Product review: Two possible belt straps

For almost eight years now, I've been pondering how best to replace the veg-tan weapon belts I wore at Marathon 2011 and 2015.  Given my suspicions that the Achaemenids tanned leather with fat or oil, as did Eastern Mediterranean peoples before them, I decided last year that my best option would be a strap of buff leather.  This is made from cowhide (perhaps originally water buffalo or European bison hide, thus the name) which is tanned primarily with fish oil in a process similar to German buckskin and American chamois.

An important note:  Like "chamois" leather (named for a species of wild European goat but in the U.S. actually made from domesticated sheep), "buff" leather can be a very misleading term.  Most items sold as being made from "genuine buff leather" appear to have their top grain intact or are finished such that you can't tell.  It makes one wonder what sellers think "buff" means.  When I refer to buff leather, what I mean is cowhide tanned with fish oil in a process that gives it a suede surface and a creamy yellow color (also called buff).  This kind is rare and hard to obtain nowadays.  Most of it in the States goes to the reenactment market, where it's used to make early modern military accoutrements like sword belts.

I've found one person in the U.S. willing to sell unstitched buff by the piece:  Roy Najecki of Najecki Reproductions.  You can read up on ordering it at his Cartridge Pouch/Box Shoulder Carriage page.  Be forewarned that it's not always easy to catch Mr. Najecki on the phone or by e-mail and delivery may take a while, so if you decide to use a buff strap for your belt, order it well ahead of when you need it.

It looks good, and it's heavy and firm yet flexible.  So why wouldn't you decide to use it?  Well, in the description above, you'll hopefully notice something that I overlooked:  Modern buff leather is tanned not only with oil but also sulfur.  This may have something to do with the fact that it smells like burned rubber, and it smells strong.  When I first received my strap last fall, I didn't even want to be in the same room with it.  I've been storing it in the garage ever since then in hopes that the smell would fade.  It has, but it's still very noticeable.  Several folks offered suggestions to ameliorate it, such as washing with saddle soap, and I experimented with small bits cut from one end, but nothing appeared to work.  I'm still on the fence about wearing it in public unless it's become tamer by the next big event.

It's also not cheap, although because belts are so narrow, the $35 per square foot sticker shock isn't as bad as it sounds unless your belt is going to be enormous.  My 1.5x42-inch strap came to $15.31.  The next item I'm reviewing here isn't all that much cheaper.

Chrome-tanned leather such as this Realeather suede belt strap can make a fair substitute for fat-cured leather in appearance and texture.  What more is there to add?  Well, it doesn't smell, and its texture probably won't be be negatively affected by rain to the extent that a natural tannage would be.  The color is a bit darker as you can see, though not as yellowish as lightly-smoked braintan, but the main flaw with this strap is that it's about half the thickness of the buff.  Will it support the weight of a fully-loaded bowcase without sagging a lot or ripping?  I can't confidently state that it will, unless your bow and its case are a lot smaller and lighter than the ones I use (and the Grozer Old Scythian is already one of the smallest I've seen for sale in its price range).

So there you have it.  While either of these will probably look more correct than a veg-tan belt, both have their own major caveats.  The search for a perfect solution continues.

Tablet-woven sash by Aleksandra Zwawiak

Since Giannis Kadoglou alerted us to the idea of tablet weaving several years ago, I've wondered whether the narrow sash worn with Medo-Persian and Elamite dress was made by this method or by cutting and stitching.  I had first made some sashes in 2013 from cotton webbing, but the one I wore in 2015 was essentially a double-wide strip cut from wool yardage, sewn into a tube, inverted, and gathered at the ends.  This works well enough, but several of us at Amphictyonia have long been of the suspicion that the zigzags shown on the Egyptian statue of Darius the Great were made by tablet-weaving instead.

Over the summer, I gave a shot at tablet-weaving my own belt from hemp.  My conclusion?  Practice a lot, or leave it to the professionals.

