My DYI Grado leather headband

Hello everyone! I normally don't do that (go online and brag about stuff I made, that is), but I'm so happy with my last creation that I had to register share it with this fine community.
It is a hand-sewn lambskin leather Grado headband with viscoelastic padding (memory foam), pics below.





The headband is actually BLACK! Sorry for the photos’ quality, I made them with my mobile phone just after I was done with it (more below), I’ll upload better pics once I fit it on the headphones.

Anyway, a bit more on the headband – I’ve been planning to make one for a while, fed up with my stock thick and heavy headband (made out of cowhide leather). I wanted something softer, more delicate and more comfortable, yet built to last, so it will serve me for years, and that’s why I decided to sew it by hand instead of using sewing machine or glue.



It took me over two full days to make it, and it was preceded with couple of weeks of experimenting to perfect the design. As a result of these experiments, for instance I decided to separate the memory foam padding into 5 pieces, thanks to that, leather on the padded side doesn’t ripple and it also looks like a delicious chocolate bar.



Top part is also padded, but with much thinner layer of much denser adhesive foam, thanks to that the headband is really, really nice to touch. To stiffen it in breadth a bit and to make sure you won’t see or feel the metal bar under the leather (and to make it slide in easier) I used stripes of thin transparent PCV sheet.



Sewing was the most difficult part for me and the longest part of the process. I was sewing it with two needles simultaneously and had to pay great attention not to make any mistakes. And I’m proud to say that I didn’t make any, and stuff looks really neat to me.



As I mentioned before, I wanted to use as little glue as possible and I only used it to attach the foam to PCV stripes and to leather. After series of experiments I decided to ditch contact cement (which seems to be a quite popular choice for this type of job) and go with upholstery glue – it holds up better and creates a very elastic, undetectable layer.



What is also important to me was to source all the materials used to make this locally. I’m from Poland, and live in the region of Silesia, which has Polish, Czech and German heritage (always been passed around between those three countries). And I’m really proud that I managed to do so, and all materials used are either Polish, Czech or German, which makes the headband 100% EU made (and I can sleep calm that no child labor or unethical treatment of animals was involved in this, plus I helped local economy a tiny bit ).

That’s it, please let me know what do you think about it! If you see any f-ups or things I could have done better/different.
I’ll post more pics soon, with headphones this time.

Also my friend asked me to make one like this for him too, so maybe this time I’ll grab more WIP photos.

Have a lovely day!

 

Hello again! And here's how it looks on SR60e's with gorgeous hand-crafted custom cups. The artist behind them is michauczok, who also happens to be a member of this forums.
It still looks kinda brown-ish, but I assure you it's black.









And here are some more high resolution pics of the band on it's own.









Also, big thanks for the likes, but I'd love to hear some opinions as well.

 

Few months have passed, and few more headbands have been made. Mostly crappy (Beyerdynamic) prototypes which I won't bother posting, but there's one more creation I'm very happy with.

Say hello to this fat monster which was created because regular width headband is sometimes not enough.


I went for wider, thicker and softer memory foam this time, process stayed pretty much the same as in the previous one.



Here's how it looks next to his older, skinnier brother. My high school friend also had a younger brother that was much bigger and mature than him, it was confusing.



I also took that baby to a professional photoshoot - used a black cardboard background on my bedroom floor - that counts as professional, right?



My mate liked it so much I had to make a twin one for him.



And here's how it looks on his custom SR325, glorious headphones.



And one more from the side.



Let me know what you think!

Cheers.

 

Wow! Fantastic work! Very nicely done.

 

Awesome!! You should open a small business on it!!!

 

Your headbands look awesome and I am sure they fit much better than the originals.
I want one!

 

The craftsmanship and aesthetics look first rate!

 

Very nice! Any interest in taking requests? Your headband is a big step up from anything coming from Grado.