Belting It Out Again

My first two belts were so fun that I immediately had to start the next one. Besides, my kids line up quickly when there are cool goodies to be had, and there was my older daughter, jostling her way to the head of the line! My younger daughter had already made her own belt, so she was sated for the moment.

For the new one I found a chain pattern on a photo of a tile, and I adapted it to fit the 1.5-inch wide belt blank I was using. The first thing I did was dampen the leather and use the edge creaser to mark lines along the belt for the edges, about a quarter-inch in from each side.

Then I dampened the leather some more and traced the pattern, following with the swivel knife. The pattern is really intricate and tedious, so I did each step in small sections to make it more interesting: trace, knife, trace, knife, and so on.

The following picture shows me cutting the pattern with the swivel knife. The idea is that you pull the knife towards you, swiveling it along the traced line with your thumb and third-fifth fingers while your index finger keeps the knife steady.

Here is a picture of the pattern, partly traced and partly cut:

The trick with the swivel knife is that is has to be really well sharpened and polished all the time. Mine wasn't sharp enough--it isn't completely sharp when you buy it, so you have to sharpen it more yourself. If you don't, you get "drag" on the blade as you go along, and the cuts aren't as smooth as they should be. It's hard to see in the picture, but my cut lines are a little jagged.

Here I started tooling the pattern as I went along, mostly with a patterned beveling tool:

As I mentioned in my post on riveting, I often jump straight into a project without doing quite enough practicing or testing first. I did in this case, and found that for my particular pattern I didn't have quite the right beveling or patterning tools to give me exactly the look I wanted. I ended up doing a bit of rework right on the belt as I tried out different tools. Fortunately the rework didn't show much (and perfection is a bad thing, right?).

Here is the tooled belt at the buckle end. The pattern and tooling goes all the way to the other end of the belt (the billet end).

Dyeing to Dye

A big reason for doing this third belt was to try using dyes that were separate from the finish, instead of the Tandy's Eco-Flo All-in-One. This time I was using Tandy's Eco-Flo Leather Dye. Also, for this belt I was doing different colors for the different threads of the chain pattern.

Here you can see how the different colors (Deep Violet, Emerald Green, and Evening Blue) weave together:


Then I added the dark brown background (Dk. Coco Brown):


If I had stopped here, I probably would have been fairly happy with the colors. However, the process recommended by the guys at the shop was to clean off the excess dye using a soft cloth and Lexol leather conditioner. I did that, trying to avoid mixing my several colors (mostly getting my green and purple muddied with brown), and my belt ended up looking very faded:


I then put a second painstaking coat of dyes on the entire belt and cleaned it again with the Lexol. It looked only slightly better than it did in the picture above, but since painting the separate colors was such a pain, I decided it was good enough.

I covered the back of the belt in the dark brown. The Lexol didn't take off as much of the dye from the back (the rough "flesh side" instead of the smooth "skin side").

Here is how it looked after the second coat and cleaning (and hole punching):


Dyeing to Finish

I used Tandy Carnauba Creme as the finish for the belt. It's basically a blend of waxes in a water base. You smooth it on using a soft cloth (I've been using cut-up pieces of a worn out t-shirt). When the creme dries, you buff it with more cloth until the leather shines. When I was applying the creme, I found that quite a bit more dye came off onto the cloth. Just a little more dye comes off during the buffing stage, though (whew!).

I did find that the most finely-textured (stippled) parts of the belt design still showed little white spots of wax after the buffing with cloth. An old soft toothbrush in a gentle circular motion worked for those.

Here is the final belt. Not that I'm keeping score, but this one probably took me 30-40 hours to make (instead of 8 hours each for the blue and brown ones). Carving and tooling the pattern for this belt definitely took longer, but the big timesink came with the careful multiple coats of multiple colors.

In general, I'm not particularly happy with the way the colors came out. The purple looks more like pink, and the whole thing is a little too "distressed"-looking for my tastes. But my daughter cheerfully snatched it up and carted it off before I could change my mind about giving it to her, so I guess it's good by definition!


Solvent Salvation

California, where I live, has imposed a lot of environmental restrictions on volatile organic compounds (VOCs), that is, all the really useful and effective (and harmful) solvents. This means that many manufacturers have had to reformulate dyes, paints, and such to eliminate or lower their use of the "bad" solvents. Tandy's Eco-Flo dyes and other products are the water-based response to lowering the VOCs.

The "old-timers" who hang out and do their leather work together on Saturday mornings at the local Tandy store shake their heads sadly and say that it's just not like the good old days where you could dye your leather and get a good high at the same time. Well, they don't really say that, but the old solvents were very good at carrying dyes deep into the leather, and water, while the ultimate solvent of life, just isn't quite so good for leather dye. They do say the new dyes just don't work quite so well as the old versions. But that's life in California, and clean air is definitely a good cause.

