What is a watch band called?
Watch band (also called watch strap) is a general term used by people in the watch industry to refer to the effective part of a watch that is fastened to the wrist.
Watch band never shown in other industry.
We (Strapmill) have more than 10 years of experience in the production of watchbands, now we introduce two kinds of the most popular watch bands: Leather watch Strap and Silicone watch band.
Leather is one of the materials often used in watch straps.
Compared with other watchbands, the advantages of leather watchband is soft, light, comfortable to wear. Leather watchbands aren`t easy to hurt the skin and clothing. The disadvantage is brittle, hard, and easy to aging fracture if exposed to sweat and chemicals often.
In general, the leather used in watchband is mostly crocodile skin, lizard skin, and cow skin. Occasionally shark skin, ostrich skin, Pearl fish skin, but not the mainstream.
As the top material for high-end watchbands, crocodile skin is highly specialized in quality grading.
So mostly the high-end watches are use it.
The lizard skin as a result of the grain is more exquisite, therefore used to match the elegant female watch.
As for ostrich skin and shark skin, their common feature is that the surface has a natural decoration, ostrich skin are dots, and shark skin is similar to the three-dimensional texture of water ripples.
The production process of the watchband reflects the brand image.
Watchbands are also one of the traditional ways of measuring the value of a watch between brands and collections. So some famous brand watch bands are made by specialized leather goods manufacturers.
Leather straps process requires high precision and detail, sometimes with an accuracy of less than 1 / 10mm.
There are 3 main watchband manufacturing processes:
- 1. Cut Edge System: This is a very traditional watchband production method, the outer skin and the inner skin are connected to each other, the edge part is not sutured, and then painted edge.
- 2. Hand Remborded: It’s a high-end, luxurious craft. The upper layer of leather wraps around the inside of the strap and then covers it with the bottom leather.
- 3. Saddle Stitching: Saddle Stitching is a hand stitched technique consisting of two stitches that are perfect for stitching leather straps. Many luxury leather brands, such as Hermès, use the stitching.
For a classic Vintage Watch, a high-quality leather strap with the elegant and nostalgic design gives a very subtle and meaningful temperament.
Silicone Watch band is a true green accessory.
Because Silicone is odorless and non-toxic materials, thus it will be no fading in storage after adding odorless, high anti-yellow curing agent.
Silicone strap is made of 100% natural solid silicone rubber by oil press. The strap itself has certain tension and flexibility, so it is easy to deform and recover immediately.
The silicone strap has the advantages of wear resistance, high temperature resistance, non-deformation, non-toxic, tasteless, No side effect on human body; and soft, non-cracking, long service life, no skin irritation and so on.
The silicone strap has obvious advantages over other types of strap:
- Production technology: the watch band is made of solid mixed vulcanized Silica Gel. It is formed by hydraulic pressure. This is a physical reaction and does not produce waste water, exhaust gas and other toxic substances. Moreover, the watch band comes out with a good feeling and is not irritating to human skin.
- Color: Color can be matched freely to meet the different requirements of consumers. monochrome, multicolor, or Camo all can be produced.
- Cost: Silicone materials are cheap and processing costs are low.
- Maintenance: Silica Gel does not react with any other product. It is easy to clean and maintain. It can be cleaned with water if non-greasy dirty . Oil can be cleaned by using daily detergents such as washing powder and detergent.
- Product use: Long lifetime, silicone watchband is still as new even used 10 years or so.
In recent years, people begin to add some functional materials, such as Anion, Germanium, titanium, far infrared etc, into the raw materials of silicone wristband for processing. Such as Silica Gel Energy watch, Silica Gel negative ion watch, etc. are using the negative ion and other elements added to the Silica Gel material together with the production of Silica Gel watchband.
Conclusion
Here we briefly introduced the characteristics of the two types of watch bands.
Leather Strap will be more soft and comfortable, but easy to be corroded, not easy to clean.
Silicone Strap Environmental Protection, non-toxic, easy to clean, long lifetime. Most of the sports watches are use silicone straps.
Since you know what is a watch band, right now you can choose the right types of watch bands according to your preference.
