Being a Cordwainer has always had its advantages and drawbacks. On the one hand, I can make almost any leather product I want to yet on the other hand I can never buy anybody else’s leatherwork; even when craftsmanship is as good or better than mine. Vanity, I suppose. Good, bad or indifferent, though, I get a perverse pleasure of thinking up something other than a pair of shoes or conventional piece of gunleather and experimenting with it using just enough documentation to be able to defend conjecture.
It wasn’t enough to Kluge together a smoothbore piece of exceptional light weight for the trail walk (that being described over in Gunmaking) that I ended up naming “Rascal”…
…but now I had to cobble together a specialized Cartouche and all the little accoutrements that would go with it. I like to cobble stuff more than I like to reproduce a documented product. I sometimes wonder whether a middle aged Cordwainer stood at the bench in his shop, and wished he could have the freedom of a cobbler while dumping the shop, his journeymen and crabby customers for the freedom of the road. You know…sort of like some aging guy in a cubicle wishing he could retire sooner than later…
Anyway, there were two requirements because it was someday going to end up on the shoulders of my grandchildren. First, it had to be made from materials already on hand, preferably stuff that was lying around and might be victimized by the annual cleaning out of the shop. Second, it had to be tightly compact and easy to carry and load out of on a trail walk. I didn’t want a powder horn. They’re a pain in the woods. There had to be something devilishly clever about it too. It would embody the basic rule I have always carried with me through the Eighteenth Century and two decades of Cowboy Action Shooting….STUFF ROCKS…
I made the bag out of a single scrap piece of 7 ounce cow folded over and tacked and glued to wooden sides. On the inside of each side I put a couple of rests so the block would sit atop a storage and possibles compartment . I took out the bottle of white vinegar/steel wool shoe dye I use on leather and glopped up the one piece leather. Fiebings black went into the wooden sides. Then I True Oiled the whole piece once it was tacked and stitched..both the flesh and flower sides of the leather.
I’d rather die than antique my leatherwork, firmly convinced that nobody but nobody in the 1700’s ever asked a Cordwainer to beat up the product so it would look old, but I have learned over the years that True Oil in a light coat on cowhide over a previous coat of Neatsfoot will give it a unique patina almost immediately, and will seal the leather without rotting it out the way silicone will. Dye, Neatsfoot and Tru oil in that order works well, the trick being not to load up too much of theTru.
I had a canvas strap with a buckle laying around that I cut from a Track Of The Wolf canvas hunting bag. I now fill that guy with range stuff when heading out to the bench, but don’t sling it over my shoulder. Hence the cannibalized strap. I had a cutsie pick and brush and a cutsie measure that I picked up at Dixons over the past few years. I also had an elegant little brass hammer that I shortened and soldered a nail into after I had drilled a hole in the top jaw piece on Rascal because changing a flint with a screw driver afield is sometimes a pain. I also had, from day one of my trekking, a disgraceful little Polymer Priming Horn that I sanded and scrimshawed. It has consistently behaved like one of the best priming horns I have ever had because of its functional little spout. I will periodically buy another one, rip out the spout, chuck the plastic and save the brass on a piece of antler or horn tip. That’s how well it works.
I took one of the smaller Altoids Tins and burned off the paint, learning that MAPP is hotter than Propane, by the way, and put the assortment of Jags and flints and patches in it. As stated, I did not want to carry a horn, so this cartouche would, indeed, be built around cartridges.
The original goal was to use the type a fellow trekker named Fred Gowan taught me years ago on one trip to Lake George, NY, where we stayed up all night swapping sources on the French and Indian War and Rangers in general. He taught me to pre measure the template for the paper so that the ball, placed at the base of the mold, would reside about a third of the way up the cartridge where the size of the paper template was determined by how much roll was needed to provide a reasonably tight patch. Before putting the measured powder in, we’d dip the cartridge from the bottom folded seal to the top of the ball in whatever lube we concocted to grease it up. I ended up using melted down Bore Butter out of laziness.
Unfortunately, Rascal prefers patched balls, dinging the romantic notion of the paper and ball species. So now I had to figure out a way to carry loading blocks and plain old paper cartridges. I never liked drilling out loading blocks, so over the river and through the woods to Dixons we go. I bought a bunch of them off the rack to fill out the eighteen shots usually required for a trail walk. Then I added a pouch on the back of the bag for some of the loading blocks, and butt seamed two small holsters for them on each end of the Cartouche.
I dunno why I chopped up some copper tubing I had laying around and glued in wood plugs that normally cover screw heads in cabinets. Maybe it was to avoid paper littering the trail. I dunno why I painted the butts red. Maybe because trekking enough teaches you that red is the best marker for stuff you drop on the forest floor. If they are two inches long you can house almost any load. Maybe I just couldn’t stand rubber and plastic speed loaders, but my block will nonetheless hold these or conventional paper cartridges, depending on the weather, snugly in the top of the Cartouche.
The bag has functioned well on the trailwalk. Being a firm believer in the fact that you gotta accessorize, I just hope it doesn’t make me look fat. (Now add one of those stupid little yellow faces laughing and winking because that was a joke. Having written books and articles for so long and relying on diction, God how I hate those stupid little yellow faces…I’m a writer who views the use of them as lazy because they don’t speak too good to them readers like what I does)
Don’t shoot yore eye out, kid,
The Capgun Kid
