Aged black California Slim Jim

[Graveyard Jack]

Been wanting to see how an aged black holster would turn out for a long time. I swapped a blued steel grip frame with Uberti ivory polymer onto my 1851 and thought it the perfect time to find out. There's one in Packing Iron that looks like it's darkened so much with age that it looks black but the incised carving is reddish, probably from red rot. Unintentional, it's a beautiful effect. My solution was to first dye it reddish chestnut brown, dry it out more with acetone, then lightly dye it black, wrinkle it up and rub it back. I decided to do a square throat pattern like the one made infamous by Frank James and that represents a challenge with the stamping pattern. I decided to put a big rosette at the top of the throat and a quadruple border stamp with two of my favorite patterns, the snake belly inner and the two petal outer, which I did somehow manage to crowd up to the stitching. Others may disagree but I think the result is spectacular.

Good thing I finished it up yesterday morning because at 4pm I chopped the end of my pinky finger almost completely off, bone and all. They reattached it but it'll be a while before I can do any more. Sure makes it hard to type.

[Abilene]

I doubt anybody would disagree with "spectacular" !!  Wow!

But YIKES!  Best of luck healing!!

[Major 2]

I very much like your effort. agreed "spectacular" is the right word.

I hope you regain full sensitivity   

[Coffinmaker]

  Graveyard 

I'm no leather crafter by any means.  I do however, think "SPECTACULAR" to be quite appropriate.  That is one very SPECTACULAR holster.  That grip set don't look too shabby neither   

[Marshal Will Wingam]

That's very striking. That was a good use of the dyes to get that effect. Congrats.

Glad to hear you were able to get that finger tip attached. It'll be a while before it's fully usable but that will just take time. Congrats on that procedure, too.