conchos on straps

[pete]

Here's the straps that I made the other night. Not apologizing or making excuses but I only spent about 3 hours total on both of them. Not my best carving or fabrication but I wanted to see how my old conchos would look.

This is the BICK'S experiment that I posted the other day. Bick's and Br. Tan then antique right away. The whole "finishing" process took about 6 minutes.

By the way. is there anyone out there who might give me a rough estimate on the conchos? I swapped a popper and mecate for them in the 60's. Just HAD to have them. They are stamped Visalia Saddle CO. San Francisco, CA inside. I[m old enough to remember the company there when I was growing up and starting to show western pleasure and trail contests

Any comments would be appreciated

pete

[freak]

I gotta tell ya i think those turned out great. After hearing the story about the conchos i'de have to say they are priceless.

I 've found some similar on ebay

Like these

Or these

I'de hold on to 'em and put one of those on there.

[pete]

thanks for the comments! I think that they turned out pretty well myself!

Ths conchos are sterling and 14 ct. gold. The knock-offs are nice but these sould be in a museum.

Anyone know if Visalia is still around?

pete

[pete]

One of the things that I tried on this project was something that I read about tooling. I believe Mr. Moody wrote that he traces and cuts his patterns but then backgrounds BEFORE he bevels. He said that it looked better to give more relief to the design and make it stand out better than the other way around. Makes the pattern stand out from the background to have the beveling give room between it and the backgrounder.

Any one else do this????

I've always beveled and then back-grounded.

pete