My less than 18 dollar ammo belt

mcabrera1275

Active Hunter
I'm curious to see what some of my fellow member's belt pouches look like. I'm looking to upgrade my set, so I was interested to see what else is out there.

Please post pics if you have any of your belt pouches. Thanks!!
 
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Here's mine. I made it form scrap pieces of leather from the local fabric store.
The whole lot of leather came to about $14.

It still needs to be weathered a bit...but not bad for home made...if I do say
so myself! :)

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I made mine out of a yard of vinyl that I paid $5.99 for. I probably used about $2.00 worth. The pouches are reinforced with foamcore glued to the insides, and the closures are Velcro.

These pics are before painting the white felt brown using acrylic paint. It looks like suede now. ;)

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Malcfett, what did you put those leather folds over?
 
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I cut thin styrofoam blocks and then hot glued the leather to that...one long piece
folded around it horizontally and then one vertically over the first.
 
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Mine are homemade out of leather. I used a modified pattern based on the Obi-Wan Academy version. The base belt was from Home DePot, and the cloth pouches are scraps from my jumpsuit sewed by my mom. The pouches are glued together over styrofome blocks. The only real expensive part was paying some guy to sew on the stiching, which is for looks only.

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Would anyone mind hosting a pic of my ammo pouches? I still don't have my own hosting site yet. Please? They're really neat pouches, I swear. :)
 
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Here are phantomfett's ammo pouches. VERY NICE, if I might say so!(y) (y) Sorry these weren't up earlier, we had company show up at 6:30 this morning out of the blue!:angry

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Thanks for hosting my pics Boba Phat! You are the man! :) I made those back in 1998 (and I'm still nowhere close to being done with the rest of the costume :( ). The bottom pic shows the layout of parts it takes for one pouch. I folded the metal cross (sheet metal) up into the box shape, cut two slits in the back for the metal clip, and glued the vinyl around the box. There's a tab of velcro sewn to the bottom side of the flap and the front of the box. So I did that process eight times. The belt was a two inch belt blank from Tandy Leather that I stained, punched holes in for the grommets, rivets, and buckle. That was the time I took off part of my finger with a very sharp Exacto blade. The grey pouches were some leftover flightsuit material. The cool thing about having metal clips on the pouches is that I can do either the ESB or ROTJ configuration simply by sliding the ammo pouches over the grey ones. :)
 
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Heres a project on the never ending fett check list that I completed two weeks ago. Probably should have made it darker but otherwise really satisfied with it.

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Comparison
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comparison
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Shopping list:
Vinyl (heavy)fromm Joanns fabric $5.00 (Tip: take the pattern with you or you'll end up with more than you need. I bought 3/4 yard and had a ton left.)
1 inch styrofoam block Joanns $2.00
Contact cement Micheals (40% coupon) 1.50
Epoxy 1.00
velcro on sale 1.00
vinyl/leather brown spray local shoe store 5.00
Already owned a needle/thread:free
groumets from Joanns 2.00

1)Used the pattern from OBI' acadamy(alternat two part)
Cut the pattern out on the vinyl with the box component being one part and the overlying tab the second.

http://www.jedi-academy.com/fett_belt_tips_alternate.html

Cut a 6 inch strip to your demensions (waist, you will later fold this over on itself to make a 3" belt). I let mine verlap by about 10 inches anticipating some loss when its over the clothes.

2)Cut the styrofoam to the demensions recomended(with a steak knife, worked great).

3)Glue the block to the vinyl and creat the box as per the pattern. TIP: use the epoxy for this. contact cement melts styrofoam. also use 1 minute epoxy. I typically had 3-4 minutes to work before it set.

4)Once the blocks where completed I took them along with the seperate tab and belt and sprayed them brown. Some members have said spray paint will work for this also. It would make it cheaper but I've never used it. So at your own risk.

5)Find a weekend day and a marathon showing on SCI-fi take a sharpe and draw a line down the center of the belt on the inside. Take a look at your reference CD and decide what you think looks correct on the stitching. What I decided on 3/16th of an inch from the outside edge of top and bottom. Draw this line again on the inside half of the the belt. Also make sure you choose the half that will make the joined edge on the bottom when folded. You'll see what Im talking about when its laid out. For the back stitching detail split the diference and draw two additonal lines. These are the lines that the groumets go between. I made the length 10 1/2 inches for this detail. TIP: dont be afraid to take larger bites as this is not ading any strength. My stitch stroke were about 3/16th in legth on the belt. You'll see that the vinyl has a lot of repeating texture on the inside. Use this to keep it the same length. With my fabric it ended up being 4 little holes for each stitchon the belt. Last tip for belt: add a 1/16th of an inch to the top thread line. You'll loose this when its folded.

