I am very rough on my watches and I’ve had a spring bar (or 2) pop off of my leather watch strap causing my watch to drop to the floor. This problem made me investigate straps that keep your watch on your arm if one of the bars fails which led me to nato/zulu watch straps. These straps originated in the military and are made from one piece of fabric (leather in my case) that slides through the ends of a watch. They way they are designed however won’t work for apple watches like mine because the back of the watch has to touch your skin. After a few failed attempts I came up with this design. I have 2 versions, one version made from 2 pieces of leather sewn together with the spring bars sandwiched in between and another version made from one piece of thicker leather where one side of the strap is slid through the watch. I think I have said this before - I love having the power that a GlowForge brings allowing me to solve problems and make ideas come to life!
I really like how these look…great job on the innovation for making them work with an Apple watch. I’m surprised that the thickness of the leather doesn’t keep the back of the watch up too high off your skin to allow it to make contact. BTW…since you don’t give any further details about the pattern being available, you may want to include the link to your Etsy (or other) shop, or if you’re giving the file away put it into the free laser design catagory here in the forum.
Thanks and yes it still works even though the leather is thick on the back. I originally thought I’d have to have the leather thinner there but no I’ve been wearing it for a couple of weeks and it hasn’t failed yet. As for my shop it’s in my profile but here it is: Profesora Leather by ProfesoraLeather on Etsy
i was a little confused when i first looked at your strap because it’s not quite constructed like a traditional zulu watch strap (i have a couple of leather and fabric zulus for my traditional watches). but now that i get what you did there, i think it’s interesting the way you incorporated the open back and i imagine (since there’s no wrist shot) that it almost looks more like a bund style strap on the wrist.
it’s a little different than a zulu because the zulus are literally one strip of whatever material that slides under both spring bars and cover the caseback. this has a similar effect as a zulu (or nato) in that you’ve got two failure points instead of one, but it’s still a little different.
given that my wife has had her apple watch fall off on a dog walk when we were at my mom’s house, two points of contact would be a good thing. (thank god for "find my phone’ capabilities, we could tell my mom what address it was at and she went and found it.)
