Seatbelts hey?

So you state you use reclaimed seatbelt webbing. I want to know more...

Well, our seatbelt webbing really is reclaimed. As with all webbing, you can buy it by the roll, but what is the point when you can find perfectly good seatbelt webbing already attached to cars? This webbing is not only durable and tough, but is also environmentally friendly. Read on to find out more about our webbing, where we collect it from, and how we go about harvesting it.

Step 1

Find a good source of cars. We considered raiding our friends cars for webbing; but this source will only last so long. Either our friends will kill us, or we'll run out of friends before we have enough webbing for all the bags that we build. Next best step, is to find a car wreckers or scrap heap. This is the option we use, as our design studio is situated very close to many different wreckers. Once we have a good source of cars, we begin cutting the belts from within.

Facts:
On average, we collect four seatbelts per car. We have also found that the average seatbelt length is 2.2m, with those belts in the rear of a car being slightly longer than those in the front.

Step 2

Once we have a good pile of belts, we take them back to the studio for cleaning and sorting. During the harvesting process we sometimes end up with buckles and other miscellaneous hardware. The harvest is sorted into piles of webbing and piles of buckles.

The buckles are being saved for another design idea, which is currently undergoing testing. Stay tuned to find out more!

Step 3

From here the webbing is thrown into a washing machine, along with a cup of wool wash. Wool wash is used as it is a gentle cleaner which doesn't degrade the seatbelt webbing.
As you can see from the photo, we are currently using a domestic machine as a commercial machine is prohibitively expensive at this stage! A feature of this particular domestic machine is that it lacks a centre "spike". We have found through testing that a machine with a centre spike tends to tangle the webbing more frequently.

Step 4

Once washed, the webbing is hung out to dry in the warm Brisbane air. We use a Hills Hoist - how Aussie of us!

Step 5

Once clean and dry, we sort the webbing into piles of similar colours. These piles are then bundled together, and rolled into a neat roll, ready for use in our bags!

Notes on the seatbelt webbing:

We use quality reclaimed webbing. Just because the webbing is reclaimed, doesn't mean it isn't high quality. We go out of our way to ensure the quality of our belts is of a consistently high quality. For example, we dont use webbing from "tradies" utes as they are generally covered in dust and muck. We avoid belts that have been overly sun exposed, as they are weakened. We also reject any belts that have obvious nicks, cuts, or abrasions as this is not only cosmetic, but also weakens the belts physically.

The only downfall to using reclaimed belts that we have discovered so far, is the set length of the belts to start with. As mentioned above, seatbelts are generally around 2.2m in length. Due to this limitation there are often short off-cuts of webbing that cannot be used in a design, meaning that there is some wastage. On the flipside however, this wastage was originally "wastage" anyway; remember, the webbing was from cars that were relegated to landfill!

As the belts are reclaimed, there are occasionally signs of their previous life. Rather than hiding or removing these signs, we try to make it a feature of our bags. Examples include:
Restrainer dots, load strength tags, as well as the use of 5 bar and 7 bar webbing (ie. non-matching) in the same bag.