Utility Belt

[gfish]

My major fashion affectation is my utility belt. It carries, going counterclockwise from the buckle: flashlight, sharpie marker, leatherman (Charge XTi), digital camera, monocular, PDA/cellphone. The exact contents and packaging have changed over the years, slowly being refined. I've put a great deal of thought into optimizing everything about it, mostly because I'm a big dork.

A couple of weeks ago I realized that I had been ignoring an entire component of the belt, leaving it completely useless -- the belt itself! Duh. So what can a belt do? Well, it's like a rope, but too short to be particularly useful. What if it was longer? What if it was a rope, but folded back and forth several times? I figured I could get at least 5, maybe 6 lengths before it got too thick to be comfortable. So I bought parts and started prototyping. This weekend I made the final version, which has a whooping 8 lengths, each 66 cm long, for a none-too-shabby total of 5.3 meters of 6mm climbing rope. Dorky? Certainly. Useful? ...maybe. Removal would be annoying, so I'd have to really need the rope before I did it. But if I ever do need it, I'll have it. So there.

Comments

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

You are, indubitably, a big dork. But I love the concept! And I'd be willing to bet that somewhere there is something along the lines of a carbon fiber rope (something thin and extremely strong) that comes in black, so you could be a highly stylish dork. And I bet it'd catch on, too.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Trouble is, the rope needs to be thick enough to be grasped without cutting into your fingers. There are plenty of fancy articial fibers that could easily carry my weight and be thin enough to get 100+ lengths on the belt, but they'd be far too thin to use. Oh well.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Have you considered webbing or strapping, or some other flat woven option?

Of course, on a sheer utility basis you seem to have weighted the climability of the rope very high, as opposed to any of the myriad other uses one might put rope to...

[gfish.livejournal.com]

(Responding to this and your other comment.)

Well, the original comment that started me thinking was someone wanting to have 50 feet of rope with them as a D&D joke, so climbing was always at the back of my mind. But lots of the other uses require non-finger-cutting as well, so it seemed like the best all-around option.

It is looped back and forth between to D-rings sewn to the cut-off ends of a normal belt. This reduces the usable length, but earlier prototypes had problems snagging on the belt-loops right around the buckle. I decided it was better to just give up on that amount of rope.

Fitting it all into a fabric sheath is an interesting idea. It would be nice to have the ability to remove the rope and not lose all belt functionality. I had some ideas about a single strand of thin nylon to allow that, but I haven't added it yet.

Before I settled on a belt, I had a series of vests serving a similar purpose. I had a lot of trouble finding ones that lasted, but they worked pretty well while they did. That was also before I had money of my own, per se, so I suspect it could be done a lot better.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the rope tying onto a cloth backing, rather than into a sheath -- a lot easier to get it off that way. It might make sense to have the tie downs be attached to leather strips -- gives it a little more structure and strength. Imagine a band of thin cloth, with a 1 cm or so strip of leather across it every 20 cm or so. To this would be attached a number of tie downs (or a single more elaborate tie down) so that many strands of roep could be attached, flat, in a ros to the surface.

(@)(@)(@)(@)
""""""""""""
^^^^^^^^^^^^

A cross section would be something like the above, where in ^^^^ would be the cloth, """"" the leather strap, and (@) the individual tie downs holding the rope. (I have kind of a specific idea for the tie downs, but I'm not patient enough to come up with a ASCII representation.)

My longest lasting vest was a denim vest to which a number of modifications were made (by me, by hand). I adored that thing... I haven't really tested the lasting power of the fishing vests of many pockets, but they always seemed like a good idea. Of course, my army surplus binocular bag recieved even more modifications, and had an adjustable strap which allowed me to wear it around my waist as well. It really is the direct lineal descendant to my current lumbar/hydration pack that I pretend is a purse. (See? Girls are supposed to carry purses. Any dorkiness is therefore hidden.) I only recently realized that the rope mesh bottle holders that I added to the binoc made it functionally almost identical...

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Aw, drat. I should have used pre tags.

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should add some sort of leather gloves to your standard utility belt inventory? It's not like climbing is the only thing they'd be useful for, particularly since you have this odd predilection for combining fire and metal.

[frobzwiththingz.livejournal.com]

the rope needs to be thick enough to be grasped without cutting into your fingers

no, it doesn't! For ascending, climb up with prusiks; make them from 4mm Spectra/Gemini cord, and then attach small webbing slings to them for your hands to hold. For descending, you would use an old-fashioned munter hitch or carabiner wrap. I have a similar "utility belt" that i made years ago out of seat belt webbing; it has an inside zipper that hides a diaper-seat climbing harness inside. 80 ft of 5-mil cord and a couple of biners fit into one of the outside pouches. I would take this skiing with me just in case i needed to self-evac out of a stuck ski lift. Which, in fact, i did need to do once, at Waterville Valley, when they suddenly had to close the lift down in high winds. I didnt feel like waiting for their evac team to get to me, and used my own stuff.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about something like that, and I might still try it. It's been years since I've done any climbing, though. I'd also like the rope to be useful for things other than climbing.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

But yeah, I'm going to look for a better color. And dye or replace the belt fabric component. This is still a prototype, just the first model ready for active use. Holding up pretty well so far. :)

[chaoswolf]

How long ago did you start the utility belt and approximatly how many weeks after you started it did you realize that you forgot the belt?

