Leather Mystery Braid Cuff

[Music] hi I'm Chuck Dorset for Weaver leather craft supply let's make a cool mystery braid cup and these are super popular because it looks impossible it doesn't look like it should work it's a breeze and I'll show you exactly how it works now with most of our tutorials we're just going to make a simple cup but use this as a jumping-off point for a hundred different directions I love the mystery braids and I put it in a lot of places first off mystery braid belts are one of my favorites but also wood carrier handles or gun case handles or purse handles because it's a very comfortable feel in the hand and it'll hold on good bit of weight now you can use all kinds of leather but we need to stay above a four to five out of leather I need some body with it because if I go to light my strands are going to curl as I move through the braid and it's not going to look real clean and consistent but if you have a beautiful leather that's a two ounce maybe three ounce just knock up backing onto it and it'll work just as well so again jumping off point now here's the thing though with our weights in leather we're going to use a four to five ounce natural veg can this is three quarters of an inch wide and I'll show you in a minute while we're going to go with three quarters and I've cut this at about 12 inches giving me plenty of room so the first thing we need to do though is get a measurement on our wrist now you can certainly take a tape if you don't have a tape simply take a piece of thong or lace wrap that around my wrist that's my wrist measurement now one thing here I need to add a little distance for two reasons first off I don't want this tight on my wrist I want it to be a little bit loose but secondly when I do a braid it's going to chew up a little real estate so I need to add some room for error there so my wrist should be about a seven it is so I'm going to add one inch to that now this can get confusing but I'm going to keep an eye on our 8 inches my wrist plus one inch is my snap to snap measurement and not my end of snap that's confusing but I'll show you what I mean I'll show you how to keep an eye on that so let's go ahead and measure our strap now our first measure I want one inch pass this snap so I have room to make my round end punch so we're going to come in from the end of our square root of one inch that's our first snap hole now this is why this can be confusing now if I'm going to go my wrist 7 plus 1 is 8 I'm going to start here and go out to 8 inches that's going to be wrong because my snap to snap distance needs to be 8 so I'm going to move that back to there now I'm going to drop in 8 and then I'm going to mark my end and I'm going to trim that so that should be a clean perfect fit now we're going to punch a round hole and a round end punch and that's going to make this look very professional now of course the tool always preferable the rounded punch makes this very clean but you can also cut by hand around in and it won't be perfect but it certainly will be close nice my ends are clean and punched now we're going to take an 8 inch round hole because we're going to use a snap here and a snap the post is going to fit nicely in 1/8 inch hole it's going to be a little snug which is just right very clean we're a step closer so clean and professional now we need to parallel lines down the middle of our strap to make our braid two ways we can do that we're going to use a leather lace stripper which makes it very clean and easy it's a great tool to have in your shot but if you don't have that tool I'm going to show you how to cut two parallel lines by hand and it's relatively easy so quick overview on this tool this is a leather lace stripper what I can do is lay a blade in between each of these plates this block just comes off now it may be a little hard to see but I've got two blades placed in here one at a quarter inch one and a half inch which for three-quarter inch straps going to be perfect measurements now I can take my mic up and I could pull there we go see how those two blades the leather will sit down on those two blades I can draw this through look at that to clean parallel cuts how easy was that but if you don't have the tool let's cut one by hand now a couple of tricks to cutting by hand I'll show you every one of them first off though if you've ever tried to make a a single cut much less two cuts down a thin piece of leather can be very difficult very frustrating show you exactly how to alleviate that problem now we need to measure let's start there so I'm going to take my square I'm going to come in three quarters of an inch or a half of an inch it's up to you now I'm going to make a mark at one quarter of an inch and one half of an inch now let's flip our strap around Square to my edge come in three quarters of an inch mark at a quarter mark it a half all right so we're marked now here's two big tricks right off the bat piece of scrap same thickness or less so I can shore up my straight edge if I don't have that I press down straight edge is going to pop up I'll get a squirrely cut secondly though and super necessary non-slip tape because I don't want him moving up down left or right I need a good clean cut now I'm going to cut to the marks closest to me but I'm going to leave a little bit of room in there so the pressure is on the strap and not on this piece of scrap now I'm lined up now I'm going to cut the whole cut again to the marks closest to me because I can see that now one big trick on your blade new blade sharp blade every project every time and here's the point there if I can't make a cut a single cut through this and cut through I'm going to need to make multiple cuts but here's the great thing what I'm actually doing there by making multiple cuts is I'm taking less pressure and more control so I'm trading pressure for control and that's always a good call now I'm going to keep my blade angle good and love it's going to do two things going to keep it from jumping by square and well ending badly but secondly because if I make multiple cuts then my blade is going to follow the previous cut nice very clean cut parallel just what I'm looking for alright let's scoot that out a little bit let's square to our marks add some pressure and plan on making two cuts or even three if we need to need to very clean cut by hand good edges parallel lines this looks great already let's step over here and braid this now this is going to look confusing to begin with but it's not you'll see exactly where I'm going with everything first and foremost nail on my table best friend worst enemy I just have nail holes so I can drop a nail in but then I can remove it when I'm done so don't run my hand or my project across it okay so let's back up a step though we're