To the Makers of Things, Show us what you do!

More for the aficionados of the West!

So what can a maker do with a buffalo robe?

I had a guy contact me. He'd been by the shop a couple of times before as he'd dropped off some knives for me to make sheaths for. Bout as far away from a cowboy type as a guy could get. Looked more like an OG, (old gangsta), right out of prison, even had tats on his ear lobes. He asked me if I could make a pair of woolies. Woolies are a type of chap with wool or hair on them. They can be several different types of chaps and can be made with bout any kind of fur or hair. He was asking about a pair of shotgun woolies. I asked him why he was interested in a pair and he said he loved watching the old westerns as a kid growing up and always admired the wooly chaps sometimes worn. He asked what types wool I had used in the past and I'd told him bear hide and buffalo. He said he wanted a pair of buffalo. We calculated prices and came up with a figure. Just a craft grade buffalo hide was gonna be about a $1,000. Well he really was interested because he brought me his entire stimulus check as a down payment. So here's what we came up with:

I was able to source a buffalo hide from a place in Wy that specializes in tanning farm raised buffalo hides. It was a much nicer hide than any I'd worked with before. I can't believe that I didn't take a pic of it all laid out before I started cutting but it doesn't seem that I did. So this was a pair of shotgun woolies. When making a pair of shotgun type woolies you are basically making a regular pair of shotgun chaps and then sewing the hide to the front. My daughter was the approx size of the customer so she was our model. Got to give her credit as these are designed for winter and it wasn't. It was hot that day!

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He chose a cool color combo:

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The customer was ecstatic! Any hide left over he asked? Can ya make me a pair of wooly wrist cuffs? Now I'd seen pics of these but had never seen a pair of wooly wrist cuffs before, in person. I'd made regular cuffs before but not woolies. I mean what do they do? Anyhoo, I made them:

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The customer is ecstatic again! Do we have any hide left over? What else can we make? How about a pair of saddle bags. I'd made quite a few pairs of saddlebags over the years but never a pair of wooly ones. They were a thing in old California and were often made of griz hide. So I found a bunch of pics on the internet and studied em for a while and came up with this:

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He liked the saddlebags so much he said how bout a purse for the wife. My resident purse maker Nichole flat refused to work with the buffalo on one of her purses as it really complicates things. So we came up with a simple flap purse idea. Basically half a saddle bag:

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My niece, a college design student, built this pic for me as she was intrigued by the whole deal.

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Guy wanted me to build him a wooly top hat but that was above my pay grade! He says he's saving up to come back and do everything again but in bear hide instead of buffalo. Been a while, I think maybe the wife reined him in.
 
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Really cool! Bocote makes a nice knife handle. I traded a luthier years ago and had a pretty big board of the stuff. Mostly gone now. We’ll have to source some more
 
J. Doyle said:
I made this caddis fly sculpture out of damascus with argentium silver legs and bronze antennae for part of a Christmas present.
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Oh man this is ridiculously awesome! If you ever need a buyer for something like that let me know. As a kid I remember seeing critters, trucks and tractors made out of nuts and bolts in old timers shops. This takes that to a whole new level.
 
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