A quality full-grain leather belt won’t cost you any less than $100, but with a little elbow grease, you can make your own version for around $25. Redditor “not_throw_away” has a step-by-step pictorial guide to make it happen.
You’ll need:
- Belt blank
- Belt keep/loop of matching length
- Belt buckle
- All-in-one weather-based dye
- Rotary punch
- Sharp knife
- Sandpaper
- Denim cloth
- Gloves and rags
All of the materials should set you back by anywhere between $25 to $50 if you follow the links in the post below. Apart from being cheap, the advantage of a DIY belt is that it is the perfect length for your waist and just the way you want it, be it colour or buckle. Check out the imgur guide below and head to the Reddit thread for a discussion and some extra tips.
How to make a $US100 belt on the cheap [Imgur via Reddit]
Comments
7 responses to “Make Your Own $100 Belt For Less Than Half The Price”
Wow! That looks just terrible compared to a commercial equivilent. I mean if it was $10-20 max and far superior to just cheap belts, then sure.. But it just looks pretty terrible.
One must also consider their own time as a cost when assessing the worth of such projects- which for an adult is pretty minimally around $25 an hour if doing it on the weekend..
Unless someone is actually prepared to pay you that $25 an hour but you choose to forego it in order to make an ugly belt (probably to loop through your chinos on the way to your helpdesk job), then you actually don’t.
Personally, I value my down time much higher than what my employer pays me, since it is in much shorter supply. But there are endless things you could also choose to do for employment on the weekends if that’s what you choose to do.. Either way, putting a dollar figure on your personal time is still a great way to balance the return on investment.
Ofcourse, perhaps you love leatherworking (you seem rather insulted), in which case you may value your personal leatherworking time heh! Do what you wanna do, and i’ll do what I want to do (not make crappy belts).
I’m not insulted at all. I’m also not going to make a terrible belt, much like I’m not going to make my own pants or something.
It’s fine to put a dollar value on your personal time, but it’s an entirely fictional number and that’s very different from it ‘costing’ you money to make a belt. What you are really saying is that you are happy to spend twenty five/fifty bucks to sit on the couch or whatever for that hour. Which is entirely sensible imho.
Yeah, it looks terrible. Just get a decent belt off eBay.
My local Sunday Flea market sell real leather belts with a bit of style for somewhere between ten and twenty bucks…
I’ll stick to the great quality ones I get from Fremantle Markets for about $30. Mind you, this would be a way of avoiding the belt maker taking the piss when I come back after a year or two looking for a longer belt! 😉