If you like to work in leather and make your own gear, nothing will spur you on more than getting a new gun. Every new gun gotta get a new bag.
I actually admitted to another craftsman that I preferred the craft of cobbling and repurposing more than shoemaking. So, here are some of the things other Shoemakers, Cobblers, Saddlers and overall gun leather folks taught me over the years.
Part One Selecting Leather.
Consider the distinct difference between tanning in the 18th Century and Industrial tanning. For those of us who have to spend money on luxuries like meat and gasoline, brain and smoke is pretty much priced out of our range. The alternative is to work with what you have or can afford. Before you even start your project, set the…”Look”… of your project in mind. In this case, I want a cloth lined bag that will have an aged character, patina and wrinkled look without beating the snot out of the leather to make it look old.
It will look like something a local cobbler made and compliment my new smooth bore in my Ranger, Trekker, USMC Tough Guy persona. Arthritic, fat old guy says it has to be lightweight.
At Jacobsburg last year I went over to the leather vendor and picked out a blanket sized hide of…” upholstery”… leather. It was cheap, 3-4 ounce weight and…important…thinly spray painted rather than dyed. When leather is spray painted the paint fills pores . Sometimes slight cracks/ irregularities from dryness make the factory discard it.
In fact they are a virtue. It is veg tanned cow, where the 3-5 ounce weight is good for a lined bag.
What follows will not work on oil or chrome tanned leather.
The finish on this hide is weak and can be fully or partially purged from the leather. Years ago, in New Milford Connecticut, the local shoe repair guy taught me how to engage Fiebings Deglazer to rub in circular motions with just enough pressure to strip off some of the finish. It gives a well-worn and aged character but the leather is only a little dried out and can be restored with a conditioner or oil. On the left is the original finish with and without the Deglazer and on the right is the front pocket piece after re-defining and dying the appearance.
Part Two The Finish To Dye For
When you know it is cowhide you gotta crumple and squeeze without mercy as you work it over before the dying process to give the leather some character. It will hold the crumpling. Undyed veg tan should be moistened (not soaked) to best get this effect. . The other thing I learned from this repair guy was how to get an aged, dark look on the leather…mix Fiebings out of bottle Dark Brown and USMC Black dye. Do it in a cup so you can work your way toward the color you want. Some old stuff looks darker and sometimes shiny with wear and aging, so we’re gonna give it a dark and uneven finish because wear and use often degrades color evenness as much as it burnishes to a patina. When you are done crumpling and dying, give the leather a coat of out of bottle finish such as Leather Sheen. Buff it to get the older originals patina that comes with age and wear.
Part Three The Difference between a Cobbler and a Trades Artisan
This pouch is going to be personalized and will not be designed to look like those exquisite bags you see from some of the folks here on the forum. I want pockets inside for my OCD and how I manage this fowler. I want an outside pouch in front. Below I’ll describe how I use my Chinese Patcher to get a stitched look.
For that outside pouch crimping the two top corners toward the center and pinning them with some Crazy Glue before stitching allows the front pouch to be a little more open and easier to get stuff out of. It also gives it a stretched look. I’ll trim it before assembly.
For those of us using a patcher machine it’ll be handier if you install a wooden table on the wooden base you had to mount it with. It will help keep everything flat. Set the stitch length screw for tighter stitches. There’s a reason for that. Nothing looks like hand stitching except hand stitching but you can get close if you reduce the length of each stitch with thicker thread.
I called an outfit named…”The Thread Exchange”… and asked for the thickest thread and needles the Chinese Beast could handle. I quickly learned that the bobbin thread has to be thinner, off-the-shelf upholstery thread because the heavier thread jams the bobbin and shuttle.
Thicker tan or brown thread for the needle has less of a machine look to it and more of a waxed thread look. That’s because the cobblers and cordwainers back in the day hand wove threads in thickness before going to work on a seam. Usually in hemp and linen ( flax) the craftsman would pull out a span ( the distance from outstretched hand to outstretched hand) and combine them before waxing.
A…”ply”… is one strand. Soling might require five or six plies, uppers maybe three or four. IN the case of this pouch, two to three plies would probably equal the thickness of the Patcher stitching. Run some dye over the stitch line. Old-time hand stitching featured tighter smaller stitches than todays pricking irons, blunt harness needles and off-the-shelf thread afford, but that is a matter of taste because not a lot of folks notice that detail. A good rule of thumb is to look at a medium spaced pricking iron, and set your Patcher screw to a stitch length that equals the distance from one side of the prong to the other. That will also account for the space between prongs on the pricking iron and give you a tight looking stitch line. Besides, slightly clumsy and irregular stitching by hand or patcher for a cobbled bag isn’t all that bad an idea either. A well stitched line by hand with modern tools is something else to behold and worth the different approach.
The soul of some 18th century part-time woodsman was the way he would tailor his bag and stuff to suit him.
That little white bottle at the upper right… just above the bone knapping and top jaw pin; remember back in the day when you could load up on that aroma of …”Old Woodsman”… bug juice? I can’t bear to get rid of that last vestige so I keep my cleaning fluid in it.
And that sissy primer horn with the light scrimshawing on it to the left? Same with that. Been with me forever and it is too handy to throw away, so it’ll sit in the front pouch that I crimped for it.
Lastly, a Cobbler who bordered on the artistic in his work once advised me that one of the best ways to imply age and character is to work a small but visible repair into the finished product, whether or not it is needed.
The loop over the button implies one of the first things to go on a bag. So it has been newly repaired.
Look up on the top right of the pouch. There’s an irregular small repair tack implying that the pouch started to come apart and needed to be closed.
That way, when the inevitable posturing fop comes up to you at an event and tells you what…”they”… did and didn’t have, you can tell him that this might have been a bag that saw action at Saratoga. The original leather had to be replaced and the original contents had to be replaced, but it occupies the same space.
Don’t shoot yore eye out, kid
Capgun
