Chisholms Trail Old West Leather is a company led by Alan and Donna Soellner. We are dedicated to recreating cowboy gun leather from famous western movies and the actual gear worn by famous outlaws and lawmen.
This quest does not take place from a deck of a Lazy Boy recliner with a single malt scotch. It requires thousands of miles of travel and a tremendous expense to actually go to the historical sites where these items were worn and used. Just to be allowed to personally examine rigs such as the ones worn by Geronimo, John Wesley Hardin, or Wild Bill Hickok are pretty exciting.
On our next adventure we plan on making "Shane," from the 1953 movie filmed in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This requires us to collect all available photos of Alan Ladd from the movie. Then with these photos we are able to increase the size so we are able to examine every detail on the leather and the construction. Our team of researchers is a collection of people that have collected Indian "Tufa" cast jewelry and buckles for more than 50 years, a foundry that has molded these items for Indians for the same length of time.
We have also found a new friend that was at the filming of the movie and who was kind enough to provide us with hundreds of photos taken during the making of the movie. We will be going to Jackson Hole shortly to view the location in which the movie was shot.
The result of our study has revealed that the Shane concho is huge. It is approximately 2 " tall and 3 wide. The buckle is even larger. Both the buckle and conchos were Tufa cast. This kind of Indian construction requires the craftsman to carve his design into a smooth block of Tufa sandstone. A flat second block is secured to the first one. Molten silver is poured into the mold. After the metal cools it is separated and the final product will be flat on the back and rounded in the front. To get the concho or buckle to curve to the body, the Indians would hollow out a cotton wood stump, place the flat metal over the depression and use a rounded limb as a striker to get the soft silver to take on the arched shape desired.
The silver concho and buckle were commonly attached to Western belts and holsters. Chisholm's Trail will be the first to recreate these in the same amount of detail and in the same method to date.
A collection of the Shane holster and belt buckle photos, that only we have access to, are then put into our architectural AutoCAD program. That will open op the holster photos and provide us with a flat pattern to recreate the original.
The Shane holster is actually on our website already under the Historical button. Trust me when i say that the holster wears comfortably and lightly draws. Rod Redwing, an Indian stuntmen in the 1950's and fast draw teacher for Hollywood designed this rig. Rod said that he actually bought the conchos and buckle from some Indians selling jewelry along the trail.
Donna and I encourage you to visit our web site and see for yourself our constantly increasing line of Cowboy gun leather. Dont forget to look over our Buckle and Jewelry button with both reproduction western movie buckles and many others from historical rigs worn in the American West. Ride for the brand.
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So head on down and check out our classic rigs, not to mention our buckles and jewelry down at Chisholm's Trail Leather an checkout our western gun holsters
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