Historical western belts

[MikeRock]

The rivet heads are quite clear, nice circles.  Measuring and scaling from the .44-40 cartridge case under the rim, I get a diameter for the rivet head of 0.323", 8mm.  The diameter of the splash is equal within reasonable limits.  No washers, and this thing has held together for this long....  When you look at it, there isn't that great a force trying to tear the rivet out, just holding a friction fit on a cartridge case. 

God bless

Hope you can see the two rivets, or at least the one on the left.

[chuck123wapati]

18 minutes ago, MikeRock said:

The rivet heads are quite clear, nice circles.  Measuring and scaling from the .44-40 cartridge case under the rim, I get a diameter for the rivet head of 0.323", 8mm.  The diameter of the splash is equal within reasonable limits.  No washers, and this thing has held together for this long....  When you look at it, there isn't that great a force trying to tear the rivet out, just holding a friction fit on a cartridge case. 

God bless

Hope you can see the two rivets, or at least the one on the left.

I can see that now, they must have been  painted or finished to match the leather, is that a worn thread from a stitch above the rivet on the left still cant figure how the bottom and top wouldn't pull away at least  a little bit without being sewn did they glue also back then? yes not a lot of pressure so they would easily hold on their own.

[MikeRock]

That's a big piece of lint on the original display.  It's in the book photo.  I had to look.   It looks like the rivet body is not much more than 1/8", so the 5/16" diameter head leaves 3/32" of rim all the way around the head and splash/expanded part, plus the expanded part is actually curved back around and dug into the leather.  That would hold the leather in compression quite well.   If you load and unload from a loop you'll see there is very little pressure placed on the rivet.  I think I'll turn some copper rivets down to size and play with this a bit.  How's the weather up your way Chuck?  I just had a friend from Troy, MT tell me how nice it is up there.

God bless

[MikeRock]

The disappearing rivet trick   I have some cowboy cuffs, leather cones that went over the wrist to protect the shirt cuff and help prevent injuries as well.  The rivets on those are steel and darned near invisible.  I just thought of  them.  I'll measure and fiddle and see if we can put the rivet issue to rest.  Fun stuff.

[dikman]

Thanks Mike, now I can see them - just! I find the whole thing a bit weird. They're obviously not completely hollow rivets. I doubt if I could replicate that if I tried (not that I want to).

[chuck123wapati]

7 hours ago, MikeRock said:

That's a big piece of lint on the original display.  It's in the book photo.  I had to look.   It looks like the rivet body is not much more than 1/8", so the 5/16" diameter head leaves 3/32" of rim all the way around the head and splash/expanded part, plus the expanded part is actually curved back around and dug into the leather.  That would hold the leather in compression quite well.   If you load and unload from a loop you'll see there is very little pressure placed on the rivet.  I think I'll turn some copper rivets down to size and play with this a bit.  How's the weather up your way Chuck?  I just had a friend from Troy, MT tell me how nice it is up there.

God bless

Oh ok  sounds like a fun experiment indeed. Its gorgeous here to if your a penguin that likes 40 mph wind storms with gusts to 65  LOL I live on the edge of the red desert but we have had well over 30 inches of snow this year. But not bad today it was above freezing we went out and had to dig up some of our drifts so the deer could find a bite to eat that wind packs the snow in like cement.

May god bless you as well.