Posts: 5,981 Location: Birmingham, Alabama
Fri 05 Oct, 2012 8:16 am
Water: I think this is a valid concern with my construction. My wraps are thoroughly waxed and usually burnished, so I think you'd have to soak them to see a problem. Water will bead on my grips. However, sweaty hands, regular use and infrequent maintenance would have some effect. I recently got a VERY used Albion Squire Line sword with a blade like a saw, and all traces of the grip wrap were long gone. Use breaks down wraps. No question about it. That was true historically, too, and this is the easiest part of the sword to replace as needed. One thing I do to improve durability is place the leading edge of the overlapped seam so that it falls under the fingers when the sword is gripped. In other words, the hand is always pulling the grip in the direction of the wrap rather than against it.
Malleability: I saturate my wraps with wood glue. The stuff oozes out as I'm binding the wrap. When the piece is dry enough to remove the wrap, it will still take impressions but won't spring back. As it dries further, it freezes the impressions, so that one would really have to try to erase them. There is no cord underwrap on the grips shown above and below, and I have burnished the whole grip with a secret custom tool (i.e., the barrel of a Sharpie marker) to compress the leather, which helps seal it and eliminate the matt surface if would have otherwise. It would take a great deal of work to eliminate the cord impressions this way, but it can be done. Tooling and elaborate embossing are really out of the question, though, without some kind of spongy substrate (as in the case of my roped risers). It would not be possible to cut designs into this very thin material.
Selection: I carefully select the portion of the skin I use for wraps, as the surface can vary dramatically, from very fine to very coarse.
Dye : It takes some rubbing for my grips and scabbards to mark hands, etc. after they're thoroughly hardened and polished. This can be a problem, but I think it might have more to do with technique than materials. I use Feibing's dye, and it can rub off if the final piece is not finished properly. I haven't solved that problem entirely, but I think the solution is to thoroughly rinse the leather after dyeing and then burnish, polish and buff it after it's hard.
Matching: The place where you can really see a difference between the chamois and top-grain is if you make a chappe. The flap of chamois grip wrap that's stitched to the heavier top grain leather of the chappe can't quite match the finish of the chappe because it's harder to burnish as it has no hard surface below it, as the grip does. In the photo below you can see that the chamois grip and chappe have a higher polish than the flap. I'm sure there's a way to fix that but it doesn't concern me too much.
I'm no evangelist for chamois, but after taking note of antique grip leather in all stages of preservation, I find that chamois can give a credible look if care is taken in the finishing. The catch is that it takes more work to get a decent finish, so you're spending labor instead of cash.
Those just tuning in shouldn't mistake this process for the suede-look grip covering that makes most of us nauseous. :D
Attachment: 167.57 KB
![grip_137.gif](files/grip_137_110.gif)
Attachment: 248.55 KB
![wc1_192.gif](files/wc1_192_111.gif)
Attachment: 247.94 KB
![wc6_201.gif](files/wc6_201_169.gif)
Attachment: 146.21 KB
![wc21_253.gif](files/wc21_253_979.gif)