How Would You Go About Tooling/stamping Railroad Tracks?

[The Grizzly]

I have a belt to make for a friend who was given a buckle for the Union Pacific and Illinois Central railroad companies. I'm doing his name in the center, in one of the older style railroad fonts. I've decided that I would like to do railroad tracks (overhead view) as the design on the belt.

How would you go about tooling a line of railroad tracks? Similar to this or more of a straight down view:

Would the tracks and ties need to be cut with a swivel knife first?

Using that picture as an example, I could bevel along the tracks where the shadows are. Use some tools to work some grain into the wood...

Here's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid that I'm going to get WAY WAY into this and try to work every little detail and add gravel between the ties and all that...and it's going to be lost on the person the belt is for.

I would like to keep it rather simple, yet nice. It's been very hard finding a railroad theme that will look good on a belt...I'm about at the end of my ideas.

[TwinOaks]

Lay out the rails first and make them like you would 'beads'. Cut both sides and bevel, then run over them with a beading tool, or if you don't have one, get a screen tool from the hardware store-they're like $3 at Lowes. One end is a convex wheel for pressing the screen in, the other end is a concave wheel for the retaining bead of rubber. Run over leather, it will make a nice set of parallel lines....alternately you could use a small pulley, or hey, why not look for a set of model train wheels?

For the cross ties, cut and bevel them in lightly, then add 'wood grain' with a modeling tool or your swivel knife. But don't over do it- the suggestion of wood grain will look better than trying to duplicate wood grain.

For the gravel....a backgrounder would do. A pebbler would do better. If you don't have either.....wrap a piece of 80 grit sand paper around the end of a wooden pencil and go to town. (you might also consider a square peg instead of a pencil because it'll let you get into the corners).

Heck, if you've got a shop for making custom knives, you could probably whip up a few leather tools pretty easily. A backgrounder is really nothing more than a shaped foot that's been checkered with a file. Pebblers are made on a shaped foot that has multiple divots drilled out of them. Between projects, grab a set of torx bits and try overlapping the impressions and see what you get.

P.S. Don't forget to fade the impressions for the gravel as you reach the edges of the belt. It will look better than sharp impressions all the way to the edge (or border).

[The Grizzly]

Thank you so much, you gave me quite a bit to work with there

I had actually thought of the sandpaper trick to get the gravel look, glad to see that idea wasn't just something weird passing through my brain .

Very cool idea on the screen bead roller!!

Thanks again!

[TwinOaks]

Here's a 15 minute sample so you get a visual of what I'm talking about. But do a better job lining up the ends of the cross ties....like I said, a 15 minute sample.

For the rails, roll slowly under moderate pressure. DON'T roll back and forth or you can get doubled lines when you get just a teensy bit off.

Oh yeah, work at a scale that's comfortable. In that pic (I finally figured out my MACRO!!!) the rails have 5/16ths between them. Working on micro scale is difficult w/o micro tools.

[The Grizzly]

Awesome, thanks again! Going to work on the belt tomorrow!

[mlapaglia]

Did you ever get a pic of the finished belt? Love to see it.