JLSleather

WAIT .. So now you DON"T want to post pics of the GOOD stuff?

shot it down? I was the ONLY one said that's a good idea But tugadude has actually come up with a better one maybe. instead of introducing another middle man, this idea would ELIMINATE it all, right? Everybody show us the great leather they got there, and tell us the STOCK number they purchased so we can all get the same thing. So then: We'll all be using great leather, and we'll have nothing to complain about, and SLC will be too busy counting money to care what anybody thinks. WINS all around !

Agreed. Very polite, usually good sense of humor. But, I sell leather, not jokes. Maybe that's not always true for everybody. Do you order top grade tooling leather? Cuz tugadude has convinced me that we ABSOLUTELY SHOULD post the great leather we got there. C'mon... I'm VOCAL as they get... MAKE ME SAY SOMETHING GOOD ... I'll DO IT.

THAT"S a good idea. Lets see ALL the great leather received from SLC. Now, not sure WHY you want to turn it into a thread about SLC... the POINT was LEATHER on a LEATHER site. MANY - even on this "leather" site - have no idea what good leather should look like. So - let's go your route... SHOW US that great stuff you got from there, and then we'll ALL KNOW what good leather looks like, and we'll ALL KNOW that it should be obtained from SLC. GREAT call -- let's do this Meanwhile, my customers KNOW that I don't "accidentally" ( or otherwise ) send them ... poo ... and then "fix" it IF they complain about it. Some might send poop to 100 people, at 50% over cost. 95 people don't know better, so they made 50% markup 95% of the time. SO if they "make it right" to the other 5% who DOES know better, it's not like they're OUT anything. Same as insurance - I've paid insurance so many years that if my car was destroyed and they replaced it they'd just be giving me back a sliver of a percentage of MY OWN MONEY. _________________________________ STRANGE part here is, some people can't see somebody trying to HELP YOU. IF somebody was yelling that you should get out of the street cuz there's a car coming, I guess some would be upset cuz that bald guy is YELLIN AT ME I already told that girl at SLC DO NOT send me a replacement. DO NOT swap another piece. PUH LEEZE do not send me more leather. That's a done deal, and if SLC wants to remove me from their 'list' and not sell me Chaylor interiors (which are quite nice actually) and dyes and buckles.. fair enough. Whatever. No need to talk at length about the meter of snake hide that was actually 17" long (get it?.. "at length"), or the elephant that had so many holes you could ready the paper through it But what you seem to ignore,... this is not about SLC.. it's about GOOD LEATHER and WHERE TO GET IT. Does that seem like something people on a LEATHER SITE might be interested in? I mean, leather people.. not just the ones who are lonely and don't want to get out the chair and go DO something. SO BY ALL MEANS.... Lets see ALL the great leather received from SLC. The irony here is, had that leather been acceptable, I would have finished my coffee and been off lining and sewing that customer's order - wouldn't be here at all!

Yeah, now that you mention it. Been a few years, I think his mother was straw boss back then. If I remember right, I ended up with a couple sides of "A".. I ordered ONE, and for some reason it went to OR instead of IA... tracking wouldn't even show up for days. When I called, she sent me another one, told me I could send that first one back at her expense if it showed up. Long story cut, it did show up and it was nice leather, so I just paid for and kept it. Downside being, it was $300/side. That's a 50% markup, which is a bit extreme (HO from HO is right around $200/side). But, it was clean, firm leather, and GOOD leather at $300 is far better than BAD leather at $225-250. That's like, we could sell you this perfectly good car, or for $50 less we could sell you this one that doesn't run But we mostly got leather FROM HO, so didn't need to pay that markup. For those times we need a piece or two, maybe should contact them again.

Well, I don't see those banners. Musta turned it off good while back. DOn't remember how to put it back, nor care. But it's a bit hard to see selling me "C" leather at $16/foot as a "favor" even if they'll cut me one foot Whatever.. apparently works for the 'hobbyist' who is not on a time table and doesn't really give a hoot if it's the good stuff. Or more likely, doesn't know any better. My mistake - I find myself frequently attempting to educate those who don't want to know (silly eh?). While I appreciate humor (really!) that looks like a management issue to me. Well done, that would show 3 piles, all smaller and more manageable. The piles would have been previously sorted by .. oh, let's say ... the number of defects per square foot (meter if you folks prefer). We could come up with a name for it.. like in America people might call it "grades" or some such There'd be no "digging through the pile" because all of that pile would be the right ones plus/minus a mark or two. Just spitballin' here, clearly.

