After the end is stitched down, stitch across the bottom to the other side of the loop.
Stitch up the next loop and just keep goin' till it's done.
After the spots are one, the loops are stitched, the next thing I do is rivet on the keeper loop for the belt. I use the long, double capped rivets for this job.
To rivet down the second side, I put the rivet post through from the back of the belt. I place the corner of my plate of iron against the rivet and wrap the keeper around over the plate. Then, I line everything up and smash the cap down on the post, with the iron between the back of the rivet and the inside of the keeper.
When attaching the chape and billet to the belt body, the conchos act as rivets to hole 'em in place.
The concho posts are set just like you'd set copper rivets. In fact, I use copper burrs from my #9 copper rivets to attach my conchos and hold everything together.
You want to make sure your concho isn't on anything hard that will mar it while you are hammering down the post over the burr.
Here you see the assembled belt. In the movie, the character, Johnny Ringo, folded the end of his billet over and tucked it under the buckle. This allowed both conchos to be visible.
Here you see the coffin-end billet folded under to get the full effect of the custom, Johnny Ringo conchos.
The buckle is the standard 1 1/2" chap or garrison buckle.
In "Tombstone", Johnny Ringo carried a 4 3/4" Colt in this holster. Because of the way the holster is cut, there is quite a bit of room in the toe. Pictured here, my 5 1/2" Colt is slammed down into the holster, and only rides a fraction higher than the 4 3/4" does. I would have used one of my
4 3/4" guns for this photo, but I like the bone grips on this old gun. Even though a 5 1/2" barrel will fit in the 4 3/4" barrel holster, I still included a separate holster pattern for the 5 1/2" barrel pistols.
Because of the extra room in the toe design of this holster, I was able to use the same holster design for the 1851 Colt Navy, 1860 Colt Army, and the 1861 Colt Navy. The 1/2" difference in barrel lengths not being noticeable enough to warrant a whole different holster.
Likewise, the same