A2 Jacket: Rough Wear 1401P

[Jacob Dubow]

JRaptor,
I don't have time this evening to do it--------but I will try to get those photos posted tomorrow.

 

[JRaptor]

Mustang Hide

Holy smoke! NICE hide. How old is it?

This jacket is about 6 years old I believe, The story on the caramel mustang hide if you don’t already know goes something like this, Gary Eastman sourced a small lot of hides that were very grainy and had a lot of character to them and had them tanned and dyed in this reddish caramel color for another original maker jacket project he was working on that didn’t turn out, so he had to figure out what to use them for and got with Charles at HPA ( who is very knowledgeable in original A-2’s ) and determined that these would be very correct for some Rough Wear 1401-P’s, so they made about 12 or so jackets and HPA called them mustang hide kind of like Buzz Rickson’s saying bronco hide and Aero calling there’s jerky hide. Had nothing to do with mustang horse's rather than just a sales pitch!

BTW: Back then unless you specified HH when you ordred an ELC RW 1401-P you would get steerhide as it was the standard hide for that jacket, did you notice the write up in the Golden Book say’s nothing about horse hide. Now day's the russet HH is standard!

That’s they way it was told to me.

JRaptor,
I don't have time this evening to do it--------but I will try to get those photos posted tomorrow.

It would be greatly appreciated my friend!

 

[DiabolicalAngel]

Hi JRaptor,
Nice pics of your RW. My old RW, wish I still had it went very pale, imagine like what yout collar is like but mostly all over the whole jacket, the front, the arms with wear and tear but the back that had little rubbing on remained slightly darker. Now that you mention it, I doubt if mine was actually HH, I was always a bit suspect about it over the last few years but sadly I have moved it on.

Cheers,

Roy

 

[rongoms]

So, my dad just told me of a little trick they used to use on their old flight jackets.
The WWII-style nametags are prone to curling after time, which creates the "cup" in the left chest panel of the jacket. (as illustrated in the leading pics of this thread.)
He says that they would cut the threads on one of the small ends and insert a 2.5" brass collar stay behind the name tag. No more curling!

I'm going to try this on my jacket when the tags arrive from Flightjacket.com

(he also said that the brass stays from Hong Kong were FAR superior to the thin steel ones they could get in Austrailia.

 

[Jacob Dubow]

JRaptor,
Here are some photos of that reddish original 1401 I mentioned. I emailed the owner when this jacket was listed on ebay a year or two ago, and he said the jacket was actually more reddish than the photos represented.

You can see in the photos where the outer red color has worn off in places and the more brown-caramel color is showing through. I think I have a couple more shots of this jacket if you want me to post them, too.

 

[PADDY]

Bootiful pics!

Isn't that just one hum dinger of an A2! thanks for showing those.

 

[JRaptor]

JRaptor,
Here are some photos of that reddish original 1401 I mentioned. I emailed the owner when this jacket was listed on ebay a year or two ago, and he said the jacket was actually more reddish than the photos represented.

You can see in the photos where the outer red color has worn off in places and the more brown-caramel color is showing through. I think I have a couple more shots of this jacket if you want me to post them, too.

Thank you....Simply amazing, it really shows the hand applied dye method well. Post all the pic's you want.... we could never get enough. It looks really close to mine ( under different lighting ) and just like the one in the gallery at HPA's website witch is probably the example they used to make the caramel 1401's!