Coat the whole back side with the contact cement. It will take nearly the whole bottle. GET HELP and fold carefully.

Add groumets and done. TIP: dont hammer to hard or you'll cut right through the vinyl belt you just made. Its not leather.

6)Draw your same lines on the inside of the tabs (ammo flap) and stitch away. the stitch length was 1/8 th here. Srt in 1/8th. Again use the texture on the vinyl to keep you stitch length teh same. It comes out straight and looking machined. I also did not extend it all the way as the lower half becomes the back half of the belt.

7)Epoxy the two halves together of the ammo pouches. I made a 3" X 6" piece to simulate the belt and glued the two back pieces over this to make a snug costume fit. Put tape over your thread and touch up any missed parts on the bottom.

8)Add velcro (industrial) to back tabs and your done.

Two days to complete.

Let me know if you have any questions.
 
Looks great! I used that pattern for mine as well but I never made the belt. I just used an old brown one. I need to make a better version to put the pouches on. I love it!
 
The only other thing I might have done different is make them a 1/4 of an inch thiner to be more screen acurate. The slightly larger size does not take away from it but the pattern given is not a 100% accurate. I found this out after I had cut everything out and finished the first block. But I can live with it and its checked off the list : )
 
That's the route I took for my first belt and for the price I think it turned out fine. I am in the process of upgrading mine though to real leather. I guess it's an accuracy thing but I think you all know how it its;)
 
I used vinyl for my pouches but you inspired me. I went out today and bought a 5 pound bag of scrap leather to upgrade the belt after Halloween. Believe it or not, the leather only cost 5 bucks at Hobby Lobby, which was cheaper than the vinyl. Now that i'm close to being done, I'm finding alot of stuff to upgrade. I'll never be finished.
 
I used vinyl for my ammo pouches, and I'm really pleased with how they turned out. My whole belt project ran about $32 because of the belt blank I used. The sheet metal I had lying around from a previous attempt at armor. It wasn't too bad cutting out the metal parts, except that by about the fifth or sixth pouch I had a serious cramp in my right hand from all the snipping. :) Anyway, after all the metal was cut out, I used my handy Dremel to cut two slits in the back wall of the pouch so I could attach the metal clip. By having metal clips instead of loops, I can have either an ESB or ROTJ setup on my belt. The only problem I've run into with the metal boxes is that if the bottom of the clip isn't tight, it can be very easy to get the clips caught on the girth and they push themselves off the belt. So after the clip is installed and the sides are folded up, I ran a piece of masking tape (probably should have used duct tape) to hold the basic box shape. Then the vinyl has to be prepped. First the velcro has to be stitched on--none of that relying on glue crap! One piece on the front of the pouch and one on the bottom side of flap. To keep the stitching holding the velcro on the flap hidden, I used two identical pieces of vinyl for the flap. After the velcro is attached, the two pieces of the flap get stitched together. Just used a standard stitch on my sewing machine. Ya gotta watch out for vinyl though--it is slicker than snot! So I glued them together in the center where I wouldn't be stitching, then just ran 'em through the machine. The flap then needs to be stitched to the main piece of vinyl.

Now for attaching the vinyl to the metal, super glue is our friend. Of course, I had already treated the vinyl with leather dye for a bit of weathering and guess what I learned the hard way----Super glue will NOT stick to leather dye. Dagnabit! So I had to strip the parts I was going to glue. I centered the vinyl on the bottom of the box and started by gluing the sides down. All I did was fold the vinyl over the box and glue it down. Next I did the front part--this hides the folded over pieces from the sides. Now is the last chance to check if the velcro will come together correctly. After the front is done, I moved to the back side. A slit has to be cut in the vinyl to allow the clip to come through. Then just finish gluing down the vinyl and poof! One ammo pouch! I'm working on a tutorial with pics for this process. It's way easier to see it than to explain it. Luckily I still have three pouches in their kit form so I don't have to dismantle any of the ones in the pics above.

I hope that helps to explain my pouches a bit better. Let me know if anyone has questions. Thanks!
 
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