Personalized silver belt buckle

The belt buckle is an exclusively male fashion accessory.

Almost completely abandoned by women who choose discretion, men have appropriated this ornament. As often happens, men have few jewels but choose exclusive and personalized pieces that will last over time.

In this case we had the opportunity create a custom belt buckle in solid silver after a tattoo.

If at first glance the project seems simple, this is not the case as it is a large piece weighing more than 120 grams sculpted in 3 dimensions measuring 100 millimeters wide by 75 millimeters high. It’s much larger than typical jewelry projects, and to be honest, we had to adjust the size of the loop so it would fit into the printer that would print it.

Solid silver belt buckle reproduced from a design

The buckle design

Our starting point for the project: a photo of a wolf’s head made as a tattoo.

Since this design is relatively complex, we had to have a three-dimensional sculpture created to obtain all the details of the design and be able to use it for the manufacturing of the buckle.

Reference drawing for the creation of our silver buckle

To do this it was necessary to sculpt in 3D on a digital modeling tool and from the image the original model.

Thanks to our contacts on the web we turned to the company repliqua3D which took care of the 3D modeling and digitization of the master.

Here is the rendering of their work:

Front view showing the fidelity of the details of the sculpture to the drawing

View of the thickness of the sculpture ranging from 2mm on the edges to 1.5mm at the bottom and 7mm for the top parts of the sculpture

OpenCu virtual of the silver buckle, we observe how close the modeling is to the reference drawing

After validation of the project by the customer, it was possible to move on to the implementation phase.

Silver manufacturing

To achieve a perfect representation of the original 3D model, we used 3D printing technology to physically create the belt model from the sculpted 3D file.

We then obtained a wax model of the belt buckle, a faithful reproduction of the digital model.

The rest of the operations consisted of turning the wax master into silver by the lost wax casting method. The wax master is used to make a plaster mold which, once dry, is heated to melt the wax master which then leaves an empty impression which will be filled by the molten silver poured into the mould.

The finishing consists of polishing the front part of the belt buckle and welding the fasteners, hook and loop for attaching to the belt.

Silver finished belt buckle

Overall it took almost 6 weeks to completely complete the project, from order validation to shipping, the 3D sculpture phase being a fairly long process for this very particular type of work.

Finally, keep in mind that there are few silver or gold belt buckle offerings on the market.

Few designs are available due to lack of demand in the overall market, forcing customers to focus on creating their own personalized jewelry.

However, you may find your choice on these sites:

Examples of great men’s jewelry

Here are some examples of other large men’s jewelry made of silver in our goldsmith’s workshop, most of them obviously made of silver, given the significant weight of the metal in these designs.

To go further: