hey guys this week I'm going to do a video on how to make a belt buckle at the burr off of an elk horn most of us have a ton of sheds the guys got a lot and we always want more and we never know what to do with them I always order my burs because I don't find a lot of elk horns multiple websites you can do them but if you've got your own ella forums obviously you can cut the fur off yourself so here's the first one I ever made it's got my last name on it some trees and some mountains in the background not a real special one not super defined or anything like that but I had fun making it and I've had it for eight or nine years now and here's all the bits you'll need over here you'll need thirty-second inch sixteenth inch and 1/8 inch round high speed cutter the cone-shaped one rounded cone shape your pointed cone shape and your spade style bit that one worked really good for flattening things out if you have two different size shafts on your bits you're gonna need two different size Kaulitz you're usually your sixteenth and 1/8 inch your fine thread machine screw an eighth inch screw with a small Phillips head on it and then a couple different sanding discs you don't have to have those but it tends to work out pretty good smoothing them out and then you're gonna need obviously dremel tool or some other sort of rotary tool and then your belt buckles your burrs so this one right here is rough can't remember the site that I ordered these from you can order them from a lot of different handler buyers or you can make them yourself cut them off of your own burst so I order them since they don't find elk horns very often and here's one I'm gonna be building today and I've already smoothed it out I'll show you guys how to do that too and I'm going to end up putting the antler trader logo on it for the guys at antler trader had a really good time at shed fest so figured I'd hook them up with one of those wanted to say thanks Joan to smooth out the burr what I use is the rounded cone-shaped bit make sure you keep it moving at a decent pace otherwise you'll start to get divots in the face of the buckle once you get the majority of the face of it to doubt start cleaning up the edges with the point of the rounded cone-shaped bit just to give you a nice clean edge around the surface once you get the edges cleaned up use your sanding disc to finish smoothing it out getting rid of all of your divots and cutterhead marks in the face of the buckle so you have the smooth surface to draw your image on now that you have it smoothed out you can start drawing your image on I'll usually start with a couple of reference points one on each end and one towards the top or the bottom depending on the image just to make sure that once I get the full image on there it fits with the right proportions on the face of the buckle now that you've got it drawn you can start carving because the lettering is so small and intricate on this I'm gonna end up using the 1/32 inch bit to carve it into the buckle and instead of carving everything else around it to make it raised off the surface this will also give it a little more contrast and definition and help you see the lettering better you have one of those vinyl cutters or you know someone that does or you can even have it done at a place professionally it cost a little more but you can just have the logo print it out on a thin sheet of vinyl and then stick it to your bur and carve around the image that you want and it's a lot easier than drawing it on that's the really easy way to do it especially if you're gonna do multiple buckles with the same design on them usually what I'll do when I first start is use the sixteenth inch round cutter and cut around the whole design leaving just a little bit of extra room if need be like I said I'm gonna do these ones negative and this is a little bit too big of a cutter to get that down still have to go to the thirty-second inch round and then I'll clean it up later with some other bits keep in mind the direction of travel or spin of your your bit they act a lot on these this hard surface like the bone they act a lot like a saw blade does so they will start to pull and push I'll show you is that with the clothes up here a minute you'll notice how I'm holding the buckle and holding the cutterhead you'll generally want to pull against the travel of the bit it's a lot like using a router at one doing woodworking you want to go against the travel of the bit otherwise it tends to pull the bit away from you and it'll get out of control once I've made it all the way around the outside edges of the design I'll get the eighth inch round cutter head and start removing all the excess material in the void spaces between the design leaving it around a sixteenth of an inch to an eighth of an inch raised above the main surface of the buckle now that I've got the majority of the design cut out and raised above the surface I'm going to start on the lettering on really intricate things like this you're gonna want to not go very deep in the initial first cut otherwise it tends to be out of control and you'll lose the intricacy of your design so the first time just get a nice good path for that bit to write in so that it doesn't escape if you end up pushing too hard once you've got your nice clean edges established on your intricate lettering then you can start going a little bit deeper with it and making it more pronounced once you've got all of your design carve take your sanding discs and sand off all of the pencil marks that way you can tell how clean your edges are if there's anything you need to clean up before you finish all of the detail as you can see I still have a lot of cleaning up to do but with the pencil marks gone now I can see where I need to clean up the edges of the design and I can start smoothing out and removing all of the rotary marks from using the round cutter head to do this I'll start with the rounded two cone shape bit and then move on to the Spade shape bit to get it even smoother and look a lot nicer once I get the majority of the buckle pretty well smoothed out I'll go back with you to the 16th to the 32nd inch round bit and give the whole design a little bit more definition whether I clean up the edges or outline the whole thing once you've got it looking how you want it to then you can go through and start putting the hardware on to build the hinge where your belt will actually go through I just use a piece of eighth inch steel rod and a pair of pliers and vice grips to bend it to the shape that's needed the little tabs that will go into the buckle itself only need to be about as wide as the width of your pliers so around 1/4 to 3/8 so an inch depending on your pliers you go much bigger than that you won't be able to get them into the buckle very easy the next step is to make sure that it's wide enough to get your belt through just hold it up to your belt and grab it with your pliers right on the edge of the belt and then make your bend right there once you've got the hinge bent to the right shape give it a little bit of offset to help you get it into the holes in the back of the buckle now you need to lay the hinge on the back of the buckle making sure that it's on the correct side and make some marks around the edges of it so you know where to remove material and to drill the holes making sure that you only remove the material halfway into the tabs and then drill the holes otherwise you won't have any material for the hinge to hold in make sure when you drill the holes that you drill them straight otherwise the hinge won't end correctly and also make sure that you leave at least an eighth of an inch between the back of the buckle and the drill hole so that you don't break the back of the buckle out I haven't been able to find a screw with the head small enough to go through the holes in the belt so I made it smaller by using my drill and a metal file as a lathe using a bit that is just slightly smaller than the outside diameter of the threads of your screw pre-drill a hole in the back of your buckle and thread the screw in continue to thread the screw in until you have about an eighth of an inch between the back of the buckle and the head of the screw or the same thickness as your belt make sure that you don't tighten it too tight otherwise you'll snap the head off and have to pre-drill another hole well here's the finished product hopefully this video was helpful to you and if you end up making someone your own I'd love to see some photos it's always nice to see the creativity and talent of other outdoor enthusiasts thanks for watching and tune in next time