So this band is the one off my grandfather's 1940 Bulova. At the moment it's unwearable because the leather is very old and shot.
I'm just throwing this out there to see if anyone has seen any like it or if you have one you'd part with. There's a decent amount of gold loss on the underside of GP's band but I've been thinking of just trying to find a two decent pieces of leather like the original and have them stitched together to essentially refurb the thing. The springiness is still intact and it doesn't look to horrible polished up. I think it would very much keep the integrity of GP's watch intact as this is the band he wore with the watch... probably the entire time it's been out of the sales case.
I've seen one other of this band, ironically on a '40's Banker... the pics below in red are of my grandfather's band.
The blue pic is of an expired 40's Banker auction with the exact same band.
Ah ha! I figured out that those are hinged clamps holding the leather part of the band. I got the leather part off and I don't think it will be to hard to replace.
I just need to get my hands on a decent strip of high grade leather and my wife's sewing machine.
I polished up the gold part of the band and it turned out pretty good. I think after I get the leather replaced it's going to look pretty danged good.
All I need to do is get that hour hand Gary's sending me on there, cleaned/oiled, and maybe ridco the dial as best I can.
Then I'm going to show pops his father's old watch he gave me like 10 years ago, all broken down and probably hadn't been going in decades. Pretty stoked.