We dont know. Just whatever ya do DO NOT read this one. Nope.

Well let me say thanks for that, with the caveat ... I will not tell my customers 'here's some low end, less than what you paid for goods... it all has to move". If I got it from a supplier that way, that's who I need to take it up with (not the customer). This hide free of charge saves them some shipping charges back (which they paid), but doesn't aid me. There was no part of it i wanted to use, so free doesn't help. Kinda like being punched in the eye - just cuz it's free doesn't make a guy want another one. My issue at the moment is that order WILL go out RIGHT, but it WONT go out ON TIME. MY FAULT for letting that weight get down to cutting it that close, so I'm gonna bear that. In the end, I don't mind paying MORE than i pay at HO in exchange for the storage space and convenience. But I need the leather to look like that picture of the stuff I get from HO. I've always been clear about what I want - top shelf stuff ALWAYS. Pretty simple to just say you don't have that if you don't have that. It IS a good theory, I'll say that.

See, IF a guy was shopping ANYWAY - he might pick out some hides fer the next guy. Just have em sent right from the store, so there's no "trouble" there. Only thing is, you'd have to know who's doin' the pickin'. No offense, but i met some folks who wouldn't recognize a snake if it bit 'em... and maybe shouldn't be pickin' leather And THAT was the point of the topic from the beginning. Some folks DONT KNOW what good leather should look like, so the plan was to show 1) what the good stuff looks like and 2) what is unacceptable and you should not tolerate. In the end, though.. that's a retailer's JOB. I can't imagine I'd be in business very long if I showed people a picture of a shiny, well-fitted holster and 'fancy smancy" tooled belt, then took their money and sent them .... something other. Not really somebody ELSE'S job to see that i do mine. I'm pretty clear.. and I always say I don't mind PAYING premium as long as I'm GETTING premium.

Off the path, but I see my "allow others to follow you" thingie was turned back on - don't know when or how that happend. Long time ago I turned it off when I realized that sensitive freak in CA was "following" me... and talkin' like we wuz buddies posting posts in a clear attempt to make it look like I was endorsing what he says. I had a couple dozen "followers" before I even knew you could do that here (that's how little I pay attention to that type of thing). I personally don't follow nobody.. so if it don't happen in that little thing in the top right of the forum for most recent stuff, I probly won't see it. Anyway, I haven't ordered at Hermann Oak in 2020, so likely that's the issue. So we'll see if something changed THAT MUCH of if leather from teh tannery still looks like this ↓

Stable base, generous fit, room to grip, taper to the bottom, nice color... it's a WIN

Is that sewn on? Looks like ya gotter

Well, that's significantly understated, but okay. The shoulder is AN area of problems, but it's not the only one it's just the one under the best light. The whole skin is dry and stiff, and toward the butt the thickness drops off from .069" (which BTW is over 4 oz) to .053" in a little over a foot (that's pretty steep to me). There's a splotch about where the hip would be which may be ink-- size of a quarter maybe. I would have taken other pics but didn't want to manipulate it to the other (better light) table, and it's now packaged for return. It's rough... you'll immediately wonder, as I did, how that was ever sent out as "B". I guess we just disagree on what is acceptable tooling leather. So, let's clarify a bit. The point here is not to bash anybody, but to INSTRUCT people interested in working with leather. The point of this site, yes? Rusty, Kevin, Amanda, and a couple others I talked with about "things' in the past are all certainly polite - nobody suggesting they aren't. Had I received that same hide from Hermann Oak, I would have had the same reaction to it. Tiffany ROCKS. Give that girl a raise. Very professionally handled a call that could not have been wonderful fun. Seriously - KEEP that girl if you can. Tony is correct. Certainly not the first bad batch I've got there. To continue to do it doesn't pay either of us. Idunno if I'd DRIVE down... since St Louis is 100+ miles closer for us, doesn't much pay to 'stop in' 100 miles FURTHER to pay 50% MORE unless I happened to be down that way already. I don't mind paying the extra for the convenience (of picking up one side here and there) but if this is what the mail brings, that's not convenient. Today, I'm writing this because I'm not lining and sewing that holster, but it only backs us up worse.

