Welcome back to Friday DIY, where we spend hours making everyday things, because shopping in stores is for quitters. This week’s project is a leather belt, and I was lucky enough to be schooled in the art of belt making by a young man named Maximum Cohen.
A few years ago, Max learned how to make belts from a lifelong professional belt-maker who is now in her 80s. He now runs his own small business selling hand-crafted belts and small leathers goods like wallets, too. I’m a total autodidact when it comes to crafting — most of my knowledge of leatherwork, like my knowledge of knitting, sewing, and pattern-drafting, comes from a) books and b) practice, and my skills can therefore be uneven — so it was a pleasure to work with someone trained in this craft. You know, an actual professional. Max showed me into his Williamsburg studio space, where the walls are lined with elaborate tools, sample belts, and product prototypes, and he proceeded to explain, step-by-step, everything I needed to know about leather, belts, and belt-making. Although he uses a few key pieces of specialized equipment to make the belts he sells, Max was happy to show me how to make a belt in a slightly down-and-dirtier, DIY, at-home kind of way.
Making a belt isn’t actually all that complicated — after all, a belt is just essentially a long leather strap attached to a buckle at one end — but it does involve some simple measuring and some tools that you probably have lying around already (with the possible exception of an awl). (But if you don’t have an awl I would strongly encourage you to get one. They’re so useful around the house! And then you can make this bag or this bag or anything else you want out of leather.)
To make a belt like this, you will need:
1. A belt blank
2. An awl
3. Heavy nylon thread
4. A sewing needle
5. Leather dye (if you are dyeing the belt)
6. A foam paintbrush (if you are dyeing the belt)
7. At least one paint dauber (two if you are dyeing the belt)
8. Embroidery scissors
9. A belt buckle
10. A hole punch
11. An x-acto knife
12. Rubber cement glue
13. A large craft knife with a flat blade
14. Sandpaper and steel wool (if you would like to age the finish on your belt buckle)
Click any photo to enlarge. In order to make this belt, Max showed me how to cut a belt strap out of a cowhide. This part you likely won’t need to do yourself — you’ll probably find it easier and more practical to work with what’s called a belt blank, a long, straight belt strap. Belt blanks are sold in a variety of colors, or in raw leather suitable for dyeing, and are readily available at craft stores and online. But I thought I’d show you how a belt strap is cut from a hide by hand because it’s an interesting process.
First, Max unrolled a cowhide he’d just bought from a tannery that uses an eco-friendly tanning process. Cowhides, by the way, are enormous: this is just a half hide, and it covers Max’s entire workbench. Max uses full-grain hides (full-grain means the leather comprises the entire thickness of the animal’s skin — non-full-grain leather is cut laterally or “split” in order to double or triple the area of a single hide). You need full-grain leather for a heavy-duty item like a belt. And this leather is a very heavy weight — leather thickness is measured in weight per square foot, and this hide is around 11-12 oz per square foot.
Though very flat, the hide was marked with faint, curved striations. Max explained that these whitish marks were the vestiges of wrinkles resulting from the skin stretching along the cow’s back when the animal was alive. Max used nails to tack the hide to his work bench to hold it in place and explained that because of these striations, belts are always cut across the hide — perpendicular to the animal’s spine — because the leather is more rigid. If a belt was cut along the animal’s spine, over its lifetime the belt would stretch more than is desirable.
Max used a long metal ruler and a box cutter to cut a straight line across the hide.
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