Custom Made Guitar Straps - VeiN

Our good friend Mike's band, VeiN, is an up-and-comer on the local music scene.  These guys are playing all over town, practicing weekly, and working hard on music videos.   They are bound for greatness!

When Mike asked us to make some custom guitar straps for him and his band members.   We jumped all over it.   As you'll see further down in this post, Mike has... er.... "refined" tastes! He wanted these guitar straps to reflect that, so we set out to make his vision a reality. 

Pictured is Mike, as he lays eyes on the finished pieces for the first time.  

These fully-custom, hand-made leather guitar straps are made from #1 grade Hermann Oak leather on top and bottom.  

The top layers were dyed black, then laser-engraved with VeiN's Band logo on it.  We, then, hand-embossed the logos and hand-painted them with specially-designed acrylic paints for use on leather.  

The backs were lined with natural vegetable-tanned #1 Grade Hermann Oak leather, once again.   Only the finest for our customers!  


Let's take a look at how we constructed these Bad-Boys!

Vein - Custom Leather Guitar Straps
Vein - Custom Leather Guitar Straps

Mike had a guitar strap made from "genuine leather" splits that he really liked.  It was flexible, comfortable and the PERFECT shape for him.   He wanted to duplicate this shape and size for his custom guitar straps.

So, we took some measurements from his existing guitar strap and created a pattern in our Design Software.  From there, we sent the pattern to our in-house Epilog Helix 75 watt laser and created some Acrylic Templates that were the exact shape of the two guitar strap pieces. 

Next, we hand-cut the strap pieces from the hides and split them down to 3.5oz thickness.   The top pieces were dyed to a deep black and the bottoms were left in Natural veg-tanned leather, coated with 100% pure neatsfoot oil.  This will help them to "patina" over time, with use.  

We got a little aggressive with the oil, so we had to let them dry for a few days before we messed with the lining pieces.

Once the black dye was dry and buffed out, we brought the tops back to the laser engraver.   This time, we engraved the outline of the "VeiN" logo onto the straps, just so they would be "Perfect".  

We used Masking tape to mask off the area being engraved, so it wouldn't leave any burn marks in our freshly-dyed leather.  

Next, we hand-embossed the outline of each letter in the logo, using modeling balls and hand-embossing leather tools.  

We, then, marked the stitching grooves, adjustment holes, and holes for the guitar mounting hardware.   Following this up by actually punching the holes.  

Now, it was time to start the customization.  
 

Vein - Custom Leather Guitar Straps
Vein - Custom Leather Guitar Straps

Within each of the hand-embossed letters of the logo, we used acrylic paints by Angelus, designed specifically for leather, to hand-paint each letter.  We filled them each with white and outline them in red.    

After several coats and plenty of drying time (at least one day per layer of paint), we applied a clear-coat of acrylic Resolene finish and let it all dry.

For assembly, we glued the back sides of the top pieces and carefully laid them down on the back sides of the natural Hermann Oak pieces.   Once the glue dried, we hand-trimmed the edges with our Knipshield Knives trim knife so they were a smooth edge.  Then sanded the even smoother and hand-burnished the edges to a glossy glass finish.   We then applied a beautiful black edge coat (by hand) and let it dry.  

The last step in the edging process was to sand down the edge coats and burnish it to a final, beautifully smooth finished edge.  

We stitched the lining to the top layer with #277 bonded nylon thread - Red on top and Black on the bottom.   This really gave these guitar straps that custom look!

Vein - Custom Leather Guitar Straps
Vein - Custom Leather Guitar Straps We added the custom mounting hardware provided by VeiN, and we were off and running.   That's when Mike walked in (the first picture above) and we started taking some cool pictures outside.  
Mike was thrilled with these custom leather guitar straps and couldn't wait to surprise the rest of the band for their upcoming gig!!   (WARNING:  Gratuitous Lambo Shot!!) Vein - Custom Leather Guitar Straps
Vein - Custom Leather Guitar Straps

Check out VeiN at http://www.veinmusic.com or see their latest music video at http://veinmusic.rocks.

 

 Keep rockin', VeiN!!!