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

[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...