I contacted Aleksandra Zwawiak, proprietor of SagaWeaving (UK), about the possibility of a custom belt three weeks ago after seeing that she had produced belts with apparently the same weave pattern.  We discussed the specifications and settled on a design over a couple of days.  She ordered the yarn right away and had created the belt within a few days after that, and it arrived at my door this morning.  Aleksandra was very pleasant to work with and, having some glimmer of the effort and care this technique requires, I'm impressed at the quality and speed of her work as well, as how modestly-priced it is.

I requested a solid off-white or beige as might be obtained from a white sheep, and a width of 35-40mm - it comes in at a hair under 40mm.  The belt is a bit thick, but it has to be for the weave to be visible, and the wool is very soft and easy to tie.  It differs from the Egyptian statue in not having the lengthwise stripes with apparent Holbein stitching.  It's my best guess that these represent appliqued trim rather than part of the sash's weave, so I didn't expect or request that they be included.

(I seem to be having a bit of trouble with square knots lately.)  The standard length of 135cm between the tassels is just about right for my waist (around 30 inches or 76cm); the square knot takes up more length than a simple knot would.  The loose ends of the tassels will have to be trimmed almost to nothing, but I haven't yet decided how to eliminate the risk of the knots becoming untied once this is done, so I asked Aleksandra to leave them at full length in the meanwhile.  A possible solution would be to immediately soak the trimmed knots in melted rosin-beeswax glue to turn them into solid lumps; this would be permanent and waterproof, though the discoloration might look unsightly.

It must be emphasized that this is a speculative reconstruction.  I think it's a highly plausible one, as good as any other, and fits the available evidence.

Cast belt concho

Another item I cast this spring was a concho for a weapon belt.  I've done a number of posts on this subject and I won't go into the background yet again, so here goes.

As with most of my bronzes, I modeled it in Victory Brown.  I formed the cone by rolling out a sheet of wax to roughly 1/10 to 1/12 inch/2-2.5mm thick, cutting a circle, removing a small pie wedge from it, and bringing the cut edges together.  I cut the scalloped edge with an X-Acto and formed the rims around the petals by rolling ultra-thin wax "noodles" and pressing them into place, separating the petals by dragging the tip of a hobby awl between them.

On the back, I attached six wax gates of around 1/8 inch/3mm near the edge and two of perhaps 1/16 inch/1.6mm a bit in from the edge to serve as the rivets (as no rivets are visible on the original's face, I assume they were cast in place on the back, since adding them and then grinding them smooth on the front might undo the peening).  These all branched out from a central main gate of about 1/3 inch/8-9mm.  There were no gates or vents on the model's face.

The back bar was cast straight as a section of one of the thicker gates, with room on either end so angle grinder could cut through without touching either the bar or the concho itself.  Since I had doubts about whether it would cast, I didn't poke holes all the way through for the rivets before casting, but instead just made small pits to serve as guides for the drill press (which has an annoying tendency to slip a bit to one side when first entering).  I then drilled fully through the pits after de-gating, and formed the kink through repeated bending with needlenose pliers and annealing.

BCCC lab tech Nick investment-cast the model using a centrifugal casting machine.  This technique, also called spincasting, allows for very fine and detailed models which are almost guaranteed to cast whole, unlike gravity casting, as the centrifugal force throws the molten metal into every nook and cranny.  It also obviates the need for venting, since the weight of the molten metal being sent into the mold forces the air out the same way, through the pouring gates.

One drawback is that the investment, which as I understand it is basically plaster of paris with some sort of strengthening agent, traps a lot more small bubbles than ceramic slurry does.  Where these bubbles are in contact with the wax, they form little warts all over the model, making finishing more tedious.  You can see one large bubble on the bottom center there, and close examination will reveal the remnants of a number of smaller ones.

On the plus side, the investment is much easier to remove than ceramic shell.  Most of it crumbles away with a dunk in water, that which is left can be softened if necessary with a baking soda solution, mostly scrubbed away, and any remaining traces scraped off with metal tools or buffed off with a wire Dremel brush.

