AuThe comedians compete for championship belts and, here, I will share my. If you are making belts for a Wrestling show, I would advise that you be a bit more. Draw around them on the manilla folders to create a template for your leather. An image of the championship belt. Image_size: Image width (defaults to 220px if empty). Alt: Alternative text for the first image, for people who can't see the image.
I run a weekly Impro-Standup show in Melbourne: The comedians compete for championship belts and, here, I will share my techniques for making them (the belts, not the comedians, they do that themselves). For this particular project I am making the 'All-Australian' belt for a State of Origin series we are about to commence.
The belts take about 2 days to complete and use about $120-$150 in materials. I'm not fully tooled-up to do everything I would like to do with these but each one is better than the previous. Enjoy the ride. Supplies: Computer.
Printer Thin card (I use old manilla folders) Scissors or your preferred cutting tool. Method: Design the belt on the computer. My designs are deliberately derivative because FNC is a comedy show which has a look and feel of a wrestling show.
If you are making belts for a Wrestling show, I would advise that you be a bit more original and creative in your design. Keep the design to black and white. We will be making a resist mask and grey tones just don't work that well. High resolution is good but for this design I used a lower resolution to give more jagged lines.
This gives the appearance of age. I always design using 2 side plates. Some wrestling belts only have 1 and some have 4. You are free to like whatever perverse thing you like and I won't judge. Print out the design.
I always make it to fit onto an A4 sheet as most of the materials and equipment I use can fit that as a maximum. Cut out the paper plates and draw around them on the manilla folders to create a template for your leather. Remember that you should only draw one half as the belts are symmetrical.
Cut out the design in full. You should now have a complete paper mock-up of the belt. Supplies: Laser printer (not a Brother, they don't work) 2 A4 sheets of 1mm brass (I've also used copper, no difference) A4 sticky vinyl sheets Acetone Soap (I use Solvol because it cuts through oil) Synthetic steel wool pad Laminator Kiln brick Heat gun Leather gloves Method: Reprint the paper templates of the plates. This time flipping the image horizontally. Always print out a test image on paper and double check that it's correct.
It's a real pain when you don't do this. Also see if you need to make the image in negative. The black bits won't be etched and will be the raised bits. Anything white will be etched. Now that you've double checked that. (you did do that right?) it's time to make the resist mask.
I struggled for quite some time using the classic PNP Blue. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it was really fiddly and always it was really expensive. Here's my trick: I use the backing paper from sticky vinyl.
I have a vinyl cutter (we'll be using that later) and the backing paper works easy and perfect every time. You can't use the paper from vinyl you have cut on the cutter because it will have very slight slices in it but the sheets cost me about 50 cents each (PNP costs me 7 bucks) and I use the vinyl anyway.
Carefully separate the vinyl and backing. Save the sticky vinyl. I conveniently have a not quite finished time machine in my workshop which is good for hanging the bits of vinyl on. You can use something else.
Print your flipped image onto the shiny side of the backing paper and put this aside where it won't get damaged. It will scratch and ruin the mask if you're not careful. Now to my least favourite stage. You need to make sure there is no oil on the brass. This includes the oil from your fingers so latex gloves work well here.
Wash the surface with acetone to get rid of the majority so that it doesn't just get spread around in the next step. The surface of the brass needs to be fairly well scuffed to give the toner something to bind to. I use the steel wool and soap to scuff it and cut through any remaining oil. And now on to my next trick.