ADVERTORIAL

I Heated a Nail on the Stove for Thirty Years. Here Is What I Was Actually Making.

A man who has never thought of himself as someone who makes things, and a belt he wanted to keep.

Told in his own words.

 
adv dean hero

For about thirty years I have been making my own belt holes with a nail heated on the stove. Last spring I finally wrecked a belt I actually liked.

I am not a leather guy. I do not have a workbench, and I own a drill because everybody owns a drill. What I own is belts. Good ones, mostly, because I worked out somewhere in my thirties that one belt bought properly outlasts four bought badly.

My name is Dean. I am fifty two. The belt in question I had owned about nine years. It had gone soft in the way good leather goes soft, where it stops being a strap and starts being shaped like you. Last winter it stopped fitting. One morning I did the belt up on the last hole and there was still slack. The belt was perfect. It was just adjusted for a man slightly bigger than I had become.

I wore it like that for about two months. Then one evening I had had enough, and I did what I had always done.

What the hole looked like afterwards

I put the belt over the edge of the kitchen counter. I heated a nail on the gas ring with a pair of pliers and pushed it through. It went in at an angle. The hole came out oval and rough round the edge and left of where I had marked it, and when I did the belt up you could see it. Not from across a room. From the distance a person stands next to you.

I told myself it was fine. Then I went looking for a video on how to shorten a belt properly, which is a strange thing to do after the damage rather than before it.

What I found instead was the comment section under the video I had learned the nail trick from. A great many people were in there, and almost all of them were me. The top comment said "Just use a nail, heated over your stove burner." The reason underneath it was "edges will be 'cauterized' and therefore wont chip".

Then I got further down, into the replies, and the tone changed. "I ruined my belt, don't recommend." "you've butchered it, dude. It doesn't look clean at all." "mine belt got torn."

adv dean gap

I went and got the belt off the chair and looked at the hole again under the kitchen light. Furry at the edge, slightly oval, pulled at one side where the nail had dragged instead of going through. That is when it landed, and it is embarrassing how simple it is. A hot nail does not make a hole. It makes a gap. It shoves the leather sideways and out of the way and the leather stays there, bunched up around the edge, holding the shape until it decides not to. A knife parts the leather. A drill tears at it. None of them takes anything out. A hole is what you have left when a round piece comes out and is gone.

If nothing changes, the next belt that stops fitting will get the nail, because it is eleven at night and the nail is in the drawer. It will mostly be fine. You will look at it in the kitchen light afterwards and tell yourself it is fine, and you will be the only person who ever looks at it that closely.

So if a nail only moves the leather out of the way, what takes a piece out?

The cut that takes a piece out

The answer was never a better nail. It was a different kind of cut, one that removes a small round piece and lets it fall away. The nail pushes the leather aside. This takes a piece out of it.

So I went looking for the tool that does that, which turned out to be an old kind of tool I had reached fifty two without holding. The one I bought is the Leathos Hole Puncher, and it cuts by spinning instead of striking. I will admit what I thought when I saw the price, because somebody in that same comment section had already said it better than I could: "There are special leather punches for each size hole. But it's too expensive for just 1 hole!" And somebody else, in a different thread, answered it in a way I have not been able to argue with since: "You could always get a leather hole puncher to punch a few more holes in it if you continue to lose wieght. They are cheaper than a new belt."

The belt I was about to replace had cost more than the tool. That was the whole argument.

See the Hole Puncher

What happened at the same kitchen counter

It arrived in a box and it was heavier than I expected, which I have since decided is the point. I did the first hole standing at the same counter, on a cutting mat, because it needs something firm underneath. I marked it, put the tip where the mark was, and pressed straight down.

There was a short, clean sound, like a hole punch through paper, and then it was done, and there was a little round disc of leather sitting on the mat. That disc is the whole thing. Thirty years of making holes and I had never once produced one of those, because there had never been anything removed.

I held the belt up under the same kitchen light that had shown me the furry one. The edge was clean. The hole was round. It sat on the mark. I did the belt up, and you cannot tell which holes came with it.

adv dean disc

Here is what the tool is, as far as I understand it. The Spring-Spin-Cut action turns the downward pressure of your hand into a controlled cutting motion. The body is brass, the handle is hardwood, and a spring brings it back between presses. The tip rotates around the edge, so the cut is progressive instead of one impact, and cleaner cuts help reduce the deformation you get from high-impact punching.

I want to be straight about what it did not do. It did not fix the oval one. That hole is still in that belt, two along from four that look like they came from the factory, and I see it every morning.

It works on more than belts, which I did not know when I bought it. Leather, fabric, nylon webbing, the BioThane that dog leads and collars are made of now. The dog's collar was one press, on the mat, same as the belt. People who use it write the same: "punched a few holes with ease in a leather belt, just to try it out, Very Impressed with it." "Found the toughest piece of leather I thought, two punches later I had a perfect whole. Now I can fix my leather belt. I am excited!!"

The catch, in the words of the people who asked

help

The hole punch is kind of specialized, most people probably don't have those.

They do not. My brother in law watched me do one at his kitchen table. He did not say anything for a moment. Then he went and got a belt out of his own wardrobe and put it on the table without a word, which is the most enthusiastic a man of his temperament has ever been about anything.

I was afraid of the same thing. You hold it over the mark, press straight down onto a mat, and the tip is where the hole lands. The marking is still yours to get right, and the oval hole in my old belt is the proof that a hole which is already wrong stays wrong.

It will mostly be fine. I said so to myself for thirty years. The people who swear by it put its limit in writing: "Heated nail from a torch, only yelds a good, reliably sized and positionned hole if I'm setting it up in a press though".

That was one man's answer to "is this only for leather people".

There is a thirty day money back guarantee, so finding out whether your holes have been gaps this whole time costs you nothing except finding out. It makes round holes only, and it needs a cutting mat or something firm underneath.

If you are the one heating a nail on the stove

Delivery is free, and the thirty day money back guarantee is there if it turns out your holes were fine the way they were.

If you are the one heating a nail on the stove for a belt you actually like, I would just go and look at it.

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See the Hole Puncher