Craft Bolt: Stackable Gear Bracelets

I like making bracelets. They're easy and fast, and usually look pretty awesome. These particular beauties are no exception, and the hardest part of them is getting gears. You can buy these loose from ebay, craigslist, or elsewhere on the internet, or you could (like me) go to your local clock shop and buy a broken clock movement for $5 that you'll have to take apart on your own. Clock movements tend to be cheaper, but convenience votes for buying them loose.

The materials you need: one gear for every bracelet you plan on making, leather cord, and wire of some sort. Of course, the cording is entirely up to you- you could use string, or embroidery thread, or whatever you want, but I thought leather looked pretty awesome.

Cut two pieces of leather for each bracelet, each about twice as long as the length around your wrist. Trust me, you'll want the extra string, and there won't be much.

Attach the string to your gears. I decided that I wanted my gears to be facing different directions, so each of them are attached differently. Any of these styles works.

As you can see, for my smallest gear, I just threaded the leather in and back on itself, the biggest just had it wrapped around, and the middle one has a wrap knot.

For varieties sake, I decided that the biggest one should have some embellishment, so I wrapped it with gold wire, being careful to keep the leather flat like I wanted it to sit on my wrist. Then I finished it off by wrapping the ends in wire.

The trick to these bracelets is fastening them. Though I saw one person suggest a know closure, I have found that knots never stay very well in leather for me, so I improvised. It's hard to tell just what I did in this picture, though.