My first leather piece was a moneyclip with 3 card slots. At the time I did not calculate anything \u2014 I just saw that a slot was a little wider than the card, then measured, cut and stitched. The result: all 3 slots were tight; even sliding one card in meant wiggling it back and forth to fit, and taking it out was harder still.<\/p>\n
Only after that did I understand that the problem was not thick leather or crooked stitching \u2014 it was that I had measured exactly the card size, without adding any allowance for the stitch line and the thickness of the overlapping leather.<\/p>\n
Many people think all cards are the same size. In fact there is no international body that sets a common standard for business cards \u2014 sizes vary by country and culture. Bank cards and membership cards following the ISO\/IEC 7810 ID-1 standard are fixed worldwide (85.60mm \u00d7 53.98mm), but personal business cards follow each country’s convention \u2014 in Vietnam 90mm \u00d7 55mm is common, while Japan uses 91mm \u00d7 55mm. Below is a table of common sizes in a number of countries for reference when needed:<\/p>\n But the numbers in the table are only a starting point. From the standard card size, I calculate the slot size on the pattern with this formula: +7mm on each side that has a stitch line<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Example: a standard ISO ATM card is 85mm \u00d7 54mm. The horizontal side is stitched on both ends: 7 + 85 + 7 = 99mm. The 54mm height stays the same \u2014 this side is not stitched, it just sticks up so you can take the card out.<\/p>\n If you use a 3mm-pitch diamond chisel, you need to round the size so it matches the exact number of punched holes. The formula I use: take a number divisible by 3, minus 1. For example, 99 is divisible by 3, minus 1 gives 98mm \u2014 that is the real size that goes on the pattern.<\/p>\n There is one more thing I once overlooked: when card slots are stacked on top of each other \u2014 like the 3 slots on that first moneyclip \u2014 every layer of leather between the slots also adds to the thickness. A single slot calculated on its own may fit snugly, but when you put cards into all the slots at once, the thickness of the stacked leather really shows \u2014 the whole block is much thicker than when you test each slot one by one. That was exactly when my moneyclip became hardest to use.<\/p>\n I still keep that first moneyclip, and now and then I take it out to look at it again. Stitch allowance, punching pitch and the thickness of stacked leather layers \u2014 those three things were what I lacked the first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My first leather piece had 3 card slots that were all too tight. From that I worked out a formula for calculating card slot sizes: add the stitch allowance, round to the punching pitch, and account for the thickness of stacked leather layers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/luviart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/luviart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/luviart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luviart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luviart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/luviart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/luviart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luviart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/luviart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n
\n Country \/ Standard<\/strong><\/td>\n Size
( inch )<\/strong><\/td>\nSize
( mm )<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n Japan<\/td>\n 3,582 \u201d\u00d7 2,165\u201d<\/td>\n 91mm \u00d7 55mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Sri Lanka, Argentina, India, Brazil, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary,
Israel, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia,
Montenegro, Slovakia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria , Latvia,
Mexico, South Korea and South Africa<\/td>\n3,543 \u201d\u00d7 1,968\u201d<\/td>\n 90mm \u00d7 50mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Canada, United States<\/td>\n 3,5 \u201d\u00d7 2″<\/td>\n 89mm \u00d7 51mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway, Taiwan, Sweden, Vietnam<\/strong>,
India, Colombia<\/td>\n3,54 \u201d\u00d7 2,165\u201d<\/td>\n 90mm \u00d7 55mm<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Malaysia<\/td>\n 3,543 \u201d\u00d7 2,125\u201d<\/td>\n 90mm \u00d7 54mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Ireland, Italy, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Spain,
Switzerland, Belgium, Slovenia, Portugal, Turkey<\/td>\n3,346 \u201d\u00d7 2,165\u201d<\/td>\n 85mm \u00d7 55mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n ISO \/ IEC 7810 ID-1, (credit card size<\/strong>)<\/td>\n 3,370 \u201d\u00d7 2,125\u201d<\/td>\n 85,60mm \u00d7 53,98mm<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n ISO 216, A8 size<\/td>\n 2,913 \u201d\u00d7 2,047\u201d<\/td>\n 74mm \u00d7 52mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n ISO 216, C8 size<\/td>\n 3,189 \u201d\u00d7 2,244\u201d<\/td>\n 81mm \u00d7 57mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n ISO 216, B8 size<\/td>\n 3,465 \u201d\u00d7 2,441\u201d<\/td>\n 88mm \u00d7 62mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>