The rims around the petals are almost certainly too prominent.  Going by the OIP drawing, I interpreted them as sort of a gently rounded lip, but because I didn't spend enough time smoothing the noodles down, they instead look high and sharply differentiated from the petals' faces, with crevices that I couldn't successfully polish.  As a result, there's still a significant amount of brown as-cast finish there, giving the face a slightly antiqued appearance.  The dip around the middle cone is probably too deep as well.

Dry-fitting the back bar was the most tedious part of the process, since the rivets were crooked where the met the concho's back, and I still failed to get it perfect.  Once the fit was sufficient, peening the bar into place only took a couple minutes.  I did so with the face resting on a thick carpet on top of concrete, so as not to damage it.

As you can see, after being bent, the back bar sticks out considerably more than the original.  I should have made it only a little bit longer than its desired final length.

As I mentioned before, I think this is a low-strain application, and the thin bar and small rivets will be good enough.  Should they break, a replacement can be silver-soldered on.

If possible, I intend to make a whole new belt with a strap of buff cowhide in place of my old belt's veg-tan.  I will probably still use latigo lace for the time being, however, since it doesn't stretch like fat-cured leather, which is likely to become an issue when supporting the fully-loaded gorytos.

Last notes on this, I swear

The flower concho's petals and central circle in the OIP line art had a slightly rimmed appearance.  Assuming this to be accurate, I attempted to duplicate it by masking just the edges of these features on my newly-etched concho and giving it a short dunk of about 15 minutes in the chloride.

I'd hoped that this would make the features stand out more.  It didn't, but it does look a bit closer to the OIP drawing.  But the edges should be defined by gentle swellings, not sharp-edged borders.  I don't know how to correct this.

Interestingly, both the first and second etchings made a striated effect, always pointing toward the center, on all the exposed metal.  Internal crystalline structure after forging?  Something to do with the flow of etchant across the surface?

Lastly, I used some fine files to scallop the edges.  At this point, any further cleanup will be unnoticeable to anyone but myself, so the project is for all intents and purposes finished.

Tomorrow, final results on hide glue paint!

Improvements for the Northern-style concho

As I've discussed before, the early Achaemenid weapon belt included a shallow bronze concho which often had a flower design cast on.  In the absence of castings that could accurately replicate the originals, an acceptable substitute is a Northern-style concho.  However, it still has some differences, the most notable of which is that it has a small round loop on the back instead of a riveted bar.

 

Image from OIP 69, which you should go download right now.

You could, of course, leave your concho the way you receive it.  The alterations here are worthwhile if you happen to be set up for silver soldering (as of this writing, a low-end gas torch, tub of flux and coil of solder come to 20USD, give or take a few).

First the solder on the back is melted and the copper loop removed.  Unfortunately, it's too short to do anything with, so I tossed that one and used one of those huge copper-plated staples from a cardboard box, simply bent to shape with pliers and trimmed with wire cutters.

The advantages of this design, aside from a more accurate shape, are that it holds the concho closer to the belt, and that it can be used with either a thick, narrow leather lace or a flat, wide thong.

Before installing the back bar, I decided to beat the concho into a more conical shape with a small ball-peen hammer.  Unfortunately, my forging skills are mediocre and left it slightly lumpy, so I covered that up by going ahead and adding the classic flower design seen on some historical examples.

These designs were originally cast on, but a similar appearance can be affected by engraving or etching.  Since I don't know how to engrave, I etched it using some ferric chloride with permanent marker as a resist.  The chloride took about half an hour to make a good 3D design.

In order to let the flower stand out, I didn't burnish it as thoroughly as I could have.  Some of the permanent marker, dissolved with nail polish remover and scrubbed with a nylon sponge, tends to stick in the rough etched surface and provide a good contrast with the un-etched surface where the resist had been..

