Really enjoyed reading the responses in this thread.
I would add that age and economics would also show up in the differences in how fancy pouch styles were.
Needles were very expensive in the 18th century. Many country or poorer housewives may only have had one or two needles. Do you think they would have allowed you to use one of their precious needles to sew up a leather bag and possibly break one or both of them? Don't think so. Also, I'm not sure they would have allowed a husband to use thread if anything else could be used. Most of young folks then, just like most today, don't have a lot of money to waste in their younger years. Even if one can make most of ones furniture or other items, farm or household items took precedence.
If one has a knife and a good sized piece of leather, that's all one has to have to make a serviceable pouch. The original laced up Virginia pouch shown earlier in this forum is a good example. You can cut lace from a solid piece of scrap leather by cutting around the outside edge and cutting closer to the center as you cut the lace, until you have a lace long enough to suit your purpose. It won't be "pretty" or strictly uniform lacing, but it will work. That's how I made a whole bunch of lacing for the drawstrings on a whole lot of small bucksking pouches I made from scraps over the years. (I admit that most of the time I used leatherworking shears to actually do the cutting, though. Grin.) Same thing will work on cowhide, though it will take longer to do. The point of the knife becomes an awl for the holes for the lace. Needles could be made from boar's hair or a number of other natural items that would have been available almost anywhere. Heck, if you had a little more time, you would not even need the home made needles - just push the end of the lacing through the holes with the point of your knife. Teeth made great pliers to grab the end of the lace and pull it out enough to grab it and pull it through. Such a pouch may well have been used by the maker for ten to twenty years or even the rest of his life and possibly handed down or used for other purposes later on.
I made my first pouch out of split cowhide with not a whole lot more tools than that and basically made the same way. Unfortunately, I didn't like it as it was so soft it would fold up into itself. So I made another out of thicker leather a few years later. However, the original pouch was used as a storage pouch hung from the Ozan rope in the Lodge for a few years. Then I gave it to a new guy and he used it for a while and passed it on, himself.
Where age comes into the discussion is that as time goes by, you see more ways other people have made their pouches. This either in the 18th century or today. You will probably see something you like from that and incorporate into a later pouch. When the youngun's go from being curtain climber's to yard apes, you have more time and more money to make a better pouch, or even maybe have a better one made. Or you may decide the first pouch is good enough and "will do" for what you need.
I've got a couple nice pouches I made in my 30's and 40's that "will do" for the rest of my life and will be handed down along with the guns they belong to. Still, at age 56, I'd like to make at least one or two more as a sort of a way of demonstrating all I've learned over the years and just how good I can make them. I can see no reason others didn't do that in the 18th century as well.
