chuck123wapati

thanks! very interesting info seems the cheap labor prison workforce business was nationwide back in the day!

beautiful!! great work on those initials!

lol yea from all the places he is said to have been he woulda wore out a dozen horses a year and never got any robbing done. Cool story there!

Very interesting indeed. when the first state prison was built here, the wardens were usually business men of some type and would set up and fund businesses and were legally able to use inmate labor at that time and pay them very little. Our fist pen had a broom shop that made the old grass brooms . later another warden started a shirt factory. I think maybe that type of prison work was what you ran into.

Old Butch is a local hero villian in these parts and rode this country frequently , my family homesteaded in the little snake river valley where he came through often and all the people knew him and the wild bunch. Years ago my dad was working for the museum out there and had the fortune of getting to clean up an old Winchester rifle that had been given to a local by Butch, It was a 38 40 if I remember right and I helped him clean it up for display man that was one sweet rifle, it is still on display out there and if you are ever in this neck of the woods go to their museum you wont regret the trip.https://www.littlesnakerivermuseum.com/home

lol that's funny and I don't doubt it a bit.when I first hired on one of my jobs was to take inmates and put in the Constantine wire around the facility as it had none at all , we had a few escapes by inmates cutting the fence wire before that, after we just followed the blood trail. once a bunch of em even tried to tunnel out like in the great escape lol the old tunnel is still there. Yea folks get kinda twitchy when they find holes in the fence.

Since then we have built another medium security prison, it has all the vocations there, as well here in the high security prison there is still welding, carpentry, and a textiles area where they make all the clothes for the system as well as machine embroidered stuff a huge kitchen and bakery, laundry etc. At the honor farm same thing but they also tame and sell wild horses and have a fire crew that fights forest fires.

did I say shank instead of tang? Freudian mistake on my part doh sorry. I think you will find a flat tang, its very hard to get a flat ferrule over a round tang so the hard part is getting a slot in a piece of wood, the way I do it is I take a piece of over size rectangular stock and use drill bits the same thickness as my tang and use my drill press to drill a line of holes the right thickness to the right depth, then clean out in between the holes as best as I can with a hand drill and the same bit. then I heat my tang and burn out the rest of the crap in the slot but you don't want to heat your tang its already been tempered and you could easily ruin it so I would take another piece of metal and make it the same size and shape and use it to burn out the slot . After that I would file or grind some notches in the tang to better hold the epoxy and glue it up and tap it on with a hammer from the butt end of the handle. You can either shape the handle after final install or before but you have to cut the groove in first so you can shape the handle correctly, true and straight with the blade. Or you can do like I did this blade with two pieces of maple, its easier to cut the groove in both pieces but much harder to get it centered to look right as well you have to pin it to the tang, as shown in the pic, and that may require hardened bits if the tang has been hardened and tempered also, I use the above method much more often than this way.

yw! lol good luck with that thought they would just put you on the maintenance crew.

Nice work and nice idea.

if my calcs are right at 350 rpm lowest setting on your machine your already down to about 44 rpm or 1.3? seconds for one rotation if you foot feed can make it go slower you got made at least for your 3 second goal

Thank you, The base is repurposed oak tongue and groove flooring, the flowers are all original just the photo lighting that day I think lol. My brother found it somewhere, under our folks house I think my dad was a collector of all things old and broken and gave it to me as a project when I first retired it was covered with grime and really pitiful shape. Its a vibrating shuttle machine so took me a while to figure out as I've never seen one before.

Thank you!!

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&id=E618AFFE492134CC8616297774EACC106D31610D&thid=OIP.8EvnKnyx5VSb18E-wHFeQwAAAA&mediaurl=https this is one of two I found online images they seem to be of the same maker with some differences in design but could help you in reproducing the original as you can see how they were made. if you click on the address above the picture it will take you to the ebay page its already been sold but has pictures of the back and inside also.

Handles like these were installed by having a hole or notch cut in them the same size as the shank, tight fit! then the brass piece would be slid on the shank as far as it would go and then the wood would be pressed or hammered on and the resulting expansion of the tight fit would fill the brass piece and it would tighten up. As you can see over the years the handle loosened up and it was driven on deeper causing the brass to tear and the handle to split, to bad whomever didn't soak the handle so it wouldn't have dried out. You can shape the handle with a draw knife, or cut out with a saw and use files, rasps to shape it. You can, once you take it apart and see the shank either try to make a one piece handle by taking another piece of metal the same size and shape as the shank heating it and burning in the slot, then repair the brass and pound it back on with a hammer and finish it . Or you can drill it out, cut some grooves in the shank, so the glue will hold and fill in any extra space with epoxy. Or you can drill a hole in the shank, if its not to hard, drill out the handle wood and epoxy then drive a brass pin through the handle and hole you drilled to better hold the handle. These two thing can be done with basic hand tools. and none would require the brass piece but you can hammer it back into shape and solder the torn edge and put it back on if you like. Curly Maple would be beautiful handle indeed I use it a lot just burn it a bit with a torch to get the grain to stand out, rub down with steel wool then BLO for the finish. Hickory would be good also Cool old knife!!!

