spidermanna
New Member
Props are amazing—I wish I had the ability to make them for a living! What I really like about them is how prop makers will inventively repurpose one thing to make another, like a Whammo Frisbees used to make the identity disks in TRON (1982) (ok, those were was just blatantly obvious and silly (but not to an 11-year old)) or the deep sea flashlight, motion detector, and camera flash assembly combo used to make the shoulder light for the colonial marines in Aliens (not to mention the 3 guns used to make the Pulse Rifles...)
However, growing up and never having never paid any attention to cowboys, equestrians, or the Rhohirrim, I was flabbergasted to find out that this key critical piece of Mandalorian culture and family honor is nothing more than the belly belt that’s used to keep the saddle on a horse! Yep, that’s all it is. Mind Blown. Ranchers have been stinging these together since before the Pioneer days and if you want to buy one that is close, you could try Tractor Supply Company or Rural King (if you are fortunate enough to live in the Midwest) but I doubt you will find a perfect match. No luck finding one on Thingiverse (that was a joke). So, being a cheapskate I made my own—Its actually very easy…
For this one I had to change a few things, mainly on the clasping mechanisms and buckling assembly, mainly because I could not find a source for the ones they used in the movie anywhere online or in any store so I eventually just made my own. They weren’t spot on, but they worked (plus it gave me a reason to weld—I love welding but don’t get to do it a lot, mainly because the costs of the oxygen and acetylene have skyrocketed in recent years…)
Very, very satisfying, and manly. Thank Goodness that God created angle grinders cuz my welding skills are crap…
On the left, shown before welding. On the right, an experiment to make what I thought was a cleaner, more efficient looking buckle piece. In the end, I chose the ones that looked like crap (probably cuz they were ‘closer’ to the originals…)
So here we are at the kitchen counter with my CinemaScope pic of the jig I used to make the belt. On a side note, I believe strongly in the “Airwolf Principle” in my approach to building things—the Airwolf Principle postulates that if you have a nuclear powered super attack helicopter with rockets/lasers/machine guns and Stringfellow Hawk at the controls (assuming you get the mad scientist inventor out of the harddrive), you can pretty much overcome any crisis that the world throws your way. Well, the same goes for a good tools and Jigs for woodworkers and makers—with a Good Jig, you can do anything, and quick and many times over, and this one was cheap and quick and totally worked. I used macramé I got off Amazon and the two long screws with the macrame wrapped around them was how long the wind needed to be (mostly—I still made it longer). Mine was seven winds/section and I wound the two sections (top and bottom) together. I could have made ONE BIG single belt of 14 winds but that would have required TWO jigs and that just wasn’t in the budget (plus I didn’t think of it at the time)…
I knew I would need to pull a line threw at the ends to pull them tight so I used a dowel as a spacer (forgot why I did that initially—had to look at the pictures). I repeated this on both sides of the Jig
When you pull the rope through the space left by the dowel, it gets tight. Once its good and tight, cut it off and add some superglue to hold it in place.
Make 2 belts and you get this. Isn’t that a daisy?...
I took some smaller cotton rope (from amazon, of course) and wound it through the layers of macrame. To do this, I made a make-shift ‘needle’ by taking a piece of the welding steel rod I used to make the buckles and beating the **** out of one side with a hammer. Then I drilled a hole it and wove it through each line several times. Then I just glued it together because I couldn’t be bothered to come up with a more ornamental way to keep the thing from fraying apart… (NOTE: Gorilla Glue should never be used as a hair care product…)
I apparently upped the ante and switched from a 2x4 jig to a 2x6 jig—probably should have just used this one to begin with. Anyway, I divided belt in 4th or 3rd or whatever so there would be one strand in the middle and one each on either side. I used the exact same weaving technique for these as well. The slats screwed down over the ropes help keep the lines straight and tight.
Eventually it looked like this. The black nylon straps were stitched on with a sewing machine (not pictured—will see a lot of it when we get to making the gloves). This is probably the cleanest that my kitchen counter has ever been…
Apologize for the J.J. Abrams lens flare effect there—was not intentional. Speaking of kitchen counters, I really shouldn’t be painting on the kitchen counter…(BTW, we still haven’t made that shawarma yet…sadly...probably gone bad by now...)
That’s better. Now its hanging off the pull up bar (which I DO use every day to actually do pull-ups, thank you very much...(except Saturdays, of course))...
Initially, I wasn’t sure what color this was or the best way to color it. I learned that the color is Burgandy (like the gauntlets—as a matter of fact, they actually match up horizontally across his waste—big line of Burgandy, like James May’s caddy in Lochdown…). The post suggested that you should NOT dye the fabric (macrame) as it will bleed over time and turn your costume midsection pink. Instead, used latex house paint…so I did. Turned out perfectly (I think)
I don’t recall ever weathering this—I think I didn’t need to because it looked pretty crappy to begin with (except for the black straps which you don’t see much of as they are mostly hidden). One thing I noticed now looking at these is that I failed to finish painting the buckles—I’m surprised they haven’t rusted up yet honestly. Oh, and just one more thing…I forgot to mention or take any pics of but running up and down (top to bottom) spaced every few inches from the center outward I stitched in a few passes of regular thin cotton thread to keep the thick strands of macrame together as the 3 heavier ones that are in there weren’t doing enough to hold them together as a single unit. I would definitely put those in, and paint the buckles---what I did was just lazy…
Anyway, that wraps up another item on the big Boba Fett Costume Checklist. Hope y’all are getting something out of this. Feel free to comment or ask questions. Thanks for watching..
