TDK Urethane Belt Has Arrived.

ANNNNND it's a thing of beauty.



The timing on the arrival of this piece could not be better. I had just finished up the hood, and was looking for something different to do. I went down to get my mail, and as I was there the post office dude drove up and handed me the box. Perfect timing.

Even better, the thing fit just perfectly, straight out of the box. I could not be happier.

Overall, it's very nice, though it could have used some TLC on the finer details. There are some air bubbles here and there, and a few mold blow outs in little places. TOTALLY not distracting, and you would have to be examining the belt to find them. For the stroll/photograph mission I have planned, I think this will be perfect.

And the more that I think about it, the more confident I become that THIS will be the belt I wear on the big night out. The rigid belt that is also on its way is probably going to just be too darn pretty to risk wearing out and getting damaged. That's the last thing I would want to have happen to something that looks so beautiful. So the rigid one may just turn out to be a display piece. It will work really well with all of the other Batman Begins and The Dark Knight props I have collected over the years.

Big thanks to the seller for providing not only a really great looking belt, but also following through on quick shipment, and answering all of my lame questions.

TDK Belt, Purchased

I am a huge fan of taking the easy way out. Once I mentally committed to being The Dark Knight for Halloween, I did a mental checklist of all the things I needed to take care of. One of them was the utility belt. A while back, I purchased a REALLY FANTASTIC kit for a utility belt. I spent a couple of days working on it, and then put it into storage so that I could work on other projects. (Sound familiar???)

My first thought was to pull that out, build it up, and use that. But then it occurred to me that I'm going to be VERY busy putting the armor together, and what if the belt ends up being the long pole in the tent? So I threw out a wide net, looking for belts that people were interested in selling. I originally was looking for a urethane belt, as I figured that would wear better. You know, if I dinged it, it wasn't likely to fall apart.

Then a guy sent me some great intel on a build up he did of the SAME KIT that I already own. This belt was just about finished, and had been built with all the love and care that I could possibly hope for. It looked pretty awesome, so I jumped on it. Hopefully it will ship on Tuesday, but here are some advance pics of the finished product. From the pics, it looks really quite amazing, and I'm really looking forward to getting it.











I must confess, this belt is SO beautiful that I'm very tempted to ALSO get a urethane belt to kick around. That way I could keep this one pristine. I will need to think it through.

Begins Belt - Sanding the Lil' Bits

I noticed something interesting about myself tonight. Don't get me wrong, there's PLENTY of things that are interesting about me, but this one kind of caught me off guard.

I was reminded of the fact that I am better at doing repetitive, menial tasks when I am really tired. It must have been about 1:30 AM when I started working on the belt tonight, and the next task queued up was sanding the backs of the link pieces, and sanding the little faux metal pieces that get attached to the brackets. There's lots of them, and it takes a couple of mintues to get each one done.

Under normal conditions, I would probably do about five of them, then get frustrated over how slowly things were going, and I would step away to do something else. But tonight, I was like a tedium machine! I just kept going, and plowed through the entire stack.

Here's a close up of the links that are now all nice and clean on their back sides:



And here are the little metal buggers I was speaking about:



Not a spectacular load of work for tonight, but about an hours worth of effort. Oh, I also sanded down the back of the "gear" that goes into the center of the buckle tonight. It will need a little fine tuning, as it doesn't quite drop smoothly into the buckle, but that's not a problem.

That's all for tonight, and that brings the blog up to date for this build.

Begins Belt Sprue Removal

I decided to make my first order of business on this build to remove all the sprues from the kit. Take a look at this first pic. You can see a couple of giant ones coming out of the back of each piece.



First step was to take some handy dandy wire snips, and just go to town. I went through all of the pieces and snipped off all the sprues I could get ahold of. There were a couple that were too thick to be handled with these.



I then went in with my dremel tool and sanded down the remaining stumps. I used a cutoff wheel to attack the thicker sprues. It didn't really take much time at all to get the entire kit de-sprued.



I also did some overall levelling on the backs of some of the pieces. Probably not necessary, but I wanted to make sure the back side was relatively flat. It ultimately will not matter, as that side will be facing inward. Even better, it will be covered with neoprene, so that was probably double overkill.

Batman Begins Utility Belt - Begins

I picked up a really nice kit of the utility belt that Batman wears in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Cannot say for sure if there are any differences in the belt between movies.

This was all scratch built by a fan, who did a really bang up job. This was all done on a CNC machine in his basement, I think. These parts are resin, cast directly off his masters.

I think the thing that impressed me most about the kit was not that it was made so well, but the fact that the builder learned how to run a CNC and how to do 3D modelling just for this project. Reminded me of all the stuff I had to learn to build my R2. Not sure why, but I think that's cool.

Anyhow, the kit arrived in a box the other day. I took a few pictures of the pieces right as they came out of the shipping box. Note that none of the pieces are painted. The molds were powder coated before the resin was poured in, and they come out looking just like this. There are advantages and drawbacks to this technique, but overall, I am impressed.












I like the way the buckle and the gear that goes inside it are two different pieces. That will make painting a snap, and I think the overall finished product will look better because of it.

I'm actually bloggin' on this a little late, and I am already a few days into the build. Slow going, as I've still got that pesky day job to take my time away from fun stuff.