Fiebing's antique STAIN (not the antique FINISH) is water based. ANybody ever seen what happens when it FREEZES? Me neither, I'm askin' YOU. I've used some with okay results, but not sure about ordering it mid-winter.

Okay, changed the plan. I did call, and they did say they'd process a return. Likely would have swapped it out for another piece, too, I'm guessing had I asked.. but no more time to wait on "stuff". Thanks - haven't tried them ever. I'll check that out. Likely should just buy a bigger splitter, and just deal with the tannery.

Okay with me. I was talking to the other guys. You don't. Click a button, you be somewhere else, just that quick. I was talking to those who WANT to know. If that isn't you, feel free to ignore. No doubt, there are many sucked in with a line. Hey.. look at this part of this hide. It says "D" grade, but from right here to right here.. this 4.87" right in there is great.. should be called "A" leather in this 4 tenths of a square foot right between this gouge and those bites.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L7DxnwkiVs

So any warranty is ... WHAT?@!

10 I think, but that has to be a single weight. 20 to mix weights. So expect to spend $1800 or more. Course, it's better leather, it's $8 per foot, and it's all shipped together so you pay far less shpping than if you bought one or two at a time. Wickett-Craig tells me "come on out!"... honestly I do not get AT ALL why people who LIVE IN PA order leather from somewhere else.

Generally what I do. You're in St. Louis? Man, just walk across the street to Hermann Oak . "A" grade leather at right around $8 per foot. Drive up the path a bit and pick up dyes, finish, lining leathers... all from S-T Leather where you can walk in and pic it! I need to rearrange a bit to allow for doing that myself. There are only a couple of people I would trust to do that in my stead, and they're generally busy too. Haven't flown for a while, but I'm guessing a ticket isn't much more than the cost of ONE crap side of leather. I did some shopping - I think about every place ever mentioned on this site - so that when people ask where THEY should shop I can give an intelligent answer (FAR too much of this site is "shucks, I don't know BUT here's some words anyway...."). I want to know MYSELF, and it would be good to be able to actually KNOW when others ask. I guess I'm the "odd man out" -- I tend to give an honest review. If your work sucks, honest may not be what you're looking for. So this is an information about suppliers thread, eh? I've ordered veg leather from most if not all of the 'retailers' mentioned around here. Most of the time, that was clearly a bad idea. I'd say something about it, somebody would recommend another place, and in the end I'd get pretty much the same thing. So the question "why not just buy the good stuff then" is absolutely correct. That IS the point here. It's naive to say that these places are selling you what "the tannery graded". There are a lot of people - here on this site and others - who have ONLY seen this type of leather, and therefore think that this is NORMAL.. that it's supposed to be that way. It isn't. At the risk of being long-winded, a couple of the "stories" One guy I called late last year (different source) and asked for ONE side of 4/5 Hermann Oak A grade. One of the few places that offers "A". And from the start, it was like the guy was trying to talk me OUT of "A" grade. I don't mind paying top price as long as I'm getting top shelf stuff. What are you making with it? WHAT DOES it matter? Do you sell HO "A" or not? This side I want for lining tooled belts and inside of some holsters... SO WHAT? Why dont you buy "economy", since nobody will see it anyway? WELL I WILL SEE IT. I WILL KNOW. Now, WHY would a salesman go out of the way to sell you LESS than what you asked for? I could get it if they were OUT at the moment. Maybe should have just hung up the phone right then. But, they sent me ONE side. It's not bad, but it's certainly NOT "A", and it was certainly marked up. Call it relatively inexpensive lesson -- use what I can from that hide and don't go back. So another guy asked me about getting decent leather, just buying a side or two (under HO minimum order). SO I told him this ONLY piece I ever ordered from this place was "okay, but not A". So he ordered a side -- and the piece he got was HORRENDOUS. When he complained, the guy told him they "don't know how that happened". TIP: It happened because THAT is what you stock! Another place, I had never shopped there but people here seemed to like them. So to stick my toe in the water, I ordered two sides and two oblong punches. The leather was NOT the HO "B" advertised and the punches didn't punch (and I whopped em pretty good). Scratch off the list.. never been back. And I could go on, but what point? Yeah, I'm beyond the "could have been an honest mistake" thing. Its routine there, and has been for years. I don't think they're losing any money, though. The markup is high, and as long as they have a steady stream of people willing to buy the basement grade with a significant profit, why stock the real stuff eh? (I don't know that's the mentality, but there is some support for that). It should be very simple. I have ONE grade of product. If it isn't top shelf, it gets destroyed and replaced. That SHOULD be the case everywhere, but I get that it isn't. Some people WANT the Ford - fair enough. WHY buy a Porsche to get groceries, right? But when they call wanting and willing to pay for the Porsche, WHY would you send the Ford? Maybe, because you have a line of people who think that Ford is some of the best available... and if you get one that knows better, just "make it right"... you're hardly out anything if you marked up the first 100 fords... I'm neither learning anything or gaining anything by typing all this. I could complain around here all day long, nobody would care. But that wouldn't HELP OTHER folks at all.

