Tag: Interchangeable

Leather Revanche (and Dinosaur!)

Remember the first watch from my Watching the Watches post? If you don’t remember that doesn’t matter, just know that it was a new concept but somewhat of a failure, unfortunately. So I needed to make something that would allow the pointy concept that I had to work. During the end of a day-long workshop I doodled part of the design. A few days after my return from the workshop I managed to copy the bottom part such that I had a continuous and symmetrical design. It took a few more days for it to be executed, but I finally have a pointy watchband that actually works!

Design and front Design and back

You can see the design on the right. I stuck that on my leather and just cut the paper and leather at the same time. This worked remarkably well actually. I reused the buckle from an older attempt where I used smaller rivets, which made my skin turn green, not a useful band as such. I hammered in the rivet, punched a hole in the strap and called it a day.

Top Bottom

The defining element was only added 20 minutes ago during an attempt at cleaning up my room. I’d finally pulled the ‘I give up’-box out of its corner to clear away the contents. The ‘I give up’-box is used to hold all the little bits and bobs that take to long to clear away to their rightful place when in a hurry. If at some point I feel that I need to clear up and quickly, the ‘I give up’-box appears and stuff that needs to be moved from whatever space it is currently occupying gets put inside and the whole box goes in a corner – Instant Neat! It was time for sorting out the box and I found a dinosaur earring. Now, without holes in your ears, dinosaur earrings don’t really have much use. However, a dinosaur on a watch, that is the ultimate awesome. For evidence, see below!

Dinosaur

Tadaah! Dinosaur! I also accidentally made the watch band completely skip the protruding wrist bone which makes it wear nicely. So happy accidents all around!

Now, let’s try to finish those pesky jeans and the sweater I started almost 2 weeks ago for which there is only one more skein and about 15-20 cm of ribbing to go!

Watching the Watches

You may recall my first self-made watch-band (here), which has been in constant rotation since first assembly. I did change out the watch face at some point for one with clearer numbers on it. Now, what I found out was that watches that have non-movable supports, in the picture below the one on the strap and the middle and bottom one on the right side, fit perfectly fine in this. They don’t slide around and stay put. However, the watches on the left, weren’t so keen. They would move and therefore I never really put them in this band.

Watches

Thus, a new strap started to take shape in my mind. It is an alternative design, with the opening at the top of the wrist instead of at the bottom. I know this sounds weird, but the pictures make it make sense, hopefully. The buckle is attached to approximate middle of the band, then goes through a loop attached with a rivet on one side, then on goes the watch face, you put it on the wrist and pull the strap trough the riveted loop on the other side and through the buckle to close.

Open front Open back

The reason why I’m liking the idea and not the execution so much anymore is because I dropped the watch face every second time I put the watch on. Also, because of the heaviness, I ended up with the watch on the underside of my wrist more often than not. I want to have my watch on top. Left, the watch as it was when I’d just made it, and right after wearing it for a week or more. You can see the points splaying more, and that, and the stretching of the thin strap was most likely what kept pulling the watch down.

Front begin Top end

Below you can also see the bottom buckle and the side view.

Back Side

I do like the idea with the single rivet loops and I’m planning on making a band that opens like normal at the bottom, but does have pointy bits on the front. I wanted to make the new one today, but I got distracted by new ideas. What if I didn’t use loops or rivets to make the watches interchangeable but created built-in loops in the band itself?!

Looping

I created a sort of wave-ish design with pointy bits around the watch face on cardboard. Added slits for the thin strap to pass though and copied it all onto leather. Simply cutting it out, and riveting the buckle on, and done it was!

Front Back

Apparently there were two different types of leather in the bag of offcuts that I bought last time. I quite like the look of the back, although the front is similar colours. I’m going to have to wear it more to be sure, but I think that the movable support will stay put in this design.

Front Other loop

So that’s it, two new watch bands. My fingers hurt from cutting the leather so I’m going to postpone making the improved version of the top band. That way I can also test if the bottom version actually works to my liking.

Next up, a knitted gift.

Changing Times

Sometimes you find something online that you really really like. You wonder if you should buy it or not. So you ask the seller the question that’s haunting you, but receive no reply. What do you guys do?

I decided to create something that would give me a similar vibe, but from scratch. This was my inspiration picture:

Dawanda shop "My old Watch", click the picture for the listing
DaWanda shop “My old Watch”, click the picture for the listing

I really liked this item. The leaves, the thickness of the belt, the vintage-y look, but there was one potential snag. How would it close? The reason this is important for me, is that the last time I bought a watch online, the band was both too long and almost too short at the same time. It was one of those studded wrap watches that wind around your wrist three times. Well, with three times I had so much band left over that it was still studded, so no holes yet. So I decided to have holes added at the end and then I could wear it, but wrapped four times. Depending on the day, this can be just that little bit too tight. So if the watch didn’t have the possibility of having extra holes made to fit my chicken wrists, it wouldn’t work for me.

In the end I purchased six separate watch faces from another DaWanda shop. I bought some leather, a clasp and rivets from a local haberdashery shop. I wanted to be able to change the watch faces depending on my fancy of that day, this would mean that the face wouldn’t be attached completely.

I ended up cutting a 14 cm by 2.5 cm strip of leather and rounding of the edges. Second bit was a ~20 cm by 0.8 cm strip of leather.
I made a hole in the thin strip to thread the clasp through, the leather was then doubled at one end. I made a hole in the double end and another in the thicker strip and riveted them together. I then added supports using a rivet on either side under which the thin strip could pass to keep the watch face in place. I added the watch face for that day and attached a small oak leave pendant using a jump ring. This is the result:

Watch Watch

On the left, you can just about see the supports  for the thin strip to pass under. Because of the design of this specific watch face, these supports are adequate to keep the face in place. For the next iteration of this design I will place the supports closer to the actual watch face. You can just about see the rivet underneath the end on the right picture. To get an even better idea, you can see it laid out below, with the alternative watch faces. The top right one doesn’t fit in this design, so I’ll have to think of another method for that one.

Watches

I think I found a new hobby. I like cutting out leather with sharp tools and using my hammer to whack things. Now I just await the new smaller rivets that are coming my way and create a similar design to this. Maybe I’ll use the wrong side of the leather for some added contrast or such. I might also round of the support edges to make it a little cuter. Use a different colour leather. Add another pendant.. So many possibilities!