The Manufacturing Process

We make every one of our leather items entirely by hand. That is, we cut the straps by hand from the butt of leather , cut to length, cut the points, bevel and crease mark the edges, punch holes and chape holes. This leaves us with a blank that needs the edges finishing and and the buckles and other hardware stitching to become the finished product.

At this stage that we dye, burnish and polish the edges, a multi stage process that takes a considerable proportion of the manufacturing time for an item such as a belt. We work hard to produce goods with beautiful, tactile edges and continually refine our processes. Edge finish is one of the easiest way you are able to tell the quality of an item of saddlery or leather work - quality work will have smooth, polished, tactile edges that are an appropriate colour for the leather.

Once edge finishing is complete buckles and fixings are stitched in. All of our products are hand stitched, never riveted. Though it may seem counter intuitive stitching is always stronger than rivets as the leather has far less damage done to it when stitched, and any load applied is distributed over the far larger area of stitching.As an example, car seat belts are invariably stitched, never riveted. In addition stitched leatherwork can easily and cheaply be restitched if the original stitching does rot, not something that cant be said of riveted work. In our experience rivets anywhere in a piece of leatherwork point to corners cut by the manufacturer.

We always use a harness stitch using two needles and hand knot each stitch. This ensures that should an individual stitch wear through or be damaged the rest of the line of stitching will not come undone as machine stitching would. We use several feet of thread in a product such as a belt, and stitch at a minimum of 10 stitches per inch, far more than most of our competitior. A product such as our lined and raised belt will have in excess of 1000 individual stitches, each one done by hand, and many many yards of thread.

We have invested much time and money over the years both on tools and our ability to use them, but we continue to refine and improve our techiniques. We are proud of the products we make, but we also work towards continuously improving.