I spent a bit of time taking measurements this morning and doing some rough designing of the belt. I think this is about right to fit my close-to-38″ waist, although it’s got about an inch of allowance for what I assume will be extra material I’m wrapping around my waist underneath the belt itself.
It’s a vector file, so I can scale it accordingly. I’m printed the thing out on a bunch of sheets of paper to test for sizing.
Round one of measuring the belt out has indicated that it could stand to be a bit bigger vertically, so it got bumped up to the dimensions on the image above. The back part ended up being about 9.5″ tall from top to bottom because it looked too narrow once we fit it against the armor. I spent some time working on making molds for the shin parts and cutting all the necessary plastic bits for the motorcycle chain. Afterward came wetting, flexing, and bending leather for the back piece.
I ended up, hilariously, forming the edge around some old telephone wire that was just contact cemented into place on where I wanted the edge. The trick I figured out that I screwed up the last time I tried this was not to cut all the V grooves into the leather down to the line where the edge is, but about halfway to it. That gave enough material to roll a nice curved edge with while the leather was wet.
