Finished leather key fob on a brass ring beside the offcut strap and edge tools used to make it.
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A Leather Key Fob in an Hour

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

One strip, one ring, one fold. Then the argument starts.

A leather key fob is a short strap of vegetable-tanned leather folded around a metal ring and fastened shut, and it’s about the smallest honest thing you can make on a leather bench. The cut is short and the fold is simple. The edges still have to be finished like any strap, and the fastening still has to hold, because a set of keys gets yanked out of a pocket, dropped on concrete and dragged across a counter more times in a year than most briefcases get opened. It’s a good first project and a good test. Small enough to finish before the coffee goes cold, hard enough to show every shortcut.

Video: Gift Idea: Bee Key Ring With Copper Cactus Collective, from Tandy Leather on YouTube.

That video is from Tandy Leather, not my channel. It walks through a tooled and a laser-engraved fob set with rivets, which is the way most kits do it. I’ll show the riveted version too, then make the case for doing it the slow way.

What goes on the bench

Leather, hardware, a few edge tools. Nothing you need to buy twice.

Hands cutting a straight narrow strap of vegetable-tanned leather for a key fob against a steel rule.

Everything here comes from the guides cited below, sorted into what you’ll use. The leather weight is the one number that matters most. Christine Marcelino of the design studio Materials + Process, writing the Carryology key fob tutorial, uses vegetable-tanned leather at 5 to 6 oz for a fob that bends but holds up. Tandy’s bee key ring project lists the same 5 to 6 oz veg-tan.

  • Leather: a vegetable-tanned offcut, 5 to 6 oz, long enough for the strap plus the fold.
  • Ring: a split key ring. Tandy’s project uses a 1-1/4″ brass-plated one.
  • Fastening, the fast way: double cap rivets or a copper rivet and burr, with a setter, a mallet and a round drive punch.
  • Fastening, the slow way: a stitching chisel or pricking iron, two harness needles and waxed thread.
  • Cutting: a sharp knife, a steel rule, a plastic cutting surface, and a strap cutter if you have one.
  • Edges: an edge beveler, fine sandpaper, gum tragacanth or water, and a wooden slicker.

The leather is where an offcut earns its keep. On a briefcase I only use the bend, the butt of the hide where the fiber is tightest. The belly goes in the trash. The shoulder is for small parts, and a key fob is about as small as parts get.

My opinion: don’t cut your first fob from scrap you’d be embarrassed to sell. It’s small, but people carry it every day, and it’ll tell on you.

Cutting the strap

Straight, square, one pass where you can.

Marcelino cuts the strap to width on a plastic surface, with a strap cutter as an option for running a wider piece into even strips. Her strap is 0.75 inches wide. The ends get shaped with a knife or a steel cutting die.

Kits give you a sense of proportion if you’d rather not guess. Tandy’s key fob kit comes as a pre-cut veg-tan piece 3.13 by 2 inches, with a rivet and a key ring. Weaver’s round key fob kit finishes at 2-1/2 by 1-1/2 inches, not counting hardware. Two shapes, two sizes, same idea.

On a cut this short, the temptation is to saw. Don’t. A knife dragged back and forth leaves a wavy wall of fibers, and every ripple in that wall turns into work at the sanding stage. Lay the rule down hard, hold it with the flat of your hand, and pull the blade through in one stroke if the leather lets you, two if it doesn’t. The discipline is the same on a briefcase panel and on a scrap the length of a finger, which is why the post on cutting a briefcase out of a bend is worth a look even for a project this small.

Round the corners of the ends before you go further. A square corner on a fob catches the lining of every pocket it lives in. A rounded one slides.

Edges before the fold

Finish them flat. Once it’s folded, you can’t reach half of it.

Macro of a saddle-stitched leather key fob fold with burnished edges around a brass split ring.

Order matters here more than on a bigger piece, because the fold closes the strap on itself and buries part of the edge you’d want to rub. Marcelino bevels first, on leather that’s slightly damp, with a sharp tool. Then she puts a finishing agent on the back and the edges, wipes off the excess and burnishes both. Her reason is plain: skip the burnish, and the fibers on the cut edge work loose and start shedding.

The bevel takes the hard corner off the top and the bottom of the edge. Pull the beveler in one steady line, at one angle, and keep it sharp, because a dull one tears instead of shaving. The post on beveling and creasing a strap covers that stroke on a longer run.

Then sand. Fine paper, a light hand, just enough to flatten the wall and knock down what the knife left. Dampen the edge, rub it with gum tragacanth or plain water, and run the slicker back and forth in short fast strokes until the edge goes dark and smooth and quits feeling like felt under your thumbnail.

Burnish the flesh side of the fold area too. It’s the part of the fob that wraps the ring, and it will rub against brass for as long as the thing lives.

A fob edge is short. That’s the trap. You finish it in a minute, and a minute isn’t enough. Do it twice.

Rivet or stitch

The rivet wins the hour. Whether it wins the years is the question.

Here’s the fast way. Fold the strap around the ring, line the ends up, and fasten through both layers. Marcelino’s instruction is short: “Make sure the edges overlap by about 1″.” She punches the hole with a circular die matched to the rivet post, sets a copper rivet with a setter and a mallet, then trims the post and rounds it over.

