Sparks

As more of a 'casual' Viking interested person, I found the Viking Answer Ladies web page http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/ a great source of links to scholarly research, images, etc. Lots of info and pics, but likely no patterns per se. Sparks

I have to agree with Military Repro01...Hanover brass is the most outstanding CW buckle company out there. I have several of his buckles...I used to portray a NC soldier, and therefore have NC starburst buttons of his on my 7-button shell jacket, plus a couple/three of his NC State seal two-piece sword buckles. Also picked up one of his Texas star buckles--2-piece sword buckle. His are best because he has outstanding originals and he makes the copies from sandcasts of those buckles...every one a 'first generation' belt buckle. Great guy to work with. Mention my name and you might get a slight nod of recognition...no discounts...just a slight nod of recognition. I send ALL CW reenactors to Gary Williams at Hanover Brass. I love his stuff. And no, I am not paid to say this. Check out the buckles on his page...especially opening some of the thumbnails so you can see the sharp detail of his pieces. Of course, he has northern as well as southern buckles...plus others. The buckles from the various states (including NY, MA, KY, TX, LA, SC and CA) are absolutely outstanding. Sparks

MMArmoury, I really like your belts and Cartridge Boxes and other accouterments. I reenact the period 1785-1790 Berks Co PA. As you would expect, many of my buckles are the same as ones you show. I portray a civilian, but could 'leagally' be in the militia--I think I am barely under the upper age limit. Somehow over the years I ended up w/ a baldrick. Of course, they don't put bayonets on Early Lancaster rifles (1780s vintage copy) or same-era fowlers. My fowler is a 12-gauge, which might be a bit large for the time period 'normal.' At any rate, welcome aboard! I look forward to seeing more of your stuff. I think I'll photograph my shooting bags and pocket birdshot dispenser (w/ an Irish charger head). Sparks

Hopefully your customer wants a FLYREEL case. Those are easy, relatively speaking. It's a short cylinder, big enough for the reel to lay in plus room for part that attaches to the rod. The ones I have are zippered around maybe 85% of the cylinder (it's the round side that opens up). Sparks

I can't seem to find that "control board" you were talking about in your message to me. Somehow it's no clicking. Sparsk Name: johanna UserName: Sparks IP Address: 24.117.243.203 Email Address: jstone228@gmail.com

abn, Thanks so much for the tip on when to go to Williamsburg. I'm a member of their organization and get their magazine. I went to high school a couple years in Prince George County (VA), and while living there visited Wmsbrg a couple times...both in late spring I believe. That was about 1967. One of these days we'll get back there for a visit, and I appreciate your tip on timing. Sparks Horsewreck and Luke, Thanks for the welcome. Sparks

Thought I'd take a moment to introduce myself. I live in Boise, ID, and do some Colonial style reenacting these days. I have been doing a few projects since being introduced to leather craft in the 70s. Mostly just getting my feet wet until I started doing historical reenacting and needing some leather goods. Many of the goods were not outside the scope of my abilities, and I did pretty fair. Then, on another forum, I got to know Luke Hatley. Luke gives me tips and has answered my questions. Luke would probably agree my ability has noticeably improved since he started 'mentoring' me. He introduced me to this site, and now I have gone and introduced myself! Every new project seems to have some of the basics (stitching, cutting, patterning, etc.) along with something new (setting snaps--first one I ever set on a project was the snap on my cell phone case in the gallery). I've done knife sheaths, shooting bags, and bullet bags--among other things. I've never been one for tooling leather, other than edging and diagonal lines. I've married a fiber artist who likes doing things the 'old way,' including drop spindle spinning flax and cotton, using spinning wheels (we own three--last count), knitting, dyeing with traditional chemicals, etc. She even used to get the oldest printed knitting books she could find and then do facing page pairs...one side the way it was written originally and the other the modern 'translation.' That's more chore than it sounds, because the language for such basic tasks as 'yarn over' has been called and/or described at least five different ways over the years. An extra added challenge is that women would write up the patterns, but the typesetters didn't know sic-um about knitting. So they'd drop lines of text and sometimes even paragraphs that the editors couldn't catch because they didn't know sic-um about knitting either. She solved that by knitting the patterns as the description as things went along until it didn't make sense, then skip ahead to where it made sense again and then look at the pattern and see what was missing. (She's got all the engineering skills in this household!). Our two hobbies dovetail nicely, with her knowing textiles from materials to sewing styles and me knowing the firearms histories of the Colonial/US 18th century. Sparks