Vintagecollectkr
New in Town
- Messages
- 33
Hey folks,
As many of you know, these old Sears belts originally had metal eyelets—but on mine, every single one had fallen off over the decades. The belt holes were stretched, soft, and basically unusable as-is.
Instead of sending it out for repair, I decided to restore the eyelets myself.
I grabbed a basic eyelet kit from a local leather/sewing supply spot here in Toronto.
Tools + hardware together were only $20 CAD, and honestly I wasn’t expecting much for a first attempt but the results came out surprisingly clean.
I hand set new metal eyelets using a small anvil base and punch tool. Everything locked down flat and tight, with no damage to the leather.
The belt now feels solid again and works the way it should.
Feels good to give this piece a bit of its original functionality back without disturbing the character of the jacket.
Might experiment with adding period appropriate studs on the sleeves next, but we’ll see.
Thanks for reading and always happy to hear thoughts from the folks who’ve worked on these longer than I have.
Before/after
As many of you know, these old Sears belts originally had metal eyelets—but on mine, every single one had fallen off over the decades. The belt holes were stretched, soft, and basically unusable as-is.
Instead of sending it out for repair, I decided to restore the eyelets myself.
I grabbed a basic eyelet kit from a local leather/sewing supply spot here in Toronto.
Tools + hardware together were only $20 CAD, and honestly I wasn’t expecting much for a first attempt but the results came out surprisingly clean.
I hand set new metal eyelets using a small anvil base and punch tool. Everything locked down flat and tight, with no damage to the leather.
The belt now feels solid again and works the way it should.
Feels good to give this piece a bit of its original functionality back without disturbing the character of the jacket.
Might experiment with adding period appropriate studs on the sleeves next, but we’ll see.
Thanks for reading and always happy to hear thoughts from the folks who’ve worked on these longer than I have.
Before/after
