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Needed something historically accurate to hold my cutlass and saw one online for $120 that had unfinished edges. So I thought, “Why don’t I just make a better one for a fraction of the cost?”

A relative of mine, a couple years back, walked the medieval pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago, from Le Puy, France to Santiago de Compostella, Spain (2 1/2 months of nearly daily hiking, all on foot, about 1500 km). So this summer, I made her a commemorative bag, similar to the one the medieval pilgrims used, as pictured in art like this: And here's my version: I used some red-brown chrome tanned leather (picked up at a Tandy clearance sale) for the bag, and some thick tooling leather for the flap. The tooled design is a scallop shell, the symbol of St. James. The golden shell and blue background are used as trail markers across the Camino. That's Angelus light blue and gold acrylic paint on the front flap. 3 coats of SuperShene on the flap, too. The edges are coated with Fiebeing's Edge Kote in black. The closer hardware is from Ohio Travel Bag. They have a LOT of cool hardware! The tassels are handmade (wrapped with black thread and gold wire)-- see close-up here: I am very pleased with my stitching -- I used a 3 mm Japan Goods stitching chisel. I used Natural waxed linen thread for the bag and Blue waxed linen at the top of the blue flap. Other stitching used Red waxed linen. Both the Red and Blue thread are from Royalwood, Ltd. in Ohio (see their website here:<https://www.royalwoodltd.com/>) There is a cloth liner inside, using hand-printed fabric which features the shell motif and the St. James cross: Even the strap hangers keep the shell motif (using Fiebing Mahogany to get that red-brown color): I learned a LOT from making this bag. The full story of the bag (with work-in-progress pictures) is located at my website, here: <http://djole.altervista.org/djole/Publications/Leather/Camino Bag/CaminoBag.htm> The strap is not done yet -- I didn't have enough time to finish it before giving to the new owner. I'll get the measurements and make that later on.

Hello, I'm looking for a leatherworker based in the UK or who can ship to the UK, to provide an order of all leather bucklers, at least two in the first instance and possibly more. Purple Heart Armoury used to produce an all leather buckler, but have since discontinued them. My club used these for HEMA training, but all of our kit has gone missing and we're now looking to resupply, and Purple Heart Armoury was the only supplier I am aware of, so now we're looking to commission some. A buckler is appromixately 15" diameter circle, with an outward facing "boss" as shown in the image, which covers a hand grip hole in the main face of the shield across which a grip is attached. In the pieces we had from PHA this was entirely made of leather, including the grip, but was solid and sturdy (we used them for sparring and they held up perfectly well to solid strikes from wooden training weapons) The leather construction was perfect for us as it allowed for controlled contact in our sparring, which is not very practical with the more readily available wood and steel or hard plastic varieties. So, what we're looking for is basically a 15" disc with a central cutout, boss and grip, for training purposes. The leather must be stiff and solid enough for moderate contact martial arts practice. The grip doesn't have to be leather but it seemed to work well on the ones we had. From memory there was stitching around the rim so I assume the main shield portion was constructed of layers of leather. The key is that the central convex boss section was solid but not hard, so the buckler could be used to strike at the head and body so long as the strikes are pulled, without the risk of serious injury as would be the case with wood or steel. If anybody thinks they could produce these for us, or if you have any further questions, please contact me - alchemicalsolution at yahoo.com

Poster from the National Archives