Revised recommendations on leather goods

Based on my last post regarding the unlikelihood of vegetable-tanned leather in Achaemenid times, here is what I've come up with for leather goods:

Materials
Personally I would accept brain-tan or the nearest affordable equivalent as a substitute for other fat-cured leathers.  The nearest affordable equivalent may include chrome-tanned "buckskin" or glove-tanned if it's of similar physical properties, but, as always, check your group's authenticity standards before buying.  I advise against suede or roughout (which are harder to clean; additionally, I believe machine splits are a 19th-century development) and, obviously, anything with an overtly unnatural finish.

I consider rawhide a given for any period.  Also, if you already have pieces of kit in veg-tan that you've sunk a lot of money and work into, my feeling is keep them.  Again, ask your group's leaders.

Gorytoi
Archaeological finds have indicated that they were made of soft leather supported with a wood spine or frame.  So use fat-cured or equivalent.  I imagine the type seen at Persepolis and frequently on Greek pottery, with a straight bottom and curved upper edge - the standard for Persian soldiers in our period - had a curved wooden spine sewn into the upper edge.  This also means that the floppy-looking fringe seen hanging from gorytoi in Greek battle art may in fact be the same fitted cover seen at Persepolis; it is attached to the gorytos at the top edge, or just draped over it during battle.

Using soft leather also makes it unlikely that they were painted, unless the ancients had some method of painting dye directly onto the leather which I have been unable to discover (painting dye is a real technique but I'm told it's a modern one).  The crenellated borders shown in Greek art would probably have to be appliqued in a contrasting leather or fabric, which is done most easily before the main seam is closed.

Scabbards
Wood, or some other hard, solid block of material carved to shape (as in the ivory one from Takht-i Sangin).  The akinakes scabbard is attested as having been covered in embossed sheet metal.  Otherwise, plain wood will make a good surface for carving.  I could also imagine that a facing of glued fabric or parchment (thin rawhide) was used to add strength.  All these materials will accept paint better than cured/tanned leather, too.  Possibly, lighter sheaths (as for belt knives) were rawhide, maybe with a soft leather or fabric cover.

Shields
Shields of stick-and-hide construction, like the crescent ("taka") and pavise ("spara"), should almost certainly be rawhide, which resists puncture and cutting better than leather and which was used in the Dura-Europos shields that share the same construction method.  I have heard it suggested to paint a thin layer of wax on top of the finished shield to prevent water absorption.

Shoes
The Persepolis reliefs and Alexander Sarcophagus seem to disagree about the presence of separate soles on the ankle-strapped shoes.  It may be that both interpretations are correct:  Again, I am reminded of these shoes' resemblance to Plains moccasins, which were produced both with integral (soft) and separate soles.  Separate soles may have been soft leather or hard rawhide.  The lack of additional soles on the shoes at Persepolis may explain why it was desirable to have a band running under the middle of the shoe, for arch support.  In this use I'd be willing to accept veg-tanned leather for rawhide for expediency.

Ankle straps were fairly wide, and were likely soft leather thongs.  I believe the greater width compared to modern leather laces was necessary because the latter are made of a firmer material (albeit not "rawhide" as they are often labeled; real rawhide is too stiff for shoelaces).

Other
Herodotus mentions Persians as having leather clothing (I.72) and this is plausible if it is a very soft buckskin-like material, though I believe that the assertion that leather made up all or even the majority of their clothing in Cyrus' day is an exaggeration; they had, after all, been settled in old Elam for several centuries and raised plenty of sheep.  So I still recommend fabric first.  Bags and pockets may also be either fabric or soft leather.

In the absence of moldable leather, drink containers should either be soft (like wineskins) or ceramic.  Most of the clay canteens from Persepolis were flattened spheres with short necks, essentially like modern ones, even sometimes having cord ears (see OIP 69); those without ears could be carried in bags.  I'm open to the possibility of gourd or wooden canteens, but won't actually recommend them until seeing some evidence.

There is only one item which I haven't found a solution for yet:  the weapon belt.  Because it has to support the weight of a fully-loaded bowcase, it must be a firm material with little stretch, so fat-cured leather would seem a bad choice, but it also has to flex to be worn like a belt, so rawhide doesn't look like a great idea either.  In lieu of good evidence about what they were actually made of, I must continue to recommend veg-tan for this use alone.

