Protective Leather Watch Cover

I have this nice Swiss watch but the problem is that. It’s
not suitable for me.

This days I spent most of my time outdoor. Be it gardening, knife making. Wood working. Stone working or any other type of handcraft that involving the usage of hand tools and noisy electrical tools. So, one can see the problem with that watch. Swiss watch and my type of life style doesn’t go together.

I would sale it but, my son dare me not to. He want to inherit it. still, what the point of having watch that I can’t wear?

Alas, I decided to get a protective cover for it. being me, I also decided to make it myself.

So here is how I make it.

You will need:

Few pieces of wood (pine is good).

6oz leather.

1.5mm thickness leather.

Contact cement glue.

9mm brass poppers (snap studs).

Leather holes puncher.

Leather dye or shoe polish, colour to your choice.

Needle for leather sawing and string (optional).

first you need to build a mould to forming the watch leather top cover.

Measure the diameter of your watch and drill a shallow socket hole in the wood block. It need to be more or less the depth of the thickness of your watch.

Now build the wooden plug. Subtract two times the thickness of your leather

(mine is 3mm, so I subtract 6mm) from the diameter of the socket and cut

the plug. Use a wood file or whatever have you, to round the sharp hedge of

the plug, but only from one side.

Cut peace of leather roughly the length of two times the socket's diameter, and width of the socket depth plus 40mm.

Wet the leather in water, lay it on top of the socket and press the wooden plug into it.

clamp it in a vise and wait few hours until its’ dry.

Take out the plug and cut the excess of leather to shape the top cover. Leave

20m length of leather on two sides, roughly the width of your watch strap.

From the 1.5mm peace of leather, cut two straps, the length that can wrap around the watch strap (see photo in next step). you will have to cut round notch at the gluing end of the straps to allow them to fit snugly with the top cover.

Dye the straps and the top cover but, make sure not to dye the leather in places where you are going to glue

it. Glue the straps to the top cover and punch the holes for the poppers, then rivet the poppers.

At this stage, if you are not too lazy (like me), you can stitch the straps around the poppers to the top cover. it will gives extra strength and some astatic appearance to the cover.

Have fun to do it.

thedyslexiccraftsman.com