Finished the bandolier

[Mungo]

We were discussing authentic old west bandoliers in the holster section, and I decided to make one. It’s not perfect by any means, but it is at least serviceable. It is 66” in length with fifty .44-.40 loops. I used a buckle on it because at least some bandoliers had them. I saw some that did not. Some were short and some were long in the period photos I saw. I did go ahead and use hollow rivets, but I used two between each loop instead of one. I incised a simple botanical pattern rather than fully carved -and- stamped designs because many of the old holsters  and leather goods used similar techniques. Most of the period bandoliers appeared to have  had no decoration at all. I didn’t spend a lot of time on the edges because I just wasn’t interested in that for this project. The dye is the Tandy antique gel and sealed with Sno-Seal. 

Mods; if my photo sizes are too large, just delete or whatever else you need to do. I could not figure out how to make them smaller.

[maxdaddy]

Wow that's a lot of rivets! :-).   Seriously, that looks great.

[Mungo]

Thanks max. I got a painful case of bursitis from hammering all those rivets. I’ll be getting a hand press for sure.

[Bawarrior]

Nice job

[malabar]

Stitches will work a whole lot better than rivets. Of course, that much stitching might aggravate the bursitis, as well.

 

tk