If you've read through the specs on the Advance models currently up in our web store then you've probably noticed that we really like to emphasize that our leather straps are "100% handmade in-house" - I'd like to touch on that for a moment.
We all see that handmade mark on straps and wonder "is it really?" well yeah, it is... sort of.
Straps can be factory handmade meaning the leather is dyed at the tannery somewhere else, a strap die and press cuts all the shapes and punches the holes, a burnishing lathe smooths the sides and a sewing machine performs the stitch. It's handmade in sort of the same way that a car is handmade, which I think works quite well quality-wise I mean, I adore my Subaru STi but I don't know if I would ever have it stamped "handmade".
At Aevum Timepieces all our straps stamped with our "Aevum Handmade" logo are truly handmade with hand tools only. The closest we get to a machine is with a manual arbour press to get the leverage needed for a deep looking stamp for the Aevum Handmade logo. Let's have a look at the process.
Each strap gets sliced out of a double shoulder hide brought in from Belgium. Each strap is cut and at the time of ordering, each stitching groove hand carved and each strap hole hand punched. To prevent any strap gap, each of our straps are cut to about 22.5mm, this allows for some possible shrinking when the leather dries after dye work.
Speaking of dye work, currently every leather strap design at Aevum is dyed by us in house. We mix our own colours like our distressed chocolate, tan and night bark finishes to give our Aevum straps a bit more of a custom feel. Once a strap is dyed, it'll be distressed through a sanding process or moved straight on to a light oiling depending on the finish. Oiling helps to give the leather a softer and more pliable feel and also helps to prevent splitting of the fibers. After all that the strap is sealed and the sides burnished by hand.
Each Aevum strap is hand stitched in our clients choice of thread colour and is the final step to our straps aside from passing the spring bars through and attaching the buckle. We try our best to work in our clients straps by bending and flexing them before sending them out. After all this the straps and the watches they go on are quality checked before they go into their packaging. Some of our quality checks include a buckle test, thread inspection, temper and feel of the leather, for the watches themselves we inspect for dust, imperfections, lume, crown operation and hand positioning.
We're looking forward to developing new strap designs to bring to our store. Our next strap concept is to post one-off strap designs to our web store. These will be available to purchase on our web store as a single strap or combined with one of our watches. If you have a strap design you'd like us to consider, feel free to write to us via our 'Contact' page of the website.
I hope you've enjoyed the read! There will be more writeups coming in the future about a variety of topics surrounding Aevum Timepieces - Bryan Farquharson
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