With the purchase of my first Panerai, I dove right into to custom strap market as well. I new I wanted two things to start with: 1) a nice black alligator for when I have business meetings and 2) something more unique and likely another exotic skin. I did a lot of searching and looked at a lot of custom strap makers - some well known and experienced in the industry for decades down to hobbyists who have been doing it a while and have good reputations. During the search, I came across Aaron Pimentel who owns Combat Straps in Montreal. I remember seeing his ads on several forums over the years and after looking at his site again, looked for online reviews about the quality of his work. It was during this search that I found this interview...
Talking watch straps with Aaron Pimentel from Combat Starps | WatchPaper
After seeing this, I really got the feeling he was an artisan and decided to contact him to discuss making some straps for me. I sent he an e-mail with a few questions about the materials I was thinking of (alligator and ostrich) and the types of stitching I was thinking about. It was late in the evening on January 25th when I sent the e-mail and I headed for bed. When I got up in the morning, I already had a reply! I was torn between two types of ostrich and which color stitching to go with on the alligator (black vs. white). So I sent him another reply and he responded quickly (< 1 hour) with some photos of different skins and completed straps with different stitching colors. A few more e-mails were exchanged with sizing information, where I was located, buckle options, type/shape/amount of padding, etc. By mid-afternoon on January 26th, the order was done and he sent me an invoice and got right to work. He said he had a shipment going out on Thursday to his importer (since they are exotic skins) and he wanted to include it with that shipment. Low and behold, on Monday February 9th, FedEx was at the door and delivering these beauties.
In the interview I posted above, he said he spends 45 minutes working on the edges of each strap alone - it shows. You know there are seams there where the pieces of leather come together, but you cannot see them. They also have a nice rounded edge rather than a sharp, abrupt square cut edge.
The hand stitching is done very evenly and with a nice thick thread (he has 80 colors to choose from BTW). The holes for the tang buckle are cleanly cut and evenly spaced. The dual keepers (one sewn in and the other floating) are nice too, since on a tapered strap (these are 26x22 mm) the floating keeper can't get loose and end up by the lugs, so it tightly holds the tail to buckle side of the strap.
He makes some beautiful straps from a wide variety of materials including leather, vintage leather, exotic skins, canvas, and Alcantara. The ostrich leg skin I selected is called a tobacco suede. It's a deep, dark brown, with a soft suede texture. The tan stitching ties in nicely with the vintage lume used on the 422.
After a week with the ostrich on the wrist, I swapped over the alligator today to break it in a bit and see how it looks on the wrist. For the alligator, I decided to go with a semi-gloss black with black stitching and a black tang buckle since it was for more formal occasions. I chose to add domed padding to both straps to make them thicker where they attach to the lugs, which looks more proportionate on bigger cases in my opinion.
I love the look of both of these and really appreciate the time, advice and additional photos that Aaron sent to help me decide on my materials. The quality of these are amazing!
Sent from my iPhone and I blame autocorrect for any spellin' errs!