12mm mild steel shoe Buckle

This unassuming brass electroplated (gold-like colour) shoe Buckle is pressed from South African mild steel and is manufactured in Durban (South Africa) and holds a 12mm wide strap in place. It is usually attached to a shoe upper (or leather or fabric product) with a rivet (or cap and rivet) through the swivelling steel ‘Fish Plate’ as pictured here. This buckle is also available without fishplate where stitching is preferred.

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.

A matching steel wire section and fish-plate is shaped and attached to the buckle body and tumbled in an abrasive vibratory polisher to remove any burrs and sharp edges.

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 a thick, rich, deep golden layer of brass. Because brass will eventually oxidise (and darkens in colour) we fully immerse the freshly electroplated brass buckles in a clear lacquer, centrifuge off the excess, spin dry and bake to a very hard and smooth finish offering a lifetime of maintenance-free protection. No more polishing buckles! Brass and it’s antique variants are the second most popular buckle finish after nickel (silver colour)

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.