Adapting a leather NATO into a nice leather watch strap

I've come to find in my journey of watches that I prefer a plain simple strap, having over the last few years experimented quite a bit with many combinations.

I have a number of straps now (meaning a single piece as opposed to the "pair of straps" which are two separate parts) which makes it not only easy to change out (and thus I frequently do) but helps to keep the back of your watch that bit cleaner from skin grease, sweat and dirt.

The NATO itself as it comes makes even less sense in leather than it does in nylon because the keeper is even more pointless, adds yet more bulk and makes threading extra length even more of a mess than nylon. However it makes it easy to make a nice strap for a low price which suits your watch and makes your watch wearing experience more comfortable as well as deepen the usefulness and fashion coordination that your watch has. You may have noticed that I wear the strap on the watch buckle down, for this reason and it makes it nicer on desk work too keeping all the strap hardware off the desktop.

Back in my early watch wearing history changing a band (or indeed a bracelet) was something which required tools, tools which were much harder to get. Thus one frequently didn't.

Back to the making a leather strap from a NATO, this also means that strap changes can be simple, convenient. 

So apart from cutting off the keeper (see here), and of course trimming the band to a nice length (because you aren't really going to need that extra length for when you wear your watch outside your tactical gear or wetsuit that fits neatly in the keepers) you need to grind some of the extra thickness out from where you'll want the watch to sit.

I encourage you to think about this and perhaps buy a nylon NATO and experiment, because once you've done this its going to be pretty permanent as you'll see in this video:

So that's it ... not real hard and leaves you with a method to get a selection of straps which will suit the watch and perhaps colour match more with your clothes.

Happy Watch Wearing