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I've been wearing one form or another of the belt for years. Started in... 1998, I think.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

Every time I think you can't get any dorkier, you prove me wrong. I salute you.

[darlingfreak.livejournal.com]

LOL!

I heart dorks!

[tylik.livejournal.com]

If I understand what I'm seeing, the rope is just looped back and forth between the two belt ends, yes? Is there anything else involved? It occurs to me that you could make a backing out of a lightweight band of fabric, with some number of tie downs for the rope (I'm thinking figure eightish, except with more loops, tie downs for the individual strands of rope). The advantages here is that while the fabric itself would make a poor belt on it's own because it would not be rigid enough, the rope could lend it rigidity, and the fabric and tie downs could provide some organizing structure, arranging the rope as a flat band of strands rather than a thick roll.

And, if you were careful, you could then remove the rope from the belt without completely disassembling the belt, though as mentioned previously, the belt, sans rope, would be definately sub-par.

You have quite surpassed me in dorkiness, though I find myself wanting to start a conversation of the finer points of such things as fitting points of fitting out a fishing vest with a variety of useful tools and/or survival equipment...

[tikimonkey.livejournal.com]

not long ago, iainzard gave me a hard time because i bought a really cool grundig wind-up radio (http://www.sportys.com/acb/showdetl.cfm?&did=24&product_id=2376) and then told everyone how cool it was. thank you for putting that incident into proper perspective :)

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that's a nice model. I have a Freeplay, but it really isn't very rugged, and is only AM/FM.

[chatworthy.livejournal.com]

Are you using static or dynamic rope?

I'd make it out of black 3mm cord over (or under) webbing, myself. Strong enough for a minor emergency. Must try something like that, once I get the shop set up.

H'mm... Not quite TSA-approved. They wouldn't let me carry my Leatherman aboard whan I flew up to San Jose for Consonance. The search-and-rescue geek in me appreciates the bright orange rope; the paranoid in me is shouting for you not to wear that through security; it's just unusual enough to get you detained. Alas.

[callibr8]

My vote would be to stick with the bright orange rope, but perhaps wrap it in a black canvas or duck cloth "sheath" for travelling, for exactly the TSA-neutral reasons mentioned. As for dyeing the belt ends, if they're cotton, it can be done, but dyeing cotton to dark colors can be difficult, as the dye uptake doesn't tend to be even (at least with RIT dye, and I've not yet used the fiber-reactive ones) nor particularly saturated.

Or here's a really zany idea: get a wide cloth belt made of black canvas, which then gets customized by attaching a "pocket" on the back side for most of its length. This would hold the rope. Said pocket would be accessible by a zipper along its length. So the outside looks completely standard, but you can quickly take off the belt, unzip the rope-pouch, extract the rope, then replace the belt.

Does this make me a dork too? :)

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

*grins* Why use a zipper (nasty things to try to install) when there are perfectly good fasteners like snaps and velcro available?

Hmm ... now I'm getting funky ideas for the thing I've been wanting to make for several years now; something like a cross between a belt pouch and a utility belt, but worn like a small flat messenger bag. Fitting rope into the strap part of that would work, too.

[callibr8]

Agreed, zippers can be nasty to install. However they are in general significantly less bulky than either snaps or velcro, and the design I was describing has the access mechanism positioned on the inside (next to the wearer) rather than the outside.

[mdlbear]

What you're describing is usually called a "money belt" -- except for the fact that it's normally fairly narrow, it's a standard item.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Leathermen have been prohibited since 9/11. These days I take my entire belt off and stick it in my carry-on anyway, so they won't even see it. I doubt it will look particularly odd in xray. Will be interesting finding out on the way to CopperCon...

[mdlbear]

There are good reasons for wanting a totally non-metallic belt for travel; I use a webbing "luggage strap" from REI with a quick-release buckle.

[chatworthy.livejournal.com]

Well, my Leatherman was in one of my carry-ons at the time. It got in there by accident. Fortunately (until it was time to pay the parking bill) I was parked right there in the closest garage, so I just left it in the car all weekend.

And with a wide cloth belt such as Callie describes, you can do as I have done on occasion and use a Fastex buckle of the appropriate width. That makes it all non-metallic.

If the rope is for infrequent emergencies you could sew it into the carrier part of the belt. Leave one end of the rope accessible; when you need the rope, grab and pull. It should come out of the belt without tangling - same principle as a throw-bag. Then you'll need to sew it back in, but you'd need to re-rig the belt anyway.

[chatworthy.livejournal.com]

Of course, when you're not in the security zone, you'd want to have a carbiner or two and possibly a small rappelling ring as well. After all, you've got rope and potentially webbing already; might as well make a minimal climbing rig.

(Note to self: bring green backpack to CopperCon - we can compare notes)

[ivy]

What you need are two metal (or non-metal) chain links. Then you can wrap the rope back and forth between them, and use the links + a carabiner for a buckle. Easy on, easy off, still a lot of continuous rope.

I envy you having a Sharpie in such proximity. I carry one in my small book bag (purse sized), but that's nowhere near as well done as your belt. Envy of geek.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I actually only added it because the pouch had an obvious spot for one. I've since come to really appreciate the usefulness of having one at hand, particularly the new clickable retractable tip kind. Anything that can be deployed one-handed is a bonus.