The early Achaemenid sash and weapon belt: COMPLETE

Update 12/10/13:  This post contains information that is probably incorrect.  Please see here.

This is a rough-draft recreation of the Achaemenid sash and weapon belt.
 
The sash

The sash is a length of plain-woven cotton belting or "web," which is not strictly accurate - it should probably be wool (as cotton had to be imported from India and was quite expensive), and the only evidence for the type of weave I have found, the Egyptian statue of Darius the Great, has a fancy pattern which I would surmise to be herringbone twill with additional strips appliqued with a holbein stitch along the entire length of the sash.  Whatever material you use, it should be flexible enough to pleat and knot easily, so not too heavyweight.

When worn with a weapon belt, the sash and belt appear to be about the same width, which looks to me somewhat more than an inch, perhaps one and a quarter to one and a half inches (3.2-3.8cm).

First, square-knot the sash around your waist and cut it to the proper length.  A good length for the hanging ends is about six to 10 inches (15-25cm).

Next, double-whiptstitch the cut ends to prevent them from unraveling.

My technique for creating the little round things on the ends may not be accurate, but it's easy enough:

Fold the end into pleats.

Draw the needle and most of the thread through the pleats.

Wind the thread tightly and heavily around the end and tie it off several times before trimming off the excess.

Interestingly, a shorter and narrower, but fundamentally similar, sash is worn by a Parthian on the Arch of Septimus Severus, seven hundred years later.

The belt
The weapon belt is made of heavyweight, vegetable-tanned leather - about 8 ounces is a good weight.  Wrap it around your waist to a comfortable snugness and mark with a pencil where it should end and where to punch the holes.  A few inches of overlap is good.  Make holes with a leather punch, awl, drill, etc. and insert the leather lace.

Nothing quite resembling the conical bronze conchos used by the Medes and Persians is currently being produced by anyone that I've found, although a jewelry-casting studio should be able to make them easily enough and I intend to look into that when I'm not so unemployed.

As a stopgap measure, here I am using a "northern-style" concho, which is widely available from Native American craft suppliers.  It's made from heavy brass sheet, domed, and usually sold with a soldered loop on the back.  Soldering isn't a rock-solid method of attachment, but don't worry; the way we're using it here doesn't require the solder to bear any weight.  The belt and concho in the above pictures are 1-1/2 inch and 1-1/4 inch, respectively.

Finally, position your bowcase and/or dagger scabbard just forward of your right and left hips, and punch holes in the belt to attach them.

 For comparison, see page 5 of Nirupars' Persepolis gallery, second row from the bottom, middle photo.

Update 4 (and hopefully last) on belts

I have Mom to thank for this one.

Hypothesis:  The so-called "flower buckle" (as seen in OIP 69) is not a buckle at all, but exactly what it appears to be - a concho.  The early Achaemenid weapon belt laces closed and the lace also attaches the round object, but as a purely decorative element.

We have no solid evidence for this hypothesis, but given the lack of contrary evidence, it should work with what we do know.

OIP 69 - buckles, arrowheads and more!

Oriental Institute Publications 69 is a wonderful resource cataloguing a wide variety of archaeological findings from Persepolis, including axes, horse tack, dinner plates, jewelry, armor scales, a big iron sword with a flanged hilt strangely reminiscent of the Luristan bronzes, and, of course, lots of pottery.

I'd like to draw attention to several specific items.  On page 257 are two objects that appear to be the long-sought-after round belt buckle.  To my mind, they don't clear up the actual function very much.  They're basically shallow, hollow cones with a single thin bar on the inside.  To pass under or around these bars, the belt strap would have to be either much softer and more flexible than would seem practical on a weapon belt built to support a fully-loaded gorytos, or else much, much narrower than the buckle; in period art, it's usually the other way around.  There's also no hook, stud or other mechanism that would allow it to act as a belt the way I'm thinking.  I've previously been over the reasons I don't think the round disc itself was a button.

