At home, you can make a huge number of little things with which you can make any shoe or item of clothing unique. One such easy-to-make item is a leather cord. It can be used to replace regular rubber or synthetic laces in boots, as a decoration for a bag or backpack, or as an independent accessory - bracelet, neck pendant and other types of jewelry. It’s not at all difficult to make it with your own hands.
What manufacturing methods are there?
There are several options for making leather lace. The choice of a specific one depends on the purpose for which it was required.
If you plan to weave a bracelet, then simply cut several narrow strips of the required length from a piece of leather. The thickness of the initial workpiece is selected based on the cross-sectional shape needed to be obtained. For example, square laces can be used for shoes.
What to do when you need a round lace, for example, for shoes or to decorate a bag? There are different ways.
The simplest, but not always reliable - cut a wide strip from a piece of leather, fold it and glue it. To give it shape, you can put regular twisted twine inside. Carefully made, such a cord will look nice, but over time it can come apart.
Second way - cut several very narrow strips from the workpiece and weave a braid from them. It will look unusual and original. The thickness of the cord in this case will depend on the size and number of strips used for weaving. To prevent it from stretching during use, a thread of nylon or waxed silk can be inserted inside the weave. This part, called a cord, will significantly increase the service life of the product.
Another method will require presence of a sanding knife. To obtain a round cord, a strip of leather is glued in half, and then the edge is sanded - this is the name for the procedure of cutting material from the edge of a product in order to give it a given shape and profile.
Making a leather cord with your own hands
It would seem - what could be difficult in the process of cutting a strip of leather from a large piece? But what to do when you have a small workpiece at your disposal, but the cord must be long? Here a simple method will come to the rescue, allowing you to get the desired result and minimize the amount of waste.
What will you need for work?
To make the cord you will need:
- workpiece in the form of a piece of leather;
- scissors or a knife with a sharp thin blade;
- pen or pencil for marking;
- ruler;
- round bottle.
Preparation
Preliminary work includes marking the workpiece. To reduce the number of scraps, the lace is made of a spiral. Therefore, before cutting it out, you need to draw it on the skin.
To do this, mark the center on the workpiece, and then, using a ruler, small sections corresponding to the given thickness of the lace are laid on both sides of the center. The marks are connected to each other, and a spiral is drawn on the skin. This can be done in other ways - for example, using a regular drawing compass.
Step by step process
After the workpiece is marked and ready for work, the process of direct manufacturing of the cord begins:
1. Using scissors or a knife, carefully cut the skin in a spiral. The quality of the finished product will depend on the accuracy of cutting.. So far the workpiece is far from the desired result. The lace looks uneven and folds, that is, it forms cone-shaped folds. The closer the center of the spiral, the more noticeable these folds or folds are.
2. At the next stage, get rid of the folds on the cord. To do this, you need to wet it in water. In this position he must lie there for an hour or a little longer.
3. At the final stage of work, the wet cord is wound around the bottle or jar. In the process must be tightenedso that the folds are straightened as much as possible. The number of winding layers does not matter, only the drying time depends on it.
4. The ends of the cord are secured to the bottle using simple tape. In this position he must be left until completely dry. Usually 10-12 hours is enough. After this, the lace is removed and used for its intended purpose.
An alternative option for drying the finished cord is to hang it on a clothesline. In this case, the upper end is fixed with a simple clothespin, and a weight is attached to the lower end that will pull it out. You can use keys or another similar object as a weighting agent. In this case, you should be careful so that the load does not break the lace.
Using this method, from a 15 by 15 cm piece of leather you can get a leather cord about four meters long. Quite a decent saving of material and a good result.
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