Captain America TFA buckles

So I've been building a Captain America: The First Avenger costume for quite some time now, and am ALMOST done! It's been a long time coming, that's for sure. I started off with an eBay suit, then did about a million modifications from adding real seatbelt webbing, to leather, to fabric paint.

Something I've been working on for just as long is the buckles - I couldn't find anything online that was really accurate, so I spent several several hours in SketchUp making my own! I had Shapeways do the 3D printing, as they always do an excellent job. So far I've made the front strap buckles (that go on the red straps) as well as that lower back buckle, as it seems no one has done those accurately.

Here are the front strap buckles in plastic:



And in stainless steel, which feels AMAZING in hand. It's heavy and solid, and didn't need to be painted:


And my pride and joy, the lower rear buckle. This is pretty much spot on, save for the hard line on those rounded parts. My v.4 of this buckle has that rounded, but I gotta get it printed:


I love that buckle.

Next, I plan to do all the other buckles including that upper back buckle and the smaller buckles on the pauldron straps and the four buckles on the front. Wish me luck and let me know what you think so far!

OK. So I've been spending a LOT more time staring at my Hot Toys Captain America The First Avenger 1/6 scale figure, and think I've got most of the buckles done.

I fixed that one imperfection on that lower back harness buckle from my last post -- I didn't like how those rounded parts were just cut off. This should be my final version:

And I just finished work on the other buckles, and finally done with the back harness buckle! Really excited and think it looks great -- but what do you all think?

Back Harness Buckle:


Front Chest Strap Buckle:


Shoulder Pauldron Arm Strap Buckles:


Thoughts?

They look great!
I'm trying to make my own costume, but I’m having trouble with the buckles as well. As you mentioned it is very hard to find any designs for a 3D print of the buckles...
I have a friend with access to a 3D printer, but have never done any designing myself,
could you share your design? Otherwise I’ll just have to try myself.

Borch1996 said:

They look great!
I'm trying to make my own costume, but I’m having trouble with the buckles as well. As you mentioned it is very hard to find any designs for a 3D print of the buckles...
I have a friend with access to a 3D printer, but have never done any designing myself,
could you share your design? Otherwise I’ll just have to try myself.

Click to expand...

I think the buckles were the hardest thing to find and I never ended up finding any, so decided to 3D design them myself based off of the Hot Toys figure and what pics I could find. PM me about the designs, though ...

Are any of these available by chance?

Solidgoldcaddy said:

Are any of these available by chance?

Click to expand...

Yep the difficult ones are, at my Etsy shop: http://etsy.me/1qJlZwu

I also have the upper rear buckle completed and it prints fine, just haven’t listed it. Here it is:



The front strap buckles are a real pain to print and I’m still working that out, but having them printed by Shapeways means they come in metal and look AMAZING, but of course $$$.




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