The rear part of the Belt is supposed to get two inch wide nylon webbing that appears to be attached with one silver rivet on each side.
I cut two equal strips of nylon webbing…
Then did some quick calculations and came up with a final length needed, and an approximate location for the Velcro closure.
The Velcro was sewn to the nylon webbing.
And I now have my almost finished pieces of nylon webbing.
The two pieces were cut down to the final size, and then ends cauterized with an open flame…
After a few more quick measurements, I made a mark where the hole needs to be for the rivet on each side…
The rivets that need to be used are 1/8 inch.
Because I don’t think a single rivet will hold everything together, I’ll be adding the rivets, but they won’t actually be holding anything.
I used a piece of wood and a hammer to gently tap the metal wire out of the rivet.
I will just need the rivet part, itself…
I used my wood burning tool to melt a small hole in the nylon webbing…
Here, holes have been melted in the correct place.
An empty rivet is then fed through the holes.
And I marked the correct depth.
I then used tin snips to split the barrel portion of the rivet.
The result.
Here, both rivets have had their barrels split and then straightened back out.
A split rivet was then fed back through the holes.
And the split part of the rivet was gently separated and pressed flat. Be VERY careful when doing this because the aluminum is very soft and can easily break.
To reinforce the area, I’ll be applying KwikWeld.
I saturated the nylon webbing and covered the split rivet area.
I cut off a tiny piece of the metal wire that was in the rivet.
And super glued it into the empty hole in the rivet.
The excess nylon webbing was then glued down to the Belt, using a few more batches of KwikWeld.
The same process was repeated for the other strip of nylon webbing. The Belt assembly is quite strong now…
Next, I’ll be adding the 1 1/2 inch cotton webbing that connects the Drop Boxes to the Belt…
I want these to be adjustable, so I’ll be adding loop Velcro…
And the hook Velcro will go on the inside of the Drop Box…
The front piece is folded as such, and the loop part of the Velcro is added to the ends…
After the correct angle was determined, I pressed it and sewed it…
The other piece of loop Velcro sewn in place…
The completed front strap…
The two pieces of 1 1/2 cotton strap for the back connections…
Each strap will get loop Velcro to connect to the Drop Box, as well…
I’ll also need to add some loop Velcro to the back of the main Belt strap…
I’m adding some hook Velcro to the front strap to secure it to the plastic part of the Belt…
Here, the loop Velcro has been added it to the plastic part of the Belt…
And, the front strap is now secure…
While I’m working on this, I need to add some loop Velcro to the Belt front that will connect to the Codpiece. This should help keep the Belt in position…
Since the belt consists of 3 separate pieces, glued together, I’m a bit concerned that the stress on those joints could fail at some point. So, I’m going to attempt to beef them up a bit…
The back side of the Belt where the 3 pieces have been glued and plasti-welded.
The plan is to cut some metal strapping and use JB-Weld to secure it…
The first 2 pieces cut, and bent to conform to the contour.
Then, 2 flat pieces will go in the other area.
The “hump” area was marked…
I then used a cutting wheel on my dremel to make straight cuts.
Then, a different bit was used to remove the plastic in between the cuts. I need the cut out area to be flush with the rest of the area.
Plastic removed on both sides.
Test fit…
Nice and flush…
I then drilled holes into the meta straps. This should help give the JB-Weld something to “grab” on to.
JB-Weld mixed up, and applied to all of the reinforcement straps. Once it’s dry, I guess we’ll see if this is a working solution.
