Stylish Unisex Bracelet Using Car Inner Tube

Lovely people,

I always wanted to make those wide bracelets , the kind of wore by the warriors and gladiators. I tired paracord, wire , cardboard but none of them had the look and feel , the one I desired.

I had seen many awesome projects here on instructables using inner tube of all sorts so I decided to give it a try. I wanted to use something thick and luckily I had a few used car inner tubes lying in my garage.

This is my first ever project using inner tubes and Wow....what an amazing thing these inner tubes are and what a million possibilities.

The design of the bracelet is inspired by the design of leather armor which is wore by warriors as seen in the movies ...LOL.

Lets make this stylish unisex bracelet using the car inner tube.

I had lots of fun making this and I hope you will have it too.

Lets begin the show.

Step 1: Material Required

This bracelet require quite a few things and tools but then sky is the limit for your imagination . You will need the following (see collage above as left to right then next)

1. A used car tyre inner tube.
2. About 3 meter faux leather flat strings, you can use thick jewelry wire, paracord, leather strings , hemp etc if you want to experiment. I had this silver finish faux leather strings.
3. Glue that works with rubber.
4. A very sharp scissor .
5. A ruler
6. Some clear shoe wax.
7. Eyelets (Size 6)
8. Eylets punch and setter dye.
9. Snaps (aka jacket buttons)
10. Snaps Setter dye
11. Some sharp pointed object like screw driver (not in the picture)
12. Some heavy object to hammer punch dyes. I used a small household nail hammer.
13. OPTIONAL : A small felt cloth for inner lining

TIP: In the next step , we will start cutting and working with the tube. I recommend you to practice punching eyelets and snaps before you actually do them on the final piece of tube.

Step 2: Preparing the Tube for Bracelet

See images above and follow:

1. Cut a wide piece of tube around 12".
2. Wash it with lots of water so that there isn't any powdery stuff left on the surface. If it does not go then use a 320 grit sand paper and sand gently.
3. Using the ruler draw straight lines to cut off any uneven edges of the piece.
4. Mark a 3" length as a width of the bracelet and cut it.
5. The end result should be a 12x3" piece of rubber.
6. Decide on which side will be the front and wax that side using shoe wax. I used a waxed foam.
7. Using a dry cloth to rub off extra wax on the rubber.

Determining the correct length for your wrist.

1. Wrap the rubber piece around your wrist. For this design it should have at least 2 inch overlap from both ends. Since I am going to use snaps for securing the bracelet I left this much of overlapping rubber, should you choose to use Velcro or something else, this length may vary.
2. Mine came out to be 10" so i cut the extra length off.

At this point you should start to see that the rubber piece does not look like rubber tube but gives a nice leather sort of finish. Now lets try to punch some holes in the next step and before you do that, remember my tip in previous step for practice.

Step 3: Punching the Eyelets

This is probably the only tedious step in the entire making of this bracelet. We have to punch two parallel lines of eyelets which are distanced equally from each other. The picture above is a diagram for drawing lines that is necessary to provide sufficient spacing at both ends and to carefully punch series of holes at equated distance.

See images above and follow:

1. Turn over the rubber piece
2. Refer the diagram and draw dashed lines on all sides. Notice the gapping measure marked with red lines.
3. Before you punch or set the eyelet , place another discarded piece of tube below to avoid damaging the dye.
4. Using the eyelet punch make holes as shown in the diagram above at equated distance which in our case is 1cm.
5. Once two parallel series of holes are made, it is time to set eyelet.
6. Insert an eyelet from front side of the bracelet into hole, flip side, place eyelet setter on the eyelet and hammer it to set & secure eyelet. Make sure that the back of eyelets is resting properly on surface otherwise it may scratch your wrist while you wear.
7. Repeat #5 till both the parallel series of holes has eyelet fitted.

You might be thinking that the bracelet is coming so well and might as well stop making anymore design changes. In this case I would say, you are right and may very well take a call to stop. But for the sake of appreciating a good design , lets keep moving ahead to achieve the intended design.

Step 4: Weaving

See images above and follow:

1. Flip the bracelet to front side.
2. Grab the faux leather string and insert it from behind the first eyelet on top.
3. Insert the string in the second eyelet in the parallel series .
4. Then from behind, insert the string into the second eyelet in the parallel series.
5. Repeat #3 & #4 till you reach the end of series.
6. You will have a series of diagonal stripes.
7. Once you reach the end, insert the string from behind the last eyelet on parallel series and repeat similarly as #3 & $4. This will form a cross pattern over each previously inserted string.
8. When all eyelets are covered to make cross pattern, turn the bracelet to back and cut the extra long strings to smaller length such that they are small enough to be hidden behind the bracelet.
9. Glue both the ends as per instructions on the glue pack and secure them (see last image above).

Wait for sometime to let the glue dry and secure the strings.

Your Stylish Unisex Bracelet using car inner tube is almost ready. Lets make it wearable in next step.

Step 5: Punching Snaps

If you don't know what snaps are, they are basically jacket or purse buttons which you may have probably wore. They are extremely simple to use but tricky to install. I myself have learned it for this project. A snap has basically 4 parts (See first image):

1. Snaps cap: The part that looks like button and visible outside
2. Socket: which is hidden behind the cap.
3. Stud: Which is the male part of socket
4. Post: Which is hidden behind the Stud

When you press Cap & Post, the Socket gets locked into Stud and forms a button.

Attaching snaps on bracelet:

1. Fold bracelet such that both ends overlap each other.
2. Using a sharp pointed object make two pierce along the line of eyelets separated by 1" of distance.
3. Do #2 for other side.
4. While you do #1 & #2 make sure the bracelet does not slip or move. We do this to ensure that both ends of snap fits perfectly on each other without leaving any gaps.
5. Attaching Cap and Socket
   1. Insert cap from the front of bracelet into hole.
   2. Flip the bracelet and place the socket over the cap.
   3. Place snap setter that has a pointed end and punch it to lock cap & socket with each other.
   4. Do #1 - #3 for remaining 3 caps & sockets.
6. Attaching Stud & Post
   1. Turn to other end of bracelet.
   2. Insert Post from behind the bracelet.
   3. Turn to front of the bracelet.
   4. Cover the post with Stud.
   5. Place the snap setter that has a flat end and punch it to lock post with stud.
   6. Do #1-#5 for remaining 3 studs & posts

Your stylish bracelet is ready :).

Tip: In case you wish to choose something other than Snaps, my recommendation would be velcro.

Step 6: Final Thoughts

I have shown this bracelet to some of my friends and they could not believe if I made it myself. What a lovely reward.

One important question which you may ask, what if the back of eyelets start hurting or scratching my wrist. Well.. you are totally right, even though the faux strips provide sufficient cushion , you may still want to cover the entire back of the bracelet with felt or cloth lining.

Its time to show off this stylish bracelet.

I hope you enjoyed reading this instructable. Should you have questions or feedback, please do share in the comments below.
If this instructable appears in any contest (the vote button will be on top right side of this), please do vote.

You are awesome!!.

Stay Tuned :).

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