pieces and for the backing and I have gone with some 2mm thick nubuck camel skin I think. The black matt croc is about 1.5mm in thickness. Although there is only 2 keepers needed I do show enough croc strips for 3 keepers and that is because I'm just not that good. If one stuffs up along the way I don't have to reset the skiver etc to make another. This pic below shows the embossing stamp I decided to use and how with a bent metal plate I use to hold the leather still in case I think it needs more stamp/heat time. This shows the other strap stamped and this case held down with a magnet instead. As the keepers have to have their edging done earlier than the rest of the strap I have to split them down to obtain a finished thickness around 1.2mm firstly. For the firm backing I am going for .5mm and have decided to do this on my Fortuna skiving machine. Below shows me setting the height on some scrap first. showing the backing strip running through and now the croc a little thicker at .7mm This one below shows the skiving done on the straps with the Fortuna and a little hand skiving to achieve no thickness on the ends. This is done to minimise getting any holes in the valleys. This is showing all the pieces ready to glue up and attach some reinforcing fabric for where the watch pins go. The one piece of fabric (front left) will be cut into 3 separate pieces as they are applied. Here I am applying contact glue with the aid of glue gun. It is best to attach the fabric in a rolling fashion over something a little larger than the watch pin. In this case I use a cotton bud stick. This one shows what it should look like with the fabric's attached and the croc keeper strips stuck down. That is about how many pics will load in one go so I will be back with more later.