Post length is where riveting goes wrong. Tandy’s guide to setting hardware says a double cap rivet post should stand at least 1/16″ above the leather and no more than 1/8″. For a rivet and burr, Tandy trims the post to 1/8″ above the washer before rounding it. Buckleguy’s guide to matching rivets to thickness puts the protrusion at about 2 to 3 mm before setting, and warns that a post too long can fold or mushroom unevenly while one too short may never lock into the cap. Measure the folded stack, not the single layer. That mistake is common, and every guide here is quietly trying to prevent it.

Now my side of it. I hand saddle-stitch everything. I gave up sewing machines a long time ago, and rivets don’t get much love on my bench either. My opinion on rivets, from my own work: hollow tubular rivets are the weakest, solid tubular ones are stronger, and copper is strong but I don’t like the look of it. On straps I stitch the buckles in rather than rivet them.

A member of leatherworker.net who goes by Storm, in a thread on making a key fob, stitches his fobs shut and says of a riveted fob that the rivet “might not last long.” On my own hand stitching page I wrote that a hand saddle stitch is a stronger bond than a small machine stitch, and that’s the stitch that holds tack together.

So stitch it. That’s my answer.

And here’s where my answer gets thin. A key fob carries keys. It isn’t hauling a briefcase full of files up courthouse steps, and a well-set copper rivet through two layers of 5 to 6 oz veg-tan is a lot of metal for the job. Nothing I’ve found tests a riveted fob against a stitched one to failure, so the forum member’s warning is one man’s experience and mine is another’s. A beginner who sets a rivet cleanly gets a fob that works, in about the time the title promises. A beginner who saddle-stitches badly gets something worse. My own stitching page says it straight: unskilled hand stitching is worse for the bond than unskilled machine work. The rivet doesn’t care how steady your hands are.

I’d still stitch it. Some of that is strength. Some of it, if I’m honest, is taste: a stitched fob looks like my bench, and a riveted one looks like a kit.

Stitching it the slow way

Two needles, one thread, and the back has to look like the front.

A riveted leather key fob and a hand-stitched leather key fob side by side with rivet setter and needles.

If you go the long way, glue is optional and the holes are not. Storm glues the front and back of his fob but leaves the middle dry where the ring sits, so the leather can wrap it without a stiff lump in the bend. Then he stitches the two layers together with a saddle stitch.

Mark a stitch line a short, even distance in from the edge, and punch the holes through both layers at once while they’re held flat, so the front and back line up. On a fob there’s no room for drift. A hole that wanders a hair off the line shows on a strap you can cover with two fingers.

Thread a harness needle on each end of a length of waxed thread. Pass one needle through the first hole and center the thread. From there, every hole takes both needles, one from each side, and you pull both tight with the same force before moving on. Uneven pull makes a lopsided stitch, and on something this small the eye catches it at once.

Finish by backstitching a couple of holes, trimming, and sealing the ends. The post on finishing a saddle stitch covers backstitching and burning the thread ends in detail, and that step matters more on a fob than almost anywhere, because the last stitch sits right where a thumb rubs it every day.

Turn it over when you’re done. On The Maker page I put it this way: “The side nobody sees is where a weak stitch gets found out.” On a fob, somebody sees both sides. Every time the keys come out.

Where the hour goes

The work is short. The waiting and the checking aren’t.

My opinion: a careful beginner can cut, edge and rivet a fob in about an hour, if the tools are already sharp and laid out. Stitching adds to that. Tooling, dye and finish, the way the Tandy and American Cowboy projects do it, add drying time on top. The American Cowboy piece, by Lauren Feldman, dampens the grain before stamping and dyes the fob after, with a sheen coat once the dye is fully dry. That isn’t an hour job. Nobody said it was.

Most of the real hour goes to edges. A strap this short has more edge, for its size, than almost anything else you’ll make, and the fold buries some of it. That’s where a fob gets judged.

Then you hand it over and it starts aging. Marcelino notes that the leather darkens and softens with use and can take a conditioner if it goes stiff. My Leather Care page gives the routine: conditioner on a clean cloth, rub it in, let it sit, buff off the excess. Keys, pockets and hands will do most of the rest without being asked.

A fob is a cheap thing to get right. It’s also the first piece of your work somebody else will carry every day, which means it’ll get looked at, rubbed, dropped and judged long after the hour is over and you’ve forgotten how fast you made it.

400 Sets Double Cap Leather Rivets, 9x10mm: A box of 400 double-cap rivet sets. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Dritz 750T Double-Cap Rivet Tools: A metal rivet setter and anvil set for double-cap rivets. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

WUTA Leather Carving Hammer: A poly-head maul for leatherwork. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Fiebing’s Gum Tragacanth, 4 oz: A 4 oz bottle of gum tragacanth, a burnishing aid for leather edges. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Wet Dry Sandpaper Assortment, 45 Pieces: A 45-piece wet and dry sandpaper assortment that starts at 400 grit. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

OWDEN 9 Pieces Leather Hollow Punch Set: A nine-piece hollow punch set for round holes. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. A commission may be earned if you buy through this link, at no extra cost to you.

Sources

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