My 1952 Belt

I won this belt on ebay a little while ago. It is stamped S.E.N. 1952 / J.A. 2394 / 075 along with the government issue arrow marks and features a heavy (brass?) buckle. The weird thing about it is the fact it was 85" long which is a whopping 7'1" (for our metric friends that's 2.15m) Now I can't imagine a soldier having an 85" waist, and I don't see how it would work as a double-wrap belt because the keepers are too narrow and there are no holes for the first 'wrap'. It has been made by joining two lengths together and the join looks to be original, so I'm wondering if it was actually a strap for securing something such as a trunk? I've tried searching for information, but I've turned up a blank so far.

Anyway, I hope it doesn't turn out to be some super-rare thing, as I have converted it to a standard length belt. This involved cutting the original stitched joint, cutting the belt itself just after the keeper, and then stitching the two pieces together using the original holes in each piece. These holes didn't line up very well, but with the help of some black waxed thread, a needle, a steel thimble and some brute force, I managed to bodge stitch it....

I'm really happy with the way it looks and feels. It's like wearing my own little piece of history!

 

Bund strap

I picked up this nice little 'bund' strap for my aviator watch project on ebay. It cost me the princely sum of £6 including postage and I love how it looks on the watch. I hope it will look even better when I have aged it a little and even better still when I team it up with the aged version of the watch.

 

Aviator watch

I took a punt on a bargain basement aviator watch that I saw online from the German company Westfalia tools. I thought it would provide a cheap base for my planned WW2 style watch that I mentioned previously.

Anyway, it turned up and it's great! It feels a lot more expensive than it's £19.99 price-tag. It is a big 47mm in diameter and has a nice 'onion' crown (the winder). The hands and the numbers are lumed and glow nicely when they've been exposed to light and it has a basic Quartz movement (ie battery powered)  I know it's cheap, but this way I don't mind if I mess up my attempt to age it. Well that's not true...I like it so much, I just ordered another one in case I do just that and make a mess of it, but actually I think it's going to be a good foundation for my little project....

Mens' Jewellery

This old idea has recently resurfaced in my magpie's brain (the creative part of me that flits from idea to idea without ever finishing anything)

I am still thinking it's something I want to do, be it metal, leather, denim or something I have yet to find. I like the idea of something looking old and well-worn (and well loved) For a while, I was inspired by the lacing on vintage leather balls and it's something I still find interesting:

 

My vintage Randolph Aviators

After searching high and low I finally found my vintage Randolph Engineering aviators....

 
I bought these sometime around 1992 from WS Supplies army surplus shop in Oxford. They were standard issue for the US Air Force, Army, and Navy and became available commercially around the time I bought these.

My pair still has the little slip of paper inside the hard-case with the military info:

The straight arms take a little getting used to. They were designed to be able to be put on and removed whilst wearing a flight helmet.

Mine have yellowed a little over time, but they still perform great in the sunshine, and you can't help but feel a little bit like an extra from 'Top Gun'....:

Pilot watch

I'm really hankering after a WW2 pilot watch....Well actually a modern version of a WW2 Pilot watch. The trouble is, most of the ones I've seen are based on what the German Luftwaffe used. These are more commonly called 'Flieger' or 'B-Uhr' watches (short for 'Beobachtungs-uhr' or 'Observation watch')

The RAF used (amongst other things) the IWC Mk.X, which is beautiful, but way beyond my budget, so I'm thinking about making something in keeping with the era. Ideally it will look like it's old, military and well loved....

Watch this space!

A 1944 IWC Mk.X:


A Laco B-Uhr Bauart A 22 jewels 1942

Images courtesy of kitchener.lord

School's out....

Here is a picture of my vintage school satchel which I picked up on ebay recently. It is a lovely conker colour and has the original owner's name written inside in very faint felt-tip pen. I'm planning on making a pseudo-vintage name label for this soon (possibly a WW2 evacuation style one?) My only niggle with it is the 100cm strap, which is a little short for me to wear across the chest so I tend to keep it over one shoulder and hope it doesn't look like a handbag!