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| Joined: | Sat Oct 11th, 2008 |
| Location: | Overland Park, Kansas USA |
| Posts: | 1395 |
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$10,000 may not seem like a lot to some, but passing the cost on to the customer makes for an expensive rubber strap that only a few would purchase, or it drives up the cost of the overall watch to a much higher price.
I have exhaustively studied the different types of rubber straps out there and I have purchased so many bad ones in my quest to find the good ones... and it can be confusing out there if you don't know what you are buying.
for example:
There are websites out there selling rubber straps called "Italian rubber straps" and they are the same molds as the NBR (Nitrile Butadiene Rubber) but they are in-fact silicone rubber and are not made in Italy. so they look the same, but when you get them, they are sticky and collect lint and dust, they stretch too much when you pull on them and the remaining part of the strap just sticks straight out and never breaks in or gets a curve to it.
There are a few real NBR straps out there for sale and often are called "Natural Rubber" or "Caoutchouc" they range in price from $30 to over $100. These straps do not collect lint and dust, they do not stretch when you pull on them, but are flexible but stiff around the wrist but they do break in a little over time and get some curve to them. They also smell like vanilla because of an additive they add to make it smell that way, and often a seller will advertise the vanilla smell so you know it is not silicon.
There is also PU Rubber (Polyurethane) these are made with different blends and I have purchased one off ebay that I am very pleased with. It has the feel of soft rubber and does not collect dust, it does not stretch when you pull it, and the best part is that you can curve it in the bottom of a mug and poor boiling water on it, and it will retain the shape of the curve, making a comfortable fit around the wrist. I like this strap better than my NBR straps, it is also shorter than the straps that came with the Moray and fits my wrist size better...
which leads to the next problem we have... how big to make a strap? all straps seem to be either too big or too small for people, I haven't found a perfect size yet... it seems in the future we should explore the idea of 2 sizes of the same design.
Here are some photos of the PU Rubber strap I bought on ebay, I am very pleased with this straps characteristics and would be interested in exploring the production of our own design in the future with a rubber compound like this one:
The curving above was achieved by boiling the strap. Boiling to shape doesn't work on silicone or NBR.