First Stab At A Lined Belt

[LederRudi]

I intended a masterpiece and ended up with kind of a "journeyman's piece".

All in all I'm content with the outcome. The tool impressions are crisp enough, I'd say, and the edge is sufficiently smooth. I tried to follow Bob Park's tutorial on finishing edges.

I made some mistakes though and learned from them:

- I nicked the edge when I trimmed the lining

- I used thick Tandy artificial thread - overlapping stitches (where I had to start a new thread) are visible

- the lining ends about an inch before the buckle slit.

Any comments or hints are most welcome.

[David8386]

Looks good, I like it.

David

[Dwight]

I couldn't see your mentioned flaws, . . . so it looks good from here.

As a personal note, . . . you said you nicked the belt trimming the liner, . . . you won't do that if you trim the whole thing on a sander. I use a little $50 belt sander I bought (have 2 of them now) from Harbor Freight, . . . my sanding and trimming for one belt that used to take an hour, . . . now takes 3 or 4 minutes, . . . much better job also.

I have also used a little $3 cheapie 2 inch round sander that goes in a drill. I mounted it it a drill press, . . . made a little wooden rip fence for it so it couldn't dig in real deep on my belts, . . . that actually works very well also.

May God bless,

Dwight

[mmn]

Getting ready to try a belt myself.

1) Really like the buckle!

2) No keeper?

Regards

Michael

[Palacki808]

Did you have a way of laying out the stamping before you get the tools out? The stamping and the stitching look really even and consistent. Even with the small mistakes you mentioned, I think it looks great.

[LederRudi]

Thank you all for the input!

...I'll get a belt sander today!

Buckle:

The buckle is from Tandy. It's the only 1 3/4" buckle I could find on their website. I like its simplicity.

Keeper:

Since it's a center bar buckle it keeps the protruding end of the billet pretty close to the belt. Nevertheless I plan to add a keeper which is easily done since I used chicago screws.

Layout:

The layout of the stamping is based on Will Ghormleys "Hand of God Rig" pattern (http://www.willghormley-maker.com/MakingHOGRig.html).

I replaced the Mule's Foot by a border tool which I found more easy to control. I had already botched a strap by carelessly stamping away which resulted in tilted Mule's Foot impressions and poor lineup of the two rows. It pays to follow Will Ghormley's instructions and to prepare the stamping with a square and a Wing Divider.

Stitching:

Instead of a stitching wheel I used diamond-shaped chisels (1, 2 and 4 prong) which I only tapped lightly. The actual stitching holes I created with a diamond-shaped stitching awl that I chucked into a drill that was mounted in a drill press in order to maintain a 90 degree angle, a 45 degree cant and a certain depth (the tip of the blade barely coming out on the backside). For each stab I lifted the belt some till the awl caught the chisel impression, and then pressed down.

This method might seem ridiculous to the experienced two-needle-and-awl-jugglers, but it worked for me and for now and enabled me to generate a nice stitching line on the backside of the belt. Only now I created a stiching channel on the inside, rubbing a wooden modelling tool fiercely along a ruler.

The actual sewing (two-needle method) was a piece of cake (although time-consuming) except that I should have chosen a good quality thread.

Thank you all again for your kind comments,

Rudi

Edited April 4, 2013 by LederRudi

[mikesmith648]

Looks good Rudi

[LederRudi]

Thank you, Mike!

[Rayban]

When you use white stitching, you pretty much have to final finish the belt first , then stitch. Looks like your white stitching got a bit contaminated with dye and appears "dirty"......this is one of those I learned the hard way too.

[LederRudi]

When you use white stitching, you pretty much have to final finish the belt first , then stitch. Looks like your white stitching got a bit contaminated with dye and appears "dirty"......this is one of those I learned the hard way too.

In fact I did the stitching after dying and finishing, but you are right: it does look dirty. I think this is because the thread is heavily waxed. I thought I could get rid of the excessive wax by running a stitching wheel over the stitching afterwards, but that obviously didn't pan out. I've seen people melting away the superfluous wax with a lighter (is that standard procedure?) but I didn't like the idea of holding a flame to an artificial thread. The thread also dragged up some glue although there were more than 24 hours between glueing and stitching. Could it be that I applied too much glue or/and that I should have waited longer?

In the forums here I've read pople going on about so-and-so-many strand linnen threads and the like. What would be the best choice for a project like mine (8-9 oz belt with 4-5 oz lining)?

Thanks for your input

Rudi

Edited April 5, 2013 by LederRudi