ForestForTheTrees
One of the Regulars
- Messages
- 293
- Location
- Pacific Northwest
My new JL custom half belt arrived safe & sound and it did not disappoint. I spent many, many months going back and forth with Alan to work out all of the details. Through it all he was always patient, helpful and a pleasure to work with. Johnson Leathers allows customers to provide their own hides if they choose to do so and after comparing numerous swatches I decided to pursue this option and order my hides directly through the folks at the Horween Tannery. I outlined this process earlier this week. It was not the most straightforward of processes, but in the end, I'm really thrilled with the end result. The hide I chose is the 3 oz. brown Chromexcel front quarter horsehide. This hide provides a nice contrast to the Black overdyed CXL steerhide that I chose for the first jacket that I ordered from JL. This time around I chose a wool lining that Alan had on hand and it makes for a pretty warm jacket. I wore it out last night with the temperature just above freezing and was quite warm with a cotton sweater underneath. With this lining, I won't need to layer as much underneath as with my other jacket, even though the hide on that one is quite a bit thicker.
There was a considerable amount of unused hide left over which Alan returned along with the jacket. I might just have to learn how to make wallets now. You can see the hide setting on top of the jacket in the first image below. The Chromexcel hide has great depth to it and I believe this is what Aero uses in their "Oil Pull" jackets. The tone of the hide changes quite a bit depending on lighting conditions making it hard to capture the exact look in photos. It looks best in the sunshine, but that's scarce around the Pacific Northwest in the winter time so I came as close as I could to showing what it looks like indoors. For more information on the Chromexcel tannage visit Horween's blog. I miscalculated the total cost earlier in the week as I ended up spending $950 all together this time around. That's a huge hunk of change in my book, but relatively speaking, that's far less than a top notch suit. This certainly qualifies as a top notch jacket and in my case it's sure to see much more use than a suit would.
Once again, a big thanks to Alan and the rest of the folks at Johnson Leather. They are perhaps the most accommodating business I've ever encountered and they have proven to be capable of producing exactly what I've been looking for not just once, but twice now. I can't recommend them highly enough. Just as importantly, thanks to all the others who have shared their JL jackets on TFL. If it wasn't for all of you, I probably would never have found out just what Johnson Leathers is capable of.
Here are some pics of the Half Belt. They pretty much sum up the jacket better than I'm capable of describing it in words.
There was a considerable amount of unused hide left over which Alan returned along with the jacket. I might just have to learn how to make wallets now. You can see the hide setting on top of the jacket in the first image below. The Chromexcel hide has great depth to it and I believe this is what Aero uses in their "Oil Pull" jackets. The tone of the hide changes quite a bit depending on lighting conditions making it hard to capture the exact look in photos. It looks best in the sunshine, but that's scarce around the Pacific Northwest in the winter time so I came as close as I could to showing what it looks like indoors. For more information on the Chromexcel tannage visit Horween's blog. I miscalculated the total cost earlier in the week as I ended up spending $950 all together this time around. That's a huge hunk of change in my book, but relatively speaking, that's far less than a top notch suit. This certainly qualifies as a top notch jacket and in my case it's sure to see much more use than a suit would.
Once again, a big thanks to Alan and the rest of the folks at Johnson Leather. They are perhaps the most accommodating business I've ever encountered and they have proven to be capable of producing exactly what I've been looking for not just once, but twice now. I can't recommend them highly enough. Just as importantly, thanks to all the others who have shared their JL jackets on TFL. If it wasn't for all of you, I probably would never have found out just what Johnson Leathers is capable of.
Here are some pics of the Half Belt. They pretty much sum up the jacket better than I'm capable of describing it in words.
