You can click on the photo for a larger view in a new tab. This is stamping, as opposed to embossing. Each segment of the pattern is “set” as deeply as possible into the leather using a stamping tool and a maul.
“It’s all in the details,” is a pretty common statement, but it’s critical to making leather products one piece at a time. I thought I’d show a photo of a gun belt being hand-stamped with a basket stamp and half-flower border. This is the cleanest, longest-lasting way of putting a design on the leather.
There is another way I know of to do this. It is by embossing or pressing a design into damp leather using a press or a roller/wheel with an embossing machine. This is the mass-produced, inexpensive way of doing it. It also results in a fairly shallow imprint that is subject to fading away over time. It can be done quickly, whereas hand-stamping takes more setup, and much more time.
Embossing can be done in seconds. Stamping can take hours.
An embossing machine for straps or belts.
Here’s a video from Tandy Leather and George Hurst showing you some of how it’s done.
Happy Thursday! Hard to believe it’s already three days into December, but despite all the weirdness, 2020’s moved along pretty quickly for me. The worldwide social disease has raised the suck factor through the roof, but beyond that, and the toilet paper crisis, it hasn’t been too bad out here in the woods of Northwest Florida.
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve reactivated this website primarily to restore the Blog, but I will also be adding a few products here and there as I figure out how this new deal works. In the meantime, I do have some in-stock gunleather over on the Gibson Leather website, which will continue to be my primary “store.”
I have been getting a lot of inquiries over the past several months about custom orders, and a bunch of requests to get off my ass and start making belts again. I will be doing that, but not right now. Truth be told, even though I love building belts, I have been enjoying the freedom of not having an order backlog. I’ve been doing other things to fend off poverty, but I do like not having a pile of orders waiting every morning. Despite all that, belts and gun belts are among my favorite products to make.
If you’re left-handed, and you’re in the market for a 4″ or 4.25″ 1911 holster in Black Cherry that’s been hand-basket stamped–the one in the photo above–feel free to wander over to the other website and check it out. Here’s a link to make it easier. I ship everything USPS Priority Mail within 24 to 48 hours and provide you with a tracking number. The postal service has been pretty screwed up since they hired that idiot to run it back in June, combined with the Christmas rush, so it’s almost a crapshoot to ship anything right now. If you’re a gambler, check out what we have available, and go for it.
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I took about five months off to work on other projects. Gave up 100% of my “social media,” and pretty much stepped off the world train. It was, in a word–awesome. Turns out, I didn’t miss much of anything. I did miss a lot of the people, so my herd instinct brought me back.
If you believe even a small portion of what the drug company supported commercial media is spewing out there, you’d think the entire country has pretty much gone to hell. In a lot of ways, I’d agree that it has. But, fact is, we really don’t have that luxury. We’ve been through worse, with fewer options.
I had shut down this web domain at BruceGibsonDesign.com and put more focus on my domain at GibsonLeather.com. I decided that I wanted the punishment of trying to maintain two websites, so I reactivated this one with a new theme, and very little planning and direction. I don’t have a blog on the other site, and I missed it.
Overall, I’ve learned that most of the time, ignorance is, in fact, bliss. We don’t have enough letters in the alphabet to name all the storms in a busy hurricane season, ALL gun laws are unconstitutional, our immune systems are shot, most politicians aren’t people we’d allow into our homes, and it really doesn’t matter who the President is. I’ve seen a few over the last near-60-years, and I can’t name one that has made what I’d call a “difference.” That’s probably a good thing–if they had that power, we’d really be screwed.
