Terence I use both HO and W & C. I have had a long standing love/hate relationship with HO for many many years and am a somewhat recent user of W & C. They are distinctly different. I tend to use HO on most of my sheaths. Some of that has to do with logistics more than a preference. I have two clicker dies and the sheath shapes that they yield will take care of 90 percent or more of the sheaths I make, my : Pancake sheath, Slotted sheath, Horizontal sheath, Gordo sheath and Vertical pancake sheath are all done using these dies. Weaver keeps these dies on file and does the clicker work for me. They sell HO and so that is the leather I use for my sheaths. So instead of getting a big roll of sides of leather I get a big box of sheath shapes. Their labor cost is ridiculously inexpensive for this and averages out to $18 a side. On an average batch of knives this saves me a whole day of cutting out sheaths. Each one is still trimmed and fitted to a specific knife but the cutting out of the sheaths was on average an 8 hour shop day. $18 bucks vs an 8 hour day, no brainer. BTW Nichole uses 5/8" straps and 1" straps on her purses. She has them cut up a side for her and its like $8 for that. If you have something repeatable that you use all the time it might be worthwhile having somebody do that for you. There are other outfits that offer that too, Weaver is just who we use. Anyhoo I usually have several sides of HO and W & C on hand as well. To me and in my experience the average side of W&C has more usable leather on it than the average side of HO. You can get bad sides from both outfits but I've seen fewer from W&C. There is a lot of talk and some of it on this thread about cattle markets etc affecting leather but I think its QC more than anything. Recent examples with in the last year: last night pulled one of my HO sheath shapes out of the box, turned it over and went wow, rawhide in the center of it. Had 4 from that batch, all from the same side that simply had rawhide on them. It was all on the flesh side so the worker at Weaver probably never saw it but there you go. Thats QC not rainfall or the price of corn or anything else. I got a box of sheath shapes couple of months back and 10 of them had hair on them still. So that one you gotta share some of the blame with the worker at Weaver. So no one noticed while clicking out this side of HO veggie tan that there was some hair on it? QC again not the size of the cattle herd or the age at slaughter. I received a whole batch and it just didn't seem like HO. Different color, didn't stamp the same, didn't oil the same and most of all when you dampened it for stamping or wet molding a sheath it came up with green mold like spots all over. Now some imported leathers will do this and it kinda had that more grayish color of some of the imported leathers. Got me to thiking it wasn't HO. Weaver had me send back a few. They had the same problems with it and solved the green spots by mixing Pro Carv at a 1:1 ratio instead of 10:1. QC again. But dang it this is HO and I sholdn't have to be using Pro Carv at 1:1 ratio to make it work. Now to give Weaver their due they more than have taken care of any problems but that has been my recent experience. I have a side right now of HO from a different supplier. I un rolled it when it came and it was so bad I said I can't use this. My supplier replaced it and this one was so bad they just had me keep it they didn't want it back either, so I'm using it for welts. When I unroll a new side I grade it based on usability. I guesstimate how much is good and how much is scrap. I have had sides up to 85 -90 percent some a little higher maybe. This one I graded at about a 10 percent. Again a QC issue. The worst W & C side I have ever received, I have right now and I graded it at about 60- 65 percent. These problems that I outlined have been all within the last few months.
When this thread was around the first time there were some things mentioned regarding the cowherd here in the US and possible reasons for the leather not being so great etc. Some of it didn't sound right to me as a cattleman so I did some research. Yes the cowherd in the US is at its lowest numbers since the 1950s. However, numbers of cattle slaughtered and slaughter weights have remained the same over the last ten years which is up considerably from the 50s. So we as cattleman are more efficient, takes fewer cows to produce more calves to grow to slaughter weight, better vaccines, medicines just better husbandry over all is what that tells us. Cattle are not being slaughtered earlier, the average slaughter weight has remained the same. If I sell a 5 month old calf it doesn't go to slaughter. When I sold my good, young 4 year old cows because of the drought they didn't go to slaughter, they went to Nebraska because they had a good year there, more grass then they knew what to do with. I know I checked with the brand inspector. That what happens in a drought, somebody who has grass buys cattle from somebody who doesn't have grass. Big outfits will have ranches in several different states to mitigate this. Largest ranch around here just shipped all their cattle to OR. They'll come back in Nov. Point is according to the USDA which tracks all this and published this info, tanneries are basically getting the same hides they've been getting nothing has changed except QC perhaps? Interestingly when I looked up all the stats the USDA's figures were confirmed by the...SPCA. Which got this sceptic thinking why does the SPCA track cattle slaughter figures?? Maybe someone wants us to go out for a brocolli not a steak and not play with leather..... I see a conspiracy, pass out the tinfoil hats to keep the neurontic rays away from our heads!
