Padded Back Support Belt

[Bree]

I made this belt up for a friend over the weekend. He wanted something similar to a weighlifting belt to support his back at work. He no longer lifts weights.

It is 6" wide narrowing to 4" wide per his specifications. It is made of saddle skirt veg tan with the suede side of some light pigskin grained cowhide on the back. The padding is about an inch thick and is made of poly-fill. The suede was contact cemented to the belt and about 3/8" of the belt edge in the padded zone... just enough to hold it down until the sewing machine could lock it in with 277/207 poly.

The friend wanted the belt natural with no finish other than oil. So I applied three light coats of neatsfoot oil to the veg tan and nothing to the suede. I put some Antiqwax on the edges and gave them a run thru the burnisher with a heavier burnish at the end as it would get more abuse. I wanted to paint the edges black but he said that he wanted it just the way it was... natural. Okey Dokey.

It is a heavy belt to be sure but the customer was very pleased and ran around the store showing it off to his friends. LOL! It isn't my best belt by any stretch of the imagination but it was fun to make and had its challenges.

Edited February 25, 2009 by Bree

[UKRay]

I always enjoy your posts, Bree. I think the geek in me needs the level of detail you include. The belt looks great but the thing I'm taking away is the information about the finish you used and the thread size - so useful to tuck away until a similar job hits my bench. Many thanks for a very interesting post!

[Bree]

I always enjoy your posts, Bree. I think the geek in me needs the level of detail you include. The belt looks great but the thing I'm taking away is the information about the finish you used and the thread size - so useful to tuck away until a similar job hits my bench. Many thanks for a very interesting post!

Thanks UKRay! I took some pics of the cutting but it is just a plain old big belt so I didn't want to bore you guys. It did take a good bit of sanding on the drum to round off stuff so it kicked up a lot of leather dust. (Wear a dust mask)

I had to redo the keepers because they were too small on the first go around. I didn't want to recut them larger so I enlarged them by taking some scrap suede and stitching it to the keepers on the bottom. Now they have a little stretchiness to them which actually turned out to work well since the belt is so thick. The 277 machine thread is quite nice for hand stitching the keepers together.

BTW... that little expresso tamper is just the cat's meow for rubbing down the leather and bonding it to the contact cement. I love that little thing. It got a lot of work on this project as there was a lot of contact cemented surface area.

I made a terrific profit on this one. I used some old leather that I bought several years ago and had little use for... both the saddle skirt and the suede. And I traded for goods worth many times the value of the belt. I didn't invest a lot of time in making it and told the guy that fact. Nevertheless he seems to love his new belt and chastised me for not stamping my name on it. I guess he would show off the maker stamp to his friends... adds bragging value I suppose.

The other day he offered me a nice Jet mortising machine which is basically unused for $25. That baby is selling for $350 at Rockler!! It's like magic.

Can you imagine what I could score if I produced the really high quality work like the folks around here do??? I would be positively dangerous!! LOL!!