Here is a bit of history from my area of Wyoming and probably a little unknow history of the leather trade for you folks to ponder. The leather work of prisoners, I live in the same town as the state penitentiary and it had a long history of leather work reaching back to territorial days. In the early years the prison system was very self sustaining, in that the prisoners would build or make almost everything they used. There was an honor farm that was an actual farm growing all the food and meat for the prisoners. They also made their cloths and of course their shoes also. the prison had a complete shoe shop and the trade, all the trades, was taught to inmates by other inmates as back in the day there were no people working for the system unless they were guards all the work was done by inmate labor and a lead man was appointed to run the various shops, he was in charge of teaching the help and running whatever shop. In the inmates off times they could do hobbies to sell so a lot of them would do leather work or braid horse hair, make small wooden projects etc. Local people could buy this stuff at the front gate of the building, you can google our frontier prison to get a look at it if you like. As a kid I can remember seeing and hearing people talk about the leather work done, I remember the saddle shaped purses were the cats meow back then. Anyway in about 1985 a new prison was built and I went to work there as a maintenance tech, one of the first as prior to this all the work was done by the inmates. Anyway there was room for a number of hobby shops in the new facility so the old timers who had hobbies got the shops, there were buckle making shop a couple leather shops, horse hair braiding, silversmithing, fly tying as well as many inmates still did art and stuff in their cells. There were also trades taught to the inmates , there was an upholstery shop, welding, machine shop, auto mechanics and carpentry shop, employees could take a vehicle in for example and have it totally rebuilt, painted and reupholstered for pennies above the cost of materials.. The frontier prison had a gift shop that was kept open then to the public for selling the hobby work as well many companies hired inmates to tie flies, I could buy a dozen of any type of fly for three bucks and as these boys tied thousands they were GOOOOD flies indeed. The leather work had by that time become very well known as through the years word of mouth made it place to stop if you were traveling through. One fellow, I cant remember his name at the moment had one of the shops and had five or six other inmates working for him, he made thousands of belts bags purses etc, as well as horse hair items hat bands, halters, yes even holsters. They were taken to the gift shop in town and sold there. One of my jobs in the summer was to run a yard crew at the old prison in town so I saw first hand the amount of goods this fellow made an sold. Once a month people would come down from Jackson hole and literally buy every piece of leather and horse hair in the shop. This one shop made over 50 k a year and the inmate owner would send the money to his wife. This all came to an end when three inmates killed an officer trying to escape. All of the hobby shops were shut down and all of the inmates had to ship their stuff out of the prison or have it destroyed. That happened in the 90s and still years after people would call the prison to ask if the leather work or horse hair was still being done. If you google Tom Horn , he was an "enforcer" for the cattle companies, there is a picture of him braiding a rope out of horse hair while in prison.

I have a really nice singer 401 a I know it wont do thick leathers but am wondering if anyone can give me an idea how thick of stuff it will do. Its in perfect shape and I don't want to ruin it on something to thick for it to handle. Any advice is greatly welcomed as I was thinking about a daypack made with leather and oilcloth.

That's one nice rod there for sure ! I may have to get in touch for some pointers on re doing that rod of mine. I love throwing a fly on the miracle mile.

beautiful work on that case but I don't see the handmade rod? Cmon now give us a peek. Just an off hand question I have a couple really old bamboo rods can they be re wound with new thread?

That's a cool old machine now i'm wondering how my old Royal would do. I've restored it but never tried it on leather I do know it'll do about 3/8 inches of fabric. gonna have to give er a go.

lol where I live in Wyoming on, I-80, I have had packages go through my town twice before they get delivered, ups has a main hub in Colo. so any thing goes there first, if its from the west coast it goes through town to Colo. then back. Sometimes UPS will get it here then drop it in our towns mail which now gets sorted in Cheyenne then back again and delivered by USPS. If its fed ex they have a place in SLC so if its from east of me it goes right through town and then back again, once it went from the east coast to Salt Lake then back to Cheyenne then back again to me. Tracking systems are great but life was less stressful when you didn't know this stuff it was just the old 4 to 6 weeks and you were elated when they got to you sooner.

looks to be southwestern or even from Mexico Yes looks to be south western or even from Mexico, the designs in the center are hard to make out but it sure is a cool old wallet. DOH just noticed it says Mexico right on it next to the initials doesn't it?lol.

I like how you created depth in your work. Very nice job!

change the pic keep the memories my baby girl is 38.

nice stuff!! I haven't seen any brown ones if you can find them with no finish and they are plain steel then there is a product called plum brown made by birchwood casey, I believe, for black powder rifle barrel blueing. Very easy to use and makes a nice chocolate brown finish.