So I got a little impatient with waiting for J-Money to get back online and take orders and I wasn't really taken with any of the other headphone bands. I wanted something dark brown, like
majestic's post, but I haven't seen many reviews for anything other than fatman's work. I made two attempts at a leather headband, the second came out better than the first:
First.
Kind of crappy. I thought I could use edge kote to mask the crookedness, but I wasn't fooled. I did this by following this
tutorial, but I made the mistake OP warns about and used thick leather. I couldn't fold the edges over, so I tried to just cut two flat pieces and stick the padding in the middle, which adds to it being misshapen.
For my second attempt, I decided to be more straightforward and skip the padding. I cut three pieces of leather total. Top, middle and bottom. The top and bottom are basically the parts you see (2.25 inches, the bottom strip was a about half and inch larger on all sides to be trimmed after gluing). The middle piece of leather (~3/4 inch), I cut as a narrow rectangular strip. This takes place of the cardboard frame in the tutorial.
The idea in the original tutorial is that you wrap the leather around the frame, leaving the top of the frame open for you to slide the metal headband through. This is the same idea, only I glued down the edges of the middle piece of leather, leaving the center and ends open so the metal band can slide through. I then glued the bottom piece on top of this and trimmed around so that the top and bottom pieces would be as close to identical as possible (this is step 8 in the original tutorial)
Here's the end product (sorry I didn't get pictures during construction, I was too worried about screwing up).
It's still got some rough edges in the gluing, but I'll probably shave that down with a blade and redo it with contact cement. I used a glue gun for now, but will probably use a thinner adhesive if I do this again. The leather is stiff and sturdy, so I can see it holding together for a while, but would probably be safer using permanent glue. The wider surface area (2 1/4 inches compared to the 1 1/4 of the original headband) distributes the weight more evenly, so they're pretty comfortable and I'm glad I skipped the padding on this go around.
While they don't have the most polished finish, this shows what you can do with 7 bucks worth of scrap leather and a box cutter. I have ten thumbs normally and do tend to screw up the first couple times around. I think I would have been happier with a different adhesive, but this felt like another test run. Also, this is an supplement to the first tutorial, which is useful for the fundamentals, but difficult if you can't get your hands on thinner (1oz-1.5oz) leather. I also wasn't taken with using a cardboard frame and liked the idea of an all-leather construction.
I picked up scraps from my local leather shop because I didn't want to invest a ton of money into something that might be a disaster. If you plan on using thick leather, you'll easily find scraps between 2 and 3 ounces, which is sturdy enough to keep its shape and soft enough to bend.
