Everything we sell that is leather is handmade. What exactly does that mean?
For us, it means minimal use of industrial equipment. We have a sewing machine. Currently, only one item has a machine sewn stitch, the pilgrim bag. Everything else is hand sewn. With two needles and thread.
What else? All of the stitch holes are punched by hand. Sometimes we use a punch that lets us punch more than one hole at a time. And sometimes we mount it in this goofy tool holder that limits hand fatigue. But each hole came from a human moving a hand.
Those pieces of leather? Each one is cut by hand. Kimmie likes X-Acto type knives, George prefers a Stanley type knife (actually the Milwaukee version because he couldn’t find his Stanley).
Altogether, it means each piece is unique. Is that a fancy way of saying ‘we screw up’? Only partially! It means that we are only human. Our medium for our ‘art’ is organic. It means that you get something that nobody else on the face of the earth will have. And with care, it will last a long time.
Almost every piece has our logo and company name on it (applied by hand). Those initials are us. Two people just trying to share and sell some stuff we find cool. Our name being on it means we believe we did the best we could for you.
Let me let you in on a secret: we can find fault with everything we make. My daily wear hat is fantastic. But I made it before I started learning how to pick the right part of the hide. It’s a wrinkled, lumpy mess. But everyone I ever ask about it just thinks it’s some ‘patina’ or break in. And it is! But it’s not what I saw in my mind when I printed that pattern. Take a look at the military backpacks. The flap on the black one got cut three times before I stopped screwing it up (much). And just the other night we had a ‘spirited spousal discussion’ about some rivets that weren’t quite right. Rivets can be annoying. Ultimately, the product was dismantled and we started again.
Which is all a way of saying that we won’t knowingly ship or sell something that is bad. But what you receive might not look 100% like the picture on the site. Each hide is different. Each product is different, because it came out of our home shop from our hands.
(Ok, I gotta be honest. We don’t make metal products. So all of the buckles and rivets and snaps and flasks are items we sourced.)