Seatbelts

All,

Thank you for your tips, I will try all of them and I'm sure will workout pretty well

Regards
Saul

Saul - There are so many different materials used but the best I have seen are from SMS in their PE kits. They use a a small white self adhesive sheet and it is stuck onto a template so that you can cut strips off it. They recommend colouring with a felt tip pen and it works a treat as you can make them whatever colour you want. The adhesive sits perfectly on the seats exactly as you want it.
The material used is almost an exact match for the white woven band aid stuff that you can buy in any pharmacy on a roll. I've had a roll of it now for over a year and have hardly used any so it will probably outlive my modelling life. Any colour, any width, any length. Can't be bad!! Hope this helps - Cheers.

Hi

I did see an article in 'Scale Aircraft Modeling' magazine about making seatbelts from empty tube glue tubes, cut aluminium tube open and then flatten, it had a diagram for folding in a buckle and approximately how wide belts should be for the most popular scales.

I will try this method next time, but what I have been using is plain old ribbon, painted the belt colour that I require.

Murray, that's what I think too. I saw "scale seatbelt material" for sale at the hobby shop years ago, It was maybe $3-4 for a foot of it maybe. Then I saw the craft ribbon, exactly the same stuff, for pennies compared the the packaged stuff at the hobby shop, I got a couple of yards for way less than the foot of stuff there.
Lee

Alot of the aftermarket kits have gone to lead foil. It's fairly easy to work with, and you don't have to worry about it keeping its form. If you don't want to play with lead, try using tin-foil. Smooth it out and it works just as well.

Lee, I bought some cloth ribbon too and it looks really good (to me at least). It's about the right width and it has a nice 'weave' to it that looks very similar to real seat belts.

Murray

Sticky notes work pretty good too. Just cut them to the desired width, paint them, and press them down.

For 1/24, 1/25 I use 1/16" ribbon from the craft store, you can get it in almost any color, or if you can't find the correct color, buy white and paint it. It's cheap too.
Lee

Just plain old masking tape works fine for me. What I usually do is I fold it so the stick side sticks to itself, and the non-stick side 'faces' out. Then I paint it to the desired color, and with a hobby knife cut the belts off, the width according to scale. Then you can add aftermarket buckles, or make your own.