Mexican Shading

[BareBonesLW]

Hi All,

I've had a Mexican made gunbelt and holster for a number of years and have decided to make a companion crossdraw holster. I'm trying to copy the tooling style as closely as possible and cannot seem to figure out how they have added texture in the area where one would normally use a pear-shader. I've attached a couple of pictures. Anyone have any ideas about what tools and how to use them in order to get that effect?

[oltoot]

Closest thing currently available would be a feather vane tool and grind it down lengthwise for size match. You probably don't want to go to this much trouble but Barry King or Clay Miller could make you a custom stamp to match exactly if you sent them a pencil rubbing.

[WyomingSlick]

I am totally at a loss as to why you would wish to reproduce this typical Mexican commercial speed pattern. As for the shading, it is done by using two tools from the look of it. First, it was shaded using a pretty much convential thumbprint shader (probably homemade), and then a bar stamp (also home-made) was used over that.

That is kind of an interesting effect that the tooler produced by deliberately chopping his beveling. I can see where doing that would add a lot to reducing tooling time.

[BareBonesLW]

WyomingSlick

I completely agree that the rig exhibits what most of us would call "sloppy" tooling. I'm really just trying to make a companion holster and probably won't use the style again.

However, in the manufacturer's defense, that style of floral tooling does have have a ton of texture. Not going to win any awards but for western gear I think it looks pretty authentic.

Thanks for the info. I agree that the basic stamp looks like an overlapped pear/thumb shader. Hadn't considered a bar stamp for the crisscross accents so I'll give that a try!