What a custom belt costs

A hand-tooled belt starts at $600. That is for a 36″ belt with tooled artwork designed around your story. Length and the extras you choose move the figure from there, and you see every one of them added up as you go. A design that needs artwork drawn from scratch can move it too — that part GB quotes you himself, before he draws it.

How the figure is worked out

The base belt, and the things that move it.

Hand-tooled belt, 36″	$600	Full-grain leather, artwork tooled by hand, finished and assembled.
Length	$10 / inch	Added for a longer belt and taken off a shorter one, both directions from 36″.
Leather liner	from $50	A second layer of leather on the back. Adds body and wears longer.
Hand painting	$10 / inch	Color worked into the tooling by hand, across the length you want painted.
Colored lettering	$1.00 / letter	A dollar for every letter or number that gets painted. Spaces and punctuation are not painted and are not counted, so TX 1985 is six.
Painted edges	$10	One charge, both edges, the whole length.
Belt and matching collar together	−$50	Taken off when the same artwork runs across both.

These are the figures the configurator uses. It adds them up as you go, so nothing in this table turns up later as a surprise. The one thing the table cannot price is design time, and that is the next section.

Design time is quoted separately

Every figure above is a material, or artwork GB already has a price for. The configurator adds those up into a preliminary estimate, and that is as far as a website can get on its own.

Some designs ask for more than that — artwork drawn from scratch for you, or design work well past what the figures above cover. The configurator does not guess at that, and this page will not put a rate on it. GB looks at what you have asked for, works out what the additional design work comes to, and tells you the amount and what it is for. You agree to it before he starts that work, or you do not. It is not added to your estimate without you and it is not raised after the work is done.

A design quote covers the design work and nothing else. Agreeing to one is not approving a design and it is not permission to start on the leather: you still see a proof, and nothing is cut, tooled or painted until you have approved it.

Why it is not a store belt price

A belt off a shelf is cut from a roll by a machine that has made ten thousand of them. Yours is drawn for you, cut, tooled, dyed, finished and sewn by hand, and nothing identical exists. The artwork alone is usually several hours of bench time before a single tool touches the leather.

What you are paying for is the time and the one-off design. What you get back is a piece that outlives the belt you own now.

What happens with the money

1. You submit a request. Nothing is charged. You are asking GB to design something, not buying it.
2. If the design needs more work than the estimate covers, GB quotes that design work and you agree to it before he does it.
3. GB develops the design and sends you a proof and a final price.
4. You approve the exact version you want made. The figure you approve is the figure invoiced — if it changes, you see a new proof and approve that instead.
5. You pay against that approved figure.
6. GB starts the work. Payment arriving does not put a belt on the bench on its own; GB authorizes production having looked at the design one more time.

Questions worth asking before you start

Do I pay anything to ask?

No. Submitting a request costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

Will the price change after I approve it?

Not without you approving the new one. The amount you agreed to is recorded against the proof you agreed to.

What if I want to change the design after approving?

You can. It becomes a new version with its own proof and its own figure, and the old one stays on the record as what you had agreed to before.

How long does it take?

It depends on the design and what is already on the bench. GB tells you when he sends the proof, rather than quoting a number here that would be wrong half the time.