ABOUT OUR HOLSTERS
You will see many, many makers of western gunleather on the web, all claiming that theirs are the best. Admittedly, some web sites have great photography, but have a good look - the finish of the leather, the stitching, the edge finishing, the quality of the tooling and the aesthetic appearance of the designs. As we’ve been making holsters separately for over forty years, including our forming of Escort Gunleather since 1985, we think we’ve got it right. We can only go by feedback from our customers which is always on the lines as “it’s the best I’ve ever seen”, - you will only really know when you see it.
Holsters are shaped and fitted to the gun which they are ordered for. Although we do wet mould our holsters, they are not all boned to the shape of the gun as our modern holsters are, but we will do this if required (except on steel lined). Bullet loops are correctly sewn and moulded, not threaded through.
We make our patterns after a great deal of research into the item we are making, some patterns are taken from original old holsters, belts and pouches.
We do a lot of work for the film & T.V. Industry, so many of the holsters we make will be seen on the screen in either films or adverts. We also supply leatherwork to the famous Madame Tussauds waxworks museum, and have so far contributed to works such as John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull, James Dean to name a few.
LEATHER:
We use only first grade full grain cowhides which are tanned to our own specification. The tan starts of as a light, golden colour which is then oiled and dressed by us to achieve the desired effect. The black is dyed through at the tannery so that tooling and damage such as scratches, etc., do not show through as it would if it were hand dyed or sprayed. We do not dye our items unless we have specific instructions to do so, for special colours etc., where a colour match or antique finish is desired. Everything is oiled to get the right colour, we use a dark tinted oil for dark brown which makes sure the colour penetrates and above all looks natural and not an artificial colour. With our methods of colouring and dressing the hide you will be confident that our gunleather will “age gracefully” looking better and better as time goes on.
FINISH:
Our edges are bevelled, smoothed, dyed, waxed and burnished all by hand. The stitching is done in two ways, we use extra heavy duty harness machines using 3, 4 and 5 cord waxed thread set to give a perfect saddle stitch. Unlike some makers, we treat machine stitching as an art. Some items we sew by hand. We do this when extra strength is needed such as the majority of the heavier leather lined holster welts, also box stitching, etc.
Colours we offer are light or medium oiled tan, dark oiled brown and oiled black . Stitch colours are brown, white or black.