If he hasn’t already some over educated, pointless Ponce will get a five digit grant to research how hunting bags are the forerunners of women’s handbags.
It ain’t gonna be me, because I’d do it for fifty bucks. Nope. I got more important things to do here….like reverse engineering a handbag to make it a hunting bag. Specifically, one made with stiff cowhide that holds a rigid shape. Go ahead…laugh…I can wait.
This post is mostly about Cobbling techniques and adding character to a piece. In fact, that’s what cobblers did whether in their Guild in England or one step ahead of the law here in the colonies…using initiative, styling something, repairing and repurposing and sticking to the practical. In this case, just for gits and shiggles, we are going to use a hard shell handbag from the well-known vendor of Crazy Crow rather than a Tandy kit or retail import handbag.
Even looks like a handbag….don’t it?
I wanted this size to go with my new Transitional/Jaeger/ European Rifle. I am looking for European styling that suggests some hunter who came to Christians Springs via Philadelphia or Baltimore. Not quite American yet; went up to Lake George as a contracted hunter, hobnobbed with Rangers and bugged out just before Fort William Henry lost its re-sale value. Might be good fodder for a Novel if I ever write again. This conjectural bag will be strictly for shooting out of the pouch at the range or on the trail walk.
Anyway. The craftsmanship is good, the product solid, and the finish workable for adding a little character.
I’ll cobble and repurpose as if I were repairing it. Cobblers always minimized the amount of work necessary, so here’s the way we’ll approach this bag:
Add some character to the finish by reducing the industrial gloss first.
Re-finish the bag and add a button and button slit to replace the modern buckle arrangement.
Add a decorative cut out.
Replace the stitching on the flap on the pouch.
Individualize and sub divide the pouch for the shooting habits each of us has ( in this case, me).
OK, so STEP ONE… get the modern hardware off the bag. It’s mostly rivets and flimsy buckles and the shoulder strap. I use my handy, made-in-America Craftsman Orthopedic Surgery Tool as shown in the photo.
Cut off and toss the rivets and the buckle.
OK, so STEP TWO
All we want to do here is remove the outer, industrial layer of finish. For that, consider Fiebings Deglazer over scrubbing pads or acetone or some such. Stay away from YouTube. Deglazer is noxious, so be prepared to work near an open window or exit fan. Put too much elbow grease into it and it will take off the paint/dye so rotate with soft hands to simply get the shine off. Cover the entire piece. We will add a finish at a later point.
OK, so STEP THREE
Now it’s time to take off the leather from buckle and billet. It will get replaced by a decorative cutout and a button closure. The best way to take it off is with a hook knife.
Pry with your fingers to carefully get between the piece itself and the face of the bag and slice the exposed threads maybe two or three either direction at one time, pulling them apart as you go. This helps avoid an errant slice into the leather where you don’t want it. Machine stitches will come out easily from their jerk stitching and oversized needle holes.
Since I want sort of a European Statement on the bag, I painted the billet red. I’m gonna put a small St. Josephs medal on it because metal attachments and trim suggest European influence. I’m Catholic, hence the St. Joseph Medal and conjecture of coming in through the more tolerant Pennsylvania in the 1700’s.
The billet is going to go UNDER the flap rather than on the outside, so I made a cutout within the stitching circle on the flap itself.
More on this when the bag gets its finish.
OK, so STEP FOUR
We’ll treat the seam on the flap of the bag as if it needed repair. It doesn’t, but I just have a thing about replacing machine stitching. On this bag, the border piece runs around the flap and on the flat seam where the gusset joins the back of the bag. Only the front seam where the gusset and front piece were stitched was turned inside out. The back wall of the pouch joins the gusset in a plain flat seam. This has proven handy on stiffer cowhide bags. It makes any bag roomier, but I can’t document or place it. Any notes you guys have on this style bag would be appreciated.
The key to replacing a worn seam is to avoid undoing the whole seam. One of the first things I learned from my Master shoemaker was to undo the seam maybe five stitches at a time, replacing the seam as you went so it stays in place while you work.
One of the first posts I put here was how to taper the thread end to a point and use a smaller needle rather than the ten penny nails loosely referred to as Harness needles. The smaller needle makes a smaller hole into which the thread is squeezed and the wax runs into the leather.
The binding/edging on this handbag flap is glued in place, making replacement stitching easier. In this case I am using pigs’ hair bristles in place of the needles. When done sewing, I’ll lightly pound the seam to flatten the stitches and further fill the awl holes.
The billet will go on the INSIDE of the flap because the stitching holes already match up on the flap and the billet. Any cutout hearts or stars you want can just be cut right into the flap. Here the entire seam is shown and the insert cut out.
Now we’ll replace that ugly splotch where the buckle used to be. We’ll cobble a “keep”, made of wet molded leather, and a button with a small spacer behind it, then take a bag punch and slit up the holes on the billet.
The keep and the button will go where the stitch line from the buckle is. The spacer behind the button is a punched piece of leather with a hole in the center. The stitch line is just a simple tack where the button itself is sewn in at the bottom of the stitch line,
It’ll look like this when done;
You might want to wet mold the flap to stay shut by itself rather than have the stiff leather forcing the bag open all the time.
OK, so STEP SIX. I want my bag to be partitioned. A basket at the top to hold shooting stuff and underneath a compartment that will hold all the tools patches, flints and Snickers Bars. It resembles a bag commonly associated with the military without a cartridge block. Works for me…
I traced the outside back of the pouch itself to draw the following pattern;
Note the two “ears” on the top of the pattern. More on this later. Stitch up both sides with a common crossover stitch to make the basket…nothing fancy.
Shoemakers use an adhesive named Hirschkleber. It’s a gooey paste that doesn’t dry immediately like contact cement but adheres faster than the white glues out there. We use it in shoemaking to put a heel stiffener in between the upper and the lining because it can be maneuvered. Here I gopped up the back of the bag, slid the insert in, and dragged those ears tightly out through the top slot on the side of the bag where I took the strap off.
I will pull the ears outward tightly, and then tuck them into the lower slot in the side of the bag which also remains because the handbag strap was removed. It’s a good idea to tack them down. Don’t glue the front of the insert to the front of the pouch. You can get your hands into the bottom of the bag that way.
OK Step SEVEN The finish
I’ll put a shoulder strap and buckles on this bad boy later. What I won’t do is glop up the bag with neatsfoot oil. That product is essentially at its best on veg tanned cowhide, and has to be put on with ferocity to really saturate the leather evenly. It makes some leather heavy and, over time, weakens fibers or stiffens up or both.
Convention implies that eighteenth century leather be dark. So I’ll use plain old Feibings dark brown and maybe something like off the shelf dressing or finish. I don’t have any DUBN, which is liquid lanolin and tallow mixed. That’s the best finish. You might also consider Mink Oil and some guys swear by olive oil. The trick is to buff it when done. I am not going to distress the leather or kill myself making it look old. It is supposed to be the essence of what a Cobbler did in the Eighteenth Century…. functional, new and to my own liking.
The stuff to the right goes on the bottom of the bag, out of the way., and the stuff on the left goes in the upper basket in the pouch.
The stuff to the right goes on the bottom of the bag, out of the way., and the stuff on the left goes in the upper basket in the pouch.
All that's left is to make sure that your shoes match the bag.
