Gotham By Gaslight Project: Part Three-Belt Buckle

The buckle for the utility belt was heavily based on Boer war belt buckles to give the design a functional and period accurate design. The idea behind the detailing is that this piece is a found item that has been adapted for the main characters use. The piece has been detailed to look like a police officers belt which also links to the characters sense of justice and order.

I used multiple photographs of actual Boer War buckles photographed on top of a ruler to create 1:1 scale technical drawings in Illustrator.

I separated each piece into a separate drawing and imported them from Illustrator into Solidworks. Each piece was extruded and detailed with textures and filleted edges.

A quick render of the grubby brass finish I will try to create with the finished pieces. I originally wanted to have these pieces 3D printed in actual brass because it would be much stronger than plastic and would have a much more realistic finish. However after receiving a quote back I found this wasn't a cost effective option so I will instead be printing the buckle in plastic and painting it to look like dirty brass.

I received my 3D printed parts, unlike the last time I  had something 3D printed I opted to have the item "polished" so that it would be smoother, even though it was slightly smoother there was still an obvious texture to the piece so I took to smoothing the surface with spot filler and various grades of sandpaper.

 The pieces were given their usual coats of primer and wet-sanded from 600 grit upping grits  to 1200.

But then disaster hit when my nicely smoothed surfaces became a mottled brass mess. My test piece with the brass paint had come out nice and smooth but for unknown reasons this time it did not react well, this brand was a recommendation I found online but I did have a similar colour I had used before. So after waiting patiently for the paint to cure I stripped it all back down and repainted.

Much nicer!

After a few layers of acrylic wash to give it a bit of grime the buckle was given two coats of lacquer and it was done!