72 years old before I learned who Bob Ross was; The guy with the huge Afro on PBS (Later YouTube) who used to take simple putty knife techniques, an oversized paint pallet and come up with a pretty landscape scene before your very eyes within a half hour. One of his trademarks, aside from the huge paint pallet and that Afro and soft voice, was the phrase…”Happy Accident”…
There was no such thing as a mistake.
For the rest of us, though, until you watched that guy create his pretty landscapes, the only resource we had in the immediate aftermath of a SNAFU, was the four letter …”S”… Bomb. You know, that universal word that is far more appropriate than…”literally”… or …”like”… whereby those two aren’t meant to be punctuation…
We even had to make it a curse. Most Farmers take it for granted…”Son, don’t forget to clean the S@#$ out of the stalls before breakfast”. Not us. It’s reserved for that special moment when a big chip comes out of the stock when inletting, or the seam runs away, or you muff pattern making. Now, add in the fact that, in the Eighteenth Century out in the boondocks, nothing was wasted. Spice it up with the fact that survival sometimes dictated that every man had to at least be a cobbler rather than a trained artisan, and you can hit the funny bone of my most grievous failing; I enjoy re-purposing and cobbling far more than I enjoy my trained skills as a saddle, shoe, and John Bianchi level gunbelt maker.
There’s probably a good reason the modern definitions of cobbling go beyond just working with leather, but I don’t know what it is.
If you can summon a little Christian Charity, then take a look at the types of happy accidents I have recently had. Take ‘em as a statement that all of us can re-purpose, and nothing should be taken for granted in this humble level of our hobby, sport, and historical fantasy.
This bad boy came home from Dixons as a Russel blank that I fancied as a tidy little patch and maybe belt knife when on site. I had several of those curly maple blanks that the Pecatonica Boys and Chambers folks ship with their stocks. I decided to grind down the shank and craft different scales because I didn’t want something that looked like a steak knife hanging on my belt. My new Dremel Grinder worked like a dream, however the black chunk shown in the pic shows where it split when I tapped it with the happy hammer.
Yup. Oh S!@#.
On its way to the round file I got a hold of myself. The knife on the bottom, with all that attractive electricians tape around the handle, looking like some kind of gruesome 18th Century Surgical tool to scare off the leeches when finished, is the best clicking knife I own to go through leather cleanly; whether sole or saddle skirting or deerskin it cuts cleanly every time with a minimum of stropping.
The knife on the top with the lickety-split-flat-seam sheath made out of scrap leather, no matter how wonkey, will someday end up in the hands of some Rendezvous Pilgrim; probably the Gabby Hays guy who blows the cow horn mercilessly at nine o’clock at night.
The handle was a slit in the top of a dowel, pins , enough epoxy to keep the manufacturer in business for another month, scrap leather with a lickety-split-butt-seam and red paint.
If you make this type of grip, surrounded in leather, then you will need some contact cement. Place the leather on the handle. Start with the center of the leather patch on the top of the handle. Stretch it slightly and slowly until you have a taught fit all the way around. Use a pair of pliers to crimp the extra leather where it meets and make sure the meeting point is tight on the handle. If you can dig up the…”Every Man A Cobbler “…post on butt seams, make sure your awl goes through the face and out the edge of each hole by using a curved awl like so…
Each stitch goes through both sides as shown in this moccasin pic I think I used in that post. The holes match on each edge of the leather because you stabbed like this...
When you pull it tight, it looks like two rows opf stitches and fits flat against the handle
You can also flat seam, of course. Keep the leather wrap tight against the handle again use a curved awl and make each stitch tight by making sure the awl point scrapes the wood handle as it goes through. That way, when you pull the stitch closed, you will get a snug fit on the handle.
Moisten the edge of the seam you make and tap it down against the handle so it doesn’t stick up so much.
I don’t know why, but this blade is also a one-of-a-kind razor that will make a dandy patch knife. It might even make the Capgun Kid Hall of Fame for stuff given away and then missed at a later date.
Even without …”Happy Accidents”…repurposing is its own reward. I had no idea that the Husband in the couple who are among our closest friends in our church was once a biker before The Lord hit him in the head with some faith. When they saw me at the Weiser Homestead demonstration shoemaking one Sunday after Mass they just had to give me the biker wallet he used when he pillaged villages.
I don’t know why Bikers have wallets on medieval looking chains. You can see the zipper and the compartments where he doubtlessly housed everything from a small bible to documents, cash and naughty stuff.
Now, because the donors are my friends, I am obliged to work on it and show how I value it. So I tore into it, took off the snaps, dumped the chain and put some stitching on it. You can see the intentional happy accident in the slipped stitch on the bottom seam. This is where, legend has it, The Worshipful Cordwainers Guild Masters embedded a small boo boo in their work because only God is perfect. Yeah. OK...Maybe they were justifying happy accidents…
Anyway, the compartmented pouch now sits on my shooting box where it houses documents, cash, the phone but no naughty stuff. And…I really value it…
Happy Accidents, Y’all
Capgun