going to do a three strand braid for those of us that had not done a braid it is simple enough all I'm going to do so I'm going to take my right strand cross over the middle strand it becomes the middle left over the middle it becomes the middle right over Center left over Center easy enough three strand braid but what I'm not big on is this little gully here to me that just looks odd so I tend to go under for my first Bend under under under so now that tends to just look a little more consistent to me a little cleaner alright we're doing the same thing here three strand braid but we have to count our turns now this won't make sense right now but again you'll see where I'm going with this I'm going to do four turns I'm an untangle then I'm going to do two turns untangle that will be one set so under two three four now we've got to mess down here you want to have to make this step when you get the hang of this but if you notice my right gran comes down through so when I pull everything apart there's my right strand I'm going to take the tab go up over and down around the right now still got a mess but we've only done four turns so there's number five and number six now I simply pull those apart and that wants to jump through there there's a set now I can let that go it's not going to unbraid on me but here's the big thing because I need room every four and then every two turns to untangle what I need to do is start very tight two three four now I take my tab I'm going to go up over and through around that strand number five number six then I'm going to simply pull that through there's one set alright second set one two three four now I'm going to spread that I'm going to take my tab go up over and through basically I'm going around that right strand there's number five and number six now here's one of the keys I want to get as many sets in my cup as I possibly can that's one set and it doesn't look very good there's two sets that's what we're going to work on here looks pretty good but if by chance I can get three sets in there that looks great a little more supple whether we might be able to pull that off but for right now let's just keep it simple all right so I've got two sets in here I'm going to take this I'm going to flip it on my nail now I'm going to relax the braid I don't have to rebreathe it I don't have to untangle it because you'll see this braid is going to feed this braid but now I'm reversing that so I'm going over the center over the center and again just relaxing a little bit but you can see how this braid is feeding this braid nice now that's actually pretty consistent but let's go ahead and flip this on our nail and we can flip this as many times as we want it does not matter as long as our braid is consistent so I'm just going to fine tune a little bit there that looks pretty good now we've got one more step I'm going to take the cuff and I'm going to run that over the edge of my paper this is going to set the braid it's going to soften it just a little bit and it's going to make the braid a little more consistent well that looks pretty good nice braid so last thing we're going to set a line twenty-four snap and we're done well that looks great happy with it thus far now if you want to bump up to doing the mystery braid belts and you go up to maybe an 8 to 9 9 to 10 you can let the leather it's going to make it a lot easier on your hands just be cautious because it's real easy to ding those top corners and it starts to look a little bit rough alright so setting snaps we're going to use two very common snaps where we're going to look at two we're going to use one align 20 and align 24 line 20 goes up to about a five to six outs give or take and align 20 for five to six outs up to about eight to nine pretty much the max but we're going to use a line 24 because it's a very easy snap to set and we're going to use the line 24 on a lighter weight simply because it's going to be a little easier to see but it's going to work the same way now I've got snaps set out here so line 20 line 24 you can see the difference in the cap size and the difference in the post depth we're going to go with a 24 simply because it's easier to see now I've got these set in groups up with a line 24 here's the great thing if I mix these two female pieces up it does not matter those are going to bite all I'm doing here is I'm riveting the female piece on to the strap with the front or the back post so I tend to start on the back drop that on my slab or my marble now I'm going to take this piece this has the inner flange on it now again if I reverse these it's no big deal but this the way they are typically set line 24 setter I'm going to drop that right in the post give that to good clean pops now it's still spending a little bit I don't want to hit those so hard that I knock it into next week because that's going to draw the flange in and the snap won't bite I just need it on my strap enough to where it doesn't spin and I don't know if you can see it but that post has simply curled down inside now we set our back flat we're going to take our other side our cap and we're going to put that in our anvil so we don't crush that but here's something that can be confusing and I'll show you why now this is a cup so my snap and isn't that gorgeous that's one of our teal teal or turquoise Wade's anyway I'm going to be wrapping this around my wrist as opposed to the two pieces coming together say if I were going to make a keychain now we need to pay attention to that but almost always your cap is going to go to your top grade so I'm going to flip that in and take my female same thing as the back to good pops still spinning just a little bit one more and we have a nicely set snap so that's easy enough but talking again about the keychain if we want this to come together simply take your back piece and flip it so your two females are together and they bite well that is just gorgeous now one thing on setting snaps kind of think outside your project here because if you blow out a snap on your favorite bomber jacket purse bag duffle holster you can replace your own snap in your own shop in two minutes and pennies right okay so the downside to that you're going to become very popular with friends neighbors and relatives and maybe that's information you ought to keep to yourself but anyway simple cuff but use this as a jumping off point into a hundred different directions I hope you make some great cuffs good luck with your projects you

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Views: 3,414,761

Rating: 4.890317 out of 5

Keywords: leather lace, braid cuff, vegetable tanned leather, mystery braid cuff, how to braid leather

Id: bCEC4d-KaQU

Length: 15min 39sec (939 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 03 2017