Lacey Investigates


Lacey is pretty diligent about investigating objects left on the kitchen floor. Food? Treats? Toys? Those nasty VOCs?


Nope, no VOC problem here. A few treats would be nice, though...

Belting it Out

Like any craft, leatherwork requires a lot of learning and practice to get good at it. And like the true dilettante that I am, I'm going to work really hard at it, and collect all the tools and supplies for it, until I'm pretty good (but not great) at it--just good enough to prove to myself that I can do it--and then move on to something else. After all, I always need more stuff to stuff into my craft room, right?

In any case, I had a great time doing the leather keychains, and they made good test pieces as well as great little holiday gifts. But once the holidays were over, it was time to move on, and I'm still avoiding working on my jeans circle quilt.

It was time for... the belt.

The Pattern

I've always liked Celtic knot and chain patterns, and I also wanted to do kind of a sampler to show off various basketweave patterns and designs. I found a chain design on the web, then copied a part of it and modified it on my computer using the drawing program in Sun's OpenOffice.org software. I'm pretty fond of that drawing program--it's great for repeating and resizing patterns and motifs--and best of all, it's free!

I put various sizes and shapes of the design on a single sheet and printed it out. I got a 1.5-inch-wide belt blank from Tandy to start with, then used the one design strip that fit best on my belt.


I wet the leather of the belt and used a creasing tool to press in straight lines a quarter inch in from each long edge of the belt. Then I traced the chain design into the leather using a ball-point stylus. I repeated the design as needed, then ended the design by making the big chain openings into loops. The idea was to have the design end on either side of the buckle and billet (the piece with the holes) sections.

Once I traced the design, I used the swivel knife to cut the entire design, then used a beveling tool to stamp down along the outer edge of the design. The following picture shows the belt after this first beveling.


From there, I used various stamping tools to fill in each of the large chain spaces with different patterns.


The dark spots on the right end of the picture above are the snaps that hold the buckle. The buckle tongue goes through the cut slot, and the end folds over to snap in the back of the belt. The plain part of the belt on the left end will be the billet, where I'll punch the holes.

I got to the point in the picture above, then tried on the belt to figure out exactly where to punch the holes. I had measured my old belt before starting the new one, but I found I had made a tactical error when I traced the pattern: the patterned section was too long, and the belt would be too big for me unless I put holes into the pattern! Ouch.

Well, my hubby won the leather lottery this time, since his waist is a bit bigger than mine. He wanted the belt to be dark brown (what? not purple??), so I coated the belt with the All-in-One and handed it over.


I had another belt blank handy, so I did the whole thing again, with one fewer chain link repeat this time! I did different patterns in some of the big loops too, and then dyed my belt blue. This time my belt fit. I spent about 8 hours on each belt--leatherworking requires a great deal of patience!


Learning Curve

I've been taking my work in to my local Tandy store for critiquing and advice. As I mentioned, there is a lot to learn. The two main helpful comments I've gotten have been to keep my swivel knife blades sharper and to keep my leather wetter as I work it.

The too-dull blades show up as (relatively) ragged-edged cuts, because they drag the leather along instead of slicing through it like, well, a knife! Rob at Tandy told me that while I was polishing the blade just fine with jeweler's rouge, the blades needed more drastic sharpening first. For this, I needed to drag the blades on a flat piece of 600-grit sandpaper (which I finally found in the automotive section of my local hardware store).

Keeping the leather at the right wetness, or casing the leather, affects how deep the stamping tool impressions go. If you want your pattern to appear in sharp relief (yes, you probably do), then you need the leather to be wet all the way through--but not too wet. If it's too dry, the leather is hard, and the tool only leaves its impression on the very surface. Too wet, and the leather just kind of moves around like soft clay or putty, and doesn't compress enough to hold the pattern well. Books suggest keeping your work damp in a plastic bag overnight, but you have to be careful to not let the work get mildewed! Yum.

I also learned that, while the All-in-One is really easy to use and gets great colors, it's really not the right choice for leather that will get a lot of bending and wear. Since it is both a dye and a finish, it doesn't penetrate very deeply, and it tends to crack a bit when the leather is bent or scraped (the billet section, for example, where it goes through the buckle).

Here you can see the finish cracking a bit on the back side of my blue belt (as well as how the snaps work with the buckle and the keeper, which is a separate loop of leather).


The All-in-One was great for the keychains, though, which don't get the same type of abuse as a belt. For my belt, the cracking is only visible when I'm looking at the back, so no big deal. I can always touch it up a little if I need to. For future belts I'll use separate dyes and finishes, though.

One more thing: half the fun of making belts is choosing the buckle. These are from Tandy.


His and Hers belts. Aaaw, too cute...


More to Come

And speaking of future belts, obviously I need to do at least one more so I can experiment with dyes! So I've already started the next one, but that's a topic for another blog.