Questions - Shotgun cartridge belt

[stormdevil]

Hi

Here's the final product. Well - actually two. I did a cartridge belt slider and a full belt. The slider was to make sure I had the spacing correct - (I did do a couple of loops on some scrap first so I was pretty sure, but didn't want to ruin the belt). Then I finished the belt.

I went with military grade elastic webbing - which works well, and rivets.

 

[dikman]

Looks good! See, that wasn't so hard after all, was it?

Seems like an awful lot of (small) rivets, though.

[fredk]

That should do the job nicely

[stormdevil]

11 hours ago, dikman said:

Looks good! See, that wasn't so hard after all, was it?

Seems like an awful lot of (small) rivets, though.

I'd rather rivet than hand stitch :-) It wasn't too bad once I had everything marked out.

[dikman]

That's why I do loop-through style, much easier!

[noobleather]

Great work Stormdevil.

On 07/07/2018 at 7:16 AM, dikman said:

That's why I do loop-through style, much easier!

Agreed

I am working on my second lot of loading strips using your advise.

 

[dikman]

Now that looks nice. I've never bothered with anything fancy on a cartridge holder simply because it's a purely utilitarian thing. I suppose, though, it could be good practice at stamping.

[Riem]

Fabulous information in this thread, thank you! I've been asked by a friend to make him a shotgun shell belt for clay pigeon shooting. Below is the prototype I've come up with from scraps and leftovers from previous projects. Edges coloured with a sharpie, and burnished with saddle soap (yeah, on a prototype, but I want friend to sign off on the design... )

I've gone the route of hand stitching the loops, as I don't have the punches needed for the slots, and cutting it instead of punching would have been a recipe for disaster.

Belt will be 4 mm vegtan, 80 mm wide, with 10 mm "stop strip" stitched 7 mm below the loops. Loops will be cut from 1.4 - 1.6 mm calfskin vegtan, 50 mm wide.

And here is the back (unlined, of course). Stitching looks a bit wonky, and that vague glimmer of red? 100% natural, biodegradable dye pumping through my veins... Still enough of it left to allow me to type this posting!

I'm still undecided about lining it at the back - what would you recommend? I'd be interested in reasoning other than esthetics - I'd love to line with calfskin, but haven't got enough of the length to laminate the back.

 

[dikman]

Are you talking about making a full belt or a slide?

[Riem]

6 minutes ago, dikman said:

Are you talking about making a full belt or a slide?

Full belt. I'm not skilled enough at stamping and tooling to do much embellishment though.