Completed Belt
May. 13th, 2010 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peteyfrogboyThe belt is now (mostly) complete.
The whole belt:
Buckle plate and strap end attachment:
Mount attachment and eyelet detail:
One of the purposes of making this belt was to learn from my mistakes so Serafina wouldn't have to make them on her belt. In this regard, the belt was a resounding success! :)
Overall, the belt works, and that's a good thing. It feels very delicate; I think a heavier yarn would have been a better choice, but I was trying not to make it too bulky.
I had originally intended to reinforce the eyelets with lozenge-shaped mounts with holes drilled in them. I think this might have worked if the tongue of the buckle wasn't so big. As it is, putting the tongue through the drilled mount simply didn't work. Fortunately, the sewn eyelets seem to function well enough on their own. The loss of the two mounts I'd drilled means there are two extra spaces on the belt that I'll have to fill later.
The mounts themselves have a whole raft of problems. First, as usual, I made them too thin, especially at the edges. Not only did this make them a pain to clean after they came out of the mold, but the very edge of the lozenge mounts never filled completely and had to be trimmed off. This exacerbated the larger problem with the mounts (especially the lozenge mounts), which was that the integral rivets simply didn't work. Since the rivets were so close to the edges of the mounts, it was impossible to get the rivets to peen without deforming the points of the lozenges, and there wasn't enough grip around the rivet. The rook mounts probably would have worked okay, but I opted to treat them all the same way in the end.
What I ended up doing was trimming the rivets down into flat flanges that I could push through the belt and bend down like staples. This still caused deformation of the lozenge points, but it at least kept the things on. If I had it to do over again, I would make the mounts thicker, especially at the edges, and move the rivets more further in rom the edges, or use a single rivet in the center. A buckle tongue made of steel could be made far thinner, and might allow eyelets reinforced with mounts.
Still, the belt works, and I think it will pass the 10 foot rule without any problem.
The whole belt:
Buckle plate and strap end attachment:
Mount attachment and eyelet detail:
One of the purposes of making this belt was to learn from my mistakes so Serafina wouldn't have to make them on her belt. In this regard, the belt was a resounding success! :)
Overall, the belt works, and that's a good thing. It feels very delicate; I think a heavier yarn would have been a better choice, but I was trying not to make it too bulky.
I had originally intended to reinforce the eyelets with lozenge-shaped mounts with holes drilled in them. I think this might have worked if the tongue of the buckle wasn't so big. As it is, putting the tongue through the drilled mount simply didn't work. Fortunately, the sewn eyelets seem to function well enough on their own. The loss of the two mounts I'd drilled means there are two extra spaces on the belt that I'll have to fill later.
The mounts themselves have a whole raft of problems. First, as usual, I made them too thin, especially at the edges. Not only did this make them a pain to clean after they came out of the mold, but the very edge of the lozenge mounts never filled completely and had to be trimmed off. This exacerbated the larger problem with the mounts (especially the lozenge mounts), which was that the integral rivets simply didn't work. Since the rivets were so close to the edges of the mounts, it was impossible to get the rivets to peen without deforming the points of the lozenges, and there wasn't enough grip around the rivet. The rook mounts probably would have worked okay, but I opted to treat them all the same way in the end.
What I ended up doing was trimming the rivets down into flat flanges that I could push through the belt and bend down like staples. This still caused deformation of the lozenge points, but it at least kept the things on. If I had it to do over again, I would make the mounts thicker, especially at the edges, and move the rivets more further in rom the edges, or use a single rivet in the center. A buckle tongue made of steel could be made far thinner, and might allow eyelets reinforced with mounts.
Still, the belt works, and I think it will pass the 10 foot rule without any problem.
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no subject
on 2010-05-14 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-05-14 03:49 am (UTC)