On page 303 is a collection of weapon heads.  The lancehead is apparently a stout, short kite shape made of iron.  Two javelin heads appear which are basically giant versions of the bronze three-bladed arrowhead.  And lastly there's a surprisingly wide variety of arrowheads.  The most common are the classic socketed bronze three-bladed ones, but also appearing are two-bladed ones, iron ones, tanged ones, and long, narrow ones with solid triangular or square cross-sections, looking like precursors of Medieval bodkins.  While I've yet to find anything like most of them on the market today, their existence does lend precedent to bringing greater variety to our kit by using points other than the standard socketed bronze trilobates.

Update 3

Based on amu1986's very helpful comment below, I've worked on a theoretical model for how a belt button could work.  The "button" part is actually the base of an upside-down button stud.  Since I'm pretty sure there was no such thing as screw threading, it would be attached by rivets in the form of additional stems.

These buttons would have to be custom cast for us.  As a cost-saver, I suppose it might be possible to use a screw-back concho with a longer screw, clamping the concho to the outer belt layer with a square nut and reshaping the screw to act as the stud.

Update 2 on belts

I spent part of yesterday and today finding out why large buttons aren't used on belts:  Heavy vegetable-tanned leather simply doesn't have the flexibility or stretch to get around the button unless the buttonhole is huge.  So either the leather used in an Achaemenid weapon belt was much softer or thinner than would seem to me practical for a belt intended to support a loaded gorytos, or I've yet to really understand how the "button" works.

For the large flower-patterned fasteners, I suppose it's possible that they functioned like cowboy-style buckles.  The smaller ones really do look like just large buttons, though.

Furthermore...

After examining the images at Nirupars - and keeping in mind that all my conclusions are tentative and must change come further, unforeseen evidence (but that's how it always goes) - here's what I now believe:

Medes and Persians at war at the turn of the 5th century BC wore two belts, at the same time.  One was to cinch the shirt around the waist.  It was probably fabric, and was tied in front with a square knot, leaving the ends hanging.  On top of it was worn the weapons belt, to which the bowcase and sword were attached.  It was probably heavy-grade leather because of the weight it had to support.  It was slightly looser-fitting than the first belt, and fastened in front with a round or flower-shaped button; the inability to precisely adjust the button's fit accounts for its looseness.  The button could have been metal, hardened leather or other suitable material - I think that bronze is a likely material.  Perhaps a screw back concho or even a drawer knob, if it's not too thick and heavy, could make an acceptable substitute.  This belt's ends were much shorter and didn't hang.  The two belts were the same width and could have rounded or pointed ends.

Closeups of several of Darius' guards (fourth and fifth pictures here) show them wearing headdresses which might be taken as shorter versions of the tall hats worn by the king himself and other Persians in court dress.  The short hats were open on top because the tops of the men's heads, with hair, can be seen in the middle.  If these were indeed the same as the tall hats, then those "hats" are more like crowns.  While a flat top is visible on the tall hat if viewed from above, it may not mean anything since it's unavoidable when carving such a garment in shallow relief.  This gallery also provides plenty of further examples of soldiers in court dress wearing twisted headbands instead of hats.

Consider for your reenactment large, plain hoop earrings, which were apparently very common.  Most soldiers also wear loops around their necks; these may be torcs, but if so they appear to be wearing them backward, so I won't venture a conclusion here.

Update: Belts

Nirupars has an extensive hi-res gallery of Persepolis.  I notice on page 5 several frontwise shots of the cavalry costume belt. This clears up a lot, as the belt is in fact tied closed with a square knot just like the court costume sash and like the belt on the oft-mentioned silver statuette. The button that I thought fastened the belt actually only fastens the weapon strap, and the ends of the strap don't (appear to) hang down. This raises the possibility that the belt is fabric like the court sash, and the weapon strap is a separate belt.

More on this if/when I find out anything.