Buccaneer's Baldric Buckle

This project began when our family booked our first Disney Cruise. Soon after, I learned about "Pirate Night," a themed evening on Caribbean and Bahamian Disney cruises. Characters appear in pirate garb and there is a special show and music and a fireworks show. Passengers are encouraged to dress up too.

So suddenly I had a new hyperfixation: assemble a pirate costume in time for the cruise. The first step: choose a universe. (By this, I mean: Do I want to look like I'd fit in with the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean pirate like Jack Sparrow? Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece? Treasure Planet? The pirates in Peter Pan? Assassin's Creed Black Flag? LazyTown's Robbie Rotten? Muppet Treasure Planet? Don Karnage's Air Pirates in TaleSpin? The Pirates of Penzance? Han Solo from Star Wars? The Firefly crew from Firefly? The Ravagers from Guardians of the Galaxy? Our Flag Means Death? The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything from VeggieTales?)

I decided on a more realistic (meaning most of the aspects I'd don could at some point have been found on some real life pirate in real life history.) One of the things that I wanted was a baldric or bandolier. But I didn't want to pay the amount I was seeing for the kind I wanted. That meant I'd have to make it myself.

My first plan was to rivet 2 leather strips together to form the gun belt. But I settled on another, more flexible method: 3d printing a buckle that allows me to adjust all the lengths and start with a standard leather belt.

1. Computer
2. Blender
3. 3d printer
4. Gold silk PLA
5. Leather belt
6. Leather strip

In order for the result to be considered a success, I think the following needs to be true:

1. It needs to fit me. (The belt needs to fit around my significant waist and the shoulder belt needs to rest on my sloping shoulders.)
2. The buckle needs to fit both leather strips (snugly so that the strips don't slip out - but not so snugly that we can't insert the strips or adjust them later.)
3. The buckle should hold the shoulder strip at an angle (around 15 degrees off of perpendicular or 75° from the waist belt.)
4. The buckle should look vaguely "pirate-y" (so maybe add a skull to the front?)

Once I had both strips of leather in my hands and confirmed they'd fit around me, I needed to measure their width and thickness. These measurements (and the 15° angle) would determine the rest of the design.

Ribbons (and belts) can be visualized in Blender with curves. I started by clearing the default objects from Blender and then adding 2 Bézier curves.

In the Data tab of the Properties panel for the waist belt curve, I extruded it by 18.44mm (half the measured width) and gave it a depth of 1.58mm (half of the measured thickness.) I also lowered the resolution and changed the bevel profile so that it looked more like a belt's edge.

For the baldric strip, I gave it an extrusion value of 24.95mm (half of the measured width) and a depth of 1.025mm (half of the measured thickness.)

Then I angled the baldric strip and entered Edit mode. I extruded and subdivided vertices and scaled and rotated handles until it looked like it was bent to an amount that would hold in a buckle and be small enough to fit in my imagined buckle. (I had the leather in my hands while doing this to see how it needed to bend in real life.)

Now that I had the constraints visualized, I added posts that the leather would have to wrap around to form this shape. (I made sure to have calipers or a tape measure on hand to sanity check the dimensions.)

Finally, I made a frame that would hold all the posts and to which I could add a buckle face.

Lastly, I downloaded a low poly skull I liked with a CC BY-NC license (by Vladimir E. on Sketchfab) and added it and a few flourishes to the top.

I printed the buckles with 3 walls for increased strength and 3% gyroid infill (my favorite infill) because it looked right. I rotated the object so it'd use the least material. Then I added support blockers to areas that I knew wouldn't really need the support material. 2 ½ hours later, I had a front buckle!

Learning from the first print, I beveled some edges (it was hard to fit the strip through a tight fit) and increased the height on two of the slots. I removed the flourishes and the skull for the back buckle and after another 2 hours, I had another buckle.

After removing all support material, you can thread the leather through the buckle as you'd expect with ladder buckles. It can be done more easily by pulling extra length through, wrapping it around the last post and placing the end of the strip at the edge of the first post. Then, while feeding the end backwards under the first post, you can pull on the long end. (The friction between the raw side against the same raw side coming back through, will help thread the strip correctly. This friction is what makes the buckle work.)

Flesh out the rest of your costume:

1. Print gaudy rings
2. Print gaudy necklaces
3. Get gold hoop earrings
4. Buy or print a toy sword
5. Buy temporary tattoo pens
6. Design & print tattoo stencils
7. Rip up the hem of thrift store corduroy pants
8. Buy eye patches
9. Wear a waistcoat and sandals you already own
10. Find scrap material or buy a curtain from the nearby thrift store for a sash
11. Print or buy a prop spyglass
12. Buy a compass and 3d print a compass box for it
13. Buy or sew a 17th century style shirt
14. Grow your hair and facial hair for months without a haircut
15. Design & print cursed pirate medallions
16. Wear the wool cap your wife knitted for you