Recently I posted a few pics of my current project of the famed McGlemary pouch. This pouch has garnered much attention over the years, there has been examples, renditions and attempts to recreate this pouch. Disclaimer, I do not do bench copies, I only do plausible copies. With this post I would like to delve into the little know facts about this pouch, and before I do there were several kind folks that have added to this work with valuable information that brought me to the conclusion of this piece, They know who they are, and I am in their debt, so thank you.
These are my thoughts and considerations to the whole set.
First up I will give thoughts on the strap. Kerry Masarik made the strap, here work is out of this world, the strap itself is 2.5 inches wide, and from what I understand it was fairly thin. Kerry made it just a touch thicker, but with the same weave design of the original. I cannot go into much detail as Kerry Masarik is the expert on this part, I am hoping that she will lend her thoughts to this post.
The Horn was made by Jeff Bottiger, and Jeff made the horn down to the finest of detail. This is not an easy horn to recreate. The original horn is 16" around the outside and approximately 11" from the base to the tin/leaded tip. There are (10) wooden pins around the base that come approximately .25 down from the horn's edge. The tip is madeof metal, it's been noted that it's made of tin. There is one small metal rivet and then (4) dimple type punch marks to hold the metal together .This is the interesting part there is a 1.2" raised pewter or lead band that butts up to the base of the metal flange. Near the end of the flange on the tip is another lead/pewter band as well.
The straps under close review the texture became apparent that it very closely resembles pig leather for the straps. I experimented with several leathers and the pig leather makes more sense not only to the sturdiness or pig leather but the look is very, very close. Now for the pouch....The pouch in real life is larger than that book and drawing indicate, and it makes total sense once you see the horn and the strap, anything smaller would be very unbalanced and clumsy. The pouch has been note by several people to be "Very Thin" leather, one observation the front fringe work gave the front panel and the pouch itself some rigidity, after using very thin letter it gives a great amount of credit to that thought. The pouch is 9" inches wide and approximately 9.5" inches deep, the leather is quite thin about 2/3 ounce leather. It was noted that it was deer leathr, but the "texture" indicates to me otherwise. The fringes range between 1.75" inches to 2.0" inches in length. The fringes are varigated, they are not all cut straight across, some cuts are angled others in a point and some were cut straight across as well. the amount of fringes were also varigated from 47 to 58 fringes per set... ***Note*** these are only estimates since I could only see what's in a photograph. According to the book it states that the bag was either sewn, or laced with narrow strips of leather. It was noted that the strips of leather were about 1/8 of an inch wide. We do not know the spacing of the lace work. In my piece I used two different types to get the look. I used pig leather on the tighter lace up near the top and dear leather on the panel, both worked well. The flap is a laced and it went very well with the 1/8 wide lacing. Also down at the tip of that flap in the book there is a design of a triangle of sort, the book never states how this was done. once I could examine the pictures under close light it was noted that this was made most likely by a leather tool called a Channler. In my case I used a #0 Channler to replicate the design. When it came to cutting strips for the lace one, could use a straight edge and a sharp knife. I decided to use a common tool called a Australian Strander, you can adjust the width and thickness of your laces, and it makes quick work of the lace making process, It's a mini draw gauge for your finger. This Lacing awl is made for laces, it's quite sharp (don't ask) and it makes sort of a half moon shape hole that lends very well to lacing, and it keeps the slits consistent and tight. The stitching on the pouch I found very crude in some respects, the cordage was thin in places and thicker in others, there was not much consistency. In the original pics I did spy a small saddler's tack used near the side where the strap and front panel meet. The two rings used in the set were one near the horn tip was more oblong than the one that attached the powder measure. The metal was thinner that expected and well rusted.
In the book it did not show a powder measure, in my estimation this was an added item somewhere in it's life. The chain is 10" inches long.
In the end of this process on a pouch such as the Mcglemary Pouch is one worthy of study. To get the true understanding is from the actual pouch. The book gives a nice primer to the pouch, but it did not provide enough detail to fully flesh out the intricate details. It's my hope that the information here provided can add to solutions to the mystery of this piece. It's also noted to this maker that the original maker was well versed in the leather arts. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to drop me a line. Again thank you for those folks that provided insight to their experience with this pouch.....Cheers.
Powder Measure from the Jimmy Allen Collection
Copy by Eric VanAlstine from a Facebook post. Photography by Jan Riser.
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