This listing is for one of our most popular types of leather, vintage glazed water buffalo leather belt blank. This offering is a leather "belt blank" which means it comes with pre-punched holes, rounded end, and pre-skived turn back for an easy fold over a buckle. This also comes with a matching keeper.
If you are making a new belt or just need to replace an old belt with new leather, you are in the right place. Basically this is a normal leather strip that is a couple steps closer to becoming an actual finished belt. We did the work so you don't have to. To make our belt blanks, we punch four holes for snaps or rivets and one longer oblong hole for the belt buckle's prong to come through. We also round off the end of the strip as well as skive down the thickness of the turn-back to make it an easier fold over a buckle. As you can see from the second picture, on the unfinished side of the leather, we skive (make the leather thinner) from the last hole to the end of the belt, down to about 5-7oz thick. This makes it much easier to fold over a buckle when you are assembling a finished belt.
Once you receive your belt blank, you can measure whatever length is required, add some holes and punch out a belt tip shape of your preference on the opposite end. After that, add some hardware (snaps, rivets, Chicago screws, etc. and a buckle) and you are done making a complete finished belt. You can leave the edges raw or sand them down and burnish for a more professional look.
WHAT IS VINTAGE GLAZED? - Vintage Glazed is a style of finish rather than a color. It’s achieved by applying a certain kind of wax to the surface of the buffalo leather after it has been buffed and smoothed out. There are two types of vintage glazed style buffalo leather, one is chromium tan and the other is vegetable tan. Chromium is a faster tanning process and is less expensive and usually produces lower quality leather. Vegetable tan is not a fast process and it is more expensive and usually produces high quality leather.
WHAT ARE THE PROPERTIES OF VINTAGE GLAZED? Vintage Glazed buffalo leather has a stiffer feel to the leather as compared to West Tan buffalo leather. Vintage Glazed has a waxy glaze that makes the surface of the finished side shine when light hits it. It is also not as soft and pliable as the West Tan style of buffalo leather.
These gorgeous buffalo leather belt strips are cut from B grade water buffalo double butts.
This listing is for vegetable tan Tan Vintage Glazed style buffalo leather belt blank. We also sell chocolate vintage glazed, denim vintage glazed and black vintage glazed leather buffalo strips.
Our buffalo leather is fully aniline dyed, which may or may not be significant to a buyer but let us explain why it matters to us. Only the highest quality leather is selected for the aniline dyed process because the leather is dyed exclusively with soluble dyes. The dye colors the leather without producing the uniform surface of a topcoat paint or insoluble pigmented sealant. Any sort of visible imperfections such as scars, bug bites, range marks, or pores will be more visible and the blemishes will be amplified.
Our vegetable tanned Vintage Glazed buffalo leather will not take water, will not wet mold or tool, and it will not accept dye. This leather is ideal for finished, high end leather belts or guitar straps for example. These buffalo leather strips also make excellent leather cuff bracelets, purse straps and much much more. You are only limited by your creativity.
LENGTH: All of our buffalo leather strips range in length from 48" to as long as 60"+. It all depends on the hide we are cutting from at the time of the purchase. Most of the strips we sell will be longer than 50" but we guarantee that none will be shorter than 48" in length.
WEIGHT (THICKNESS): We offer these strips in two different weights (thickness) 6-7 oz, and 8-9 oz - reference our leather weight guide for more information on picking the right weight/thickness.
WIDTH: We also offer them in many different widths: 1”, 1.25”, 1.5”, 1.75”, 2”
During checkout you can choose both the width and thickness you would like by using the drop down selection boxes. If you don’t see the width or weight you need please contact us. If you need your strips cut "buckle cut" (cutting 1/8" narrow to allow for easy use of buckles) let us know by leaving a note when you checkout or message us directly. Once we have your specifics we will make the necessary adjustments and make sure your order is perfect before shipping it out. Since we cut all of our strips by hand, we can take special requests and are very flexible to accommodate our customers.
We love working with leather crafters and there are no dumb questions when it comes to leather work, we are happy to answer any and all questions for you. We have experienced master craftsmen and women available to help you with your project or to just toss ideas around with.