25mm mild steel luggage Buckle

Super Technical

For those of you who love the technical stuff…

Rolls of very high grade mild strip steel with very consistent thickness and width is lovingly loaded into an automated, multi-stage 80 ton press where forming and cutting tools and moulds bent, cut and shape the blanks into perfectly formed buckle bodies.

The completed raw buckles are then pickled in various acids and electro-cleaners, rinsed and a thick layer of copper applied through an electroplating process. The copper further rounds the edges and provides an excellent corrosion resistant base for the subsequent electroplating layers. In this case the last layer is pure copper which is deliberately ‘aged’ through a carefully controlled oxidation process to darken the surface to extremely dark brown colour. By immersing the buckles in a clear lacquer, centrifuging off the excess, spin drying and baking to a very hard and smooth finish, the finish is equivalent to a deep black enamel paint, but even harder wearing (doesn’t chip, scuff or crack). Popular for modern military equipment and clothing, this finish is found on the boot buckle, hook and eyelet of every current European and Russian soldier’s boot. Black also goes with anything.

Cast and finished locally and electroplated in-house we can make you small quantities quickly in a wide range of standard and custom metallic finishes to exactly suit your needs.