How to cut belt tips and holes easy

[RockyAussie]

This is a method of cutting out the belt holes and tips together and perfectly every time. In the following I will show how I go about making a jig/alignment tool the old way as well as the new 3d printed way. Because I do mostly production manufacturing, time and quality are always important factors to be considered. As I am working on a tutorial on how I make combination dress belts shortly I thought best to do this one in order to cut down some of the explanations in that later one. I will start this with a couple of pictures of the type of belts I make to show off how the tongue holes and buckle holes and tips are done.

This first one is one of the styles of the dress belts I commonly make. It is the 30mm version with a removable buckle retainer. I like this style mostly because the buckle retainer can be taken of the belt easily shortened which means if a customer is buying a gift for someone else they can safely get a long one and get it shortened.

This hornback version also has a removable buckle retainer and is for a 45mm (1 3/4") buckle. This version is what I am going to show how I make up a jig for doing the holes etc.

I use a clicker press and knives for doing this job but some workable inexpensive presses can do this work as well. Some of these can be found in this earlier post I did awhile ago and note that they are also useful for wet moulding, stamping and other things.

After I have done my cad drawings and sent the patterns to the knife/die maker, he sends back a pretty good knife that will cut out the shape. One with the tongue tip and holes like this below should set you back about $150 AU or a little over $100 US dollars. This is done on 19mm or 3/4" steel rule die and will last for many years and many thousands of cuts. Once I get the knife back and in hand I grind away the edges so that only the tip and holes will be cut. Care must be taken not to touch the hole punches when doing this grinding process.

After this step I construct a jig using 3mm (1/8") painted Masonite board  for the base and normally some skirting pine that is typically used in internal door surrounds. That is normally around 30 to 40mm by 12mm (1 1/4" to 11/2" by 3/8"). I cut 2 pieces of the pine to the same length as the knife and with the knife held in between these I scribe a mark to cut the Masonite width and similarly the end stop smaller piece of pine.

I then with a sharp knife carve out a recess for the belt tip leather to go in under for the tongue line up cut. Around 3 or 4mm normally will work OK.

following this I cut the Masonite to width and glue and attach with small nails the 2 side strips of pine.

Before attaching the end stop pine piece I tap down the knife enough to mark the Masonite well in order to get centre marking for cutting out.

Once a clear centre line is drawn in and the width of the belt to be held is marked in place I proceed to do cut lines with a band saw or handsaw. (Back shortly)

 

 

 

 

Edited June 16, 2019 by RockyAussie
forgot link

[RockyAussie]

After that the tip end needs to be cut out wider to allow for the knife thickness and a dry check done to be sure the end allows enough of the leather to go up in under the end stop pine board.

Once done the end stop strip can be glued and nailed in.

Now from past experience I have found that with out a support strip up the other end the jig will stress enough with the cutting that it will splay and become useless so I worked out to use a thin strip of aluminium as shown.

I then sand away the Masonite enough for the strip to fit in

and then nail it into place as shown below

This shows the top view now

Ready for testing .......

And Yippie she works

This one shows other jigs for this width belt that were done similarly. How the buckle retainer piece is made is shown in another earlier post here -  and Note: there is an attached pdf file in that post that shows how to do it with descriptions...

I will go over how I do this cutting jig with the new 3D printing process tomorrow morning if I can.

Brian

 

 

Edited June 16, 2019 by RockyAussie
mistake

[Matt S]

Brian, those are some excellent jigs and a great, clear tutorial. Thank you for being so generous with your time and experience.

[Scoutmom103]

15 minutes ago, Matt S said:

Brian, those are some excellent jigs and a great, clear tutorial. Thank you for being so generous with your time and experience.

I agree.  Also those are beautiful belts.

[RockyAussie]

11 hours ago, Matt S said:

Brian, those are some excellent jigs and a great, clear tutorial. Thank you for being so generous with your time and experience.

Thanks Matt, I thought that it might be of some interest at least to us that try and earn a living from it.

 

11 hours ago, Scoutmom103 said:

I agree.  Also those are beautiful belts.

Thank you

[RockyAussie]

Now for those that have a 3D printer or access to one this can be a whole lot easier. In this I had to do a new version of a 30mm belt with a double snap connected buckle. I already have a knife for doing this in 35 and 38mm belts and determined that the same shape could be used here as well. A similar construction was done as the jig above except the 3mm Masonite was done in pla but without the need for any cutting out as shown below

This continues up now with a 30% fill and the wall thickness I went with is 1.6mm

Under view and notice the recess for the belt end cut off

This shows my old 35mm jig alongside the new 30mm one

The 35mm one with knife view in place

Here I am showing both jigs about to be used

Both now cut using the same knife

A better view

And that I think is it. Feel free to ask any questions and I will do my best to answer. Remember to keep a watch out for my upcoming dress belt manufacturing tutorial. I do not pretend this is how everyone else in the trade does this sort of thing as I don't know ......This is just how I worked out to do it for me and if something could be better then please say so. I go with this method because each cut takes about 30 seconds and is reliably the same and the cutting is not limited to the one cutting spot which tends to wear out after repeated use.

Thank you for reading and your comments are all appreciated.

[chrisash]

Hi Brian

I dont understand the purpose of the arrow head cutout, please can you explain

[RockyAussie]

13 minutes ago, chrisash said:

Hi Brian

I dont understand the purpose of the arrow head cutout, please can you explain

The knife thickness is 2.5mm and when you have that on the 2 sides to cut the tip that becomes 5mm that has to be pushed somewhere in order to get through the leather. It is more noticeable on the 30 mm pla printed one because the knife is made to go out to a 38mm wide belt. Notice though that the leather belt piece still fits in tight once past the arrow head cut out in order to get both sides cutting equally. An advantage with the 3D printed jig is that it is the same drawing for each different belt strip except for the cut out section. Being able to use the one knife for several different width belt strips also saves the $$$$. Another advantage also with the printed version is that my first print was .6mm too tight and by taking another .3mm off of each side in the drawing it was printed again without all off my usual #%*^<> etc. I had forgot to allow for the edge coat thickness. The latter one has done now over a hundred belts and still looks like new.

[chrisash]

Thanks, I never considered that, stored away in the little grey cells for possible future use, (assuming any grey cells left)

[beltbuckles]

nice job man!

[Rockoboy]

So, am I correct in assuming your belt blanks are cut over width, ends and holes punched then the belt is cut to width?

[Handstitched]

I feel like an antique doing it all the 'old fashioned way'    

HS 

[Rockoboy]

20 minutes ago, Handstitched said:

the 'old fashioned way'

Yeah! A strap cutter, a knife and a straight edge ... who woulda thought ...

[RockyAussie]

11 hours ago, Rockoboy said:

So, am I correct in assuming your belt blanks are cut over width, ends and holes punched then the belt is cut to width?

Depends on if the are combination style belts. If it just one leather I cut it to size and they get the above treatment. If they are a combination, the strips get cut oversize then attached together then second cut through a combining machine that cuts about a 1 1/2mm off each side and then it gets the buckle and tongue holes put in as above. Here is a couple of pictures of my combining machine doing what it does -

You could do this on a belt strap cutting machine with a few mods as well if you were so inclined.

I will be showing some more on this in an upcoming post on belt making in the next couple of weeks.

8 hours ago, Rockoboy said:

Yeah! A strap cutter, a knife and a straight edge ... who woulda thought ...

Yep I still go that way on the odd one off.