Yeah, they've taken hides back before. At some point, ya hafta wonder, .. WHY go through that? If I order from somebody, they send it, I don't like it, I send it back... so basically I just wasted a week er 10 days. If it happens ONCE, could be a mistake. Maybe the new kid in shipping was confused. If it happens 3 times in 10, that's a trend. And when it happens 7 in 10, that's a POLICY. I'll say that I HAVE received some usable leather from SLC, which is why I have given 'em so many opportunities to fly straight. But never got a piece from there that looked like the leather I get from Hermann Oak. Which is pretty sad considering this lower grade stuff is sold at 50% ABOVE the cost of the good stuff. My fault - I knew and jumped in anyway. I blame.. ME. So, just offering information. The money I lose is well spent, actually, to get the project out the door to the customer when I said I would. Integrity worth more than a few bucks. Sadly, few see it that way these days.

Whatcha think? Does SLC NOT KNOW what Hermann Oak "B" looks like, or do they THINK I DONT" know? I've called and complained enough times that I just wont do it again... it's pointless and only wastes more of my time. The entire shoulder area looks like road kill, and at SLC prices that's about $60-70 of landfill material. Oh, well - -the guy buying those shoulders I had for sale can have this... decide if he wants to use it (which I doubt) or maybe use it as a door mat for people to wipe their feet when they come in. This is a closer-up. Click to zoom, and i'll let the pics speak. Fortunately, I needed a bit of this to line a holster, and the area to the right of that big crease across the whole piece will let me get that project done. Course, couple hunnert $ for a piece to complete a $100 order doesn't seem to work out so good in the long run This isn't the first time, by far. Only posting this so that others, particularly the 'new guy', can see what leather is SUPPOSED TO look like. I have some other pics of materials I've ordered if you want to swap horror stories, but meanwhile let me show you what HERMANN OAK calls "B" grade leather. THIS is what you should be seeing when somebody tells you "Hermann Oak B".

good thinkin' This aint a 43x, but it is for a glock.- actually bigger'n the 43x. Guy WANTED "full cover" panel on the OUTSIDE. But point here is, if he wanted panel to the INSIDE, that wouldn't change the position of the "reinforcement" piece. Still needed to be under the RIGHT THUMB (a guy could learn how to use the pinky, if he cared to - just most people have stronger and more coordinated thumbs. With yours, you likely wanna make a "lefty", then just put the "reinf piece" on the OTHER side. This puts your "backing plate" on the inside, lets you attach it flush (though you might want to add a "shim" under the screws / stitching / whatever to give him room for grip. Back to workin' ....

This is ROUGH... video thing I tried but didn't like, left handed holster for a guy not left handed, and trying to hold the camera and stay out the lamp all same time S T I L L .... give a guy an idea how easy this should SLIP off Okay, that's not going well. -- I just send it to ya

Is he going to SEPARATE the "plate" from the holster? I mean, as in removable? Cuz if he's gonna use this plate ALL THE TIME, then it's efficient cost and time to simply SEW THROUGH both layers of the "holster" AND the "backing plate" all at once. Lay in on where you want it, sew the whole thing solid. Will keep it from flexing / rotating. Where does your pistol fall on your drawing? That Glock is 5" tall... is your plate gonna be the whole width? Or does the grip stick out past the plate? If he's right handed, you'd likely want the "reinf" piece on the OTHER side (which is a better way of saying what i was trying to describe before).