Jesse James

[JohnBarton]

This is the last one for a while because the next ones are just in the design phase. The name Jesse was on my mind because of our new daughter and me being an outlaw in cue cases of sorts (at least it's better for my ego to think of myself this way than just plain obnoxious and stubborn), and the fact that the case reminds me of saddles and holsters all came together to name this one Jesse James. Is it a bit pretentious to name your pieces?

[pete]

nice effect! who does your tooling? Is he overseas or do you have them sent?

pete

[TomSwede]

That is just awesome John!!!

Very nice overall effect and the details is very nice too. The basketweaving fits in perfect and I really like the effect you got with the backgrounder.

Tom

[JohnBarton]

nice effect! who does your tooling? Is he overseas or do you have them sent?

pete

The way it works in my shop is that we discuss a concept that I want to do and the toolers come back to me with drawings of how they see the concept and then I will either choose the one I like best and let them run with it or I will add in my thoughts as to what I want to see or I will scrap everything and start over if nothing fits my vision.

For this case the tooling was done by another shop and they sent me the design files and I approved them and let them run with it. I like working with this company because they are very expressive in their work. When I first contracted them almost two years ago they were turning in creative but very sloppy work. After long discussions they are finally doing work that is acceptable to me on almost all levels.

For cases that are tooled in our shop Zhen Hai Lee signs them as he is here with me. For cases that are tooled elsewhere I encourage signatures but if they don't come with one then they don't.

Besides our in house staff I have three other shops that I work with to get my tooling done. I can't wait to show you all another case we are doing with some cool filigree done by one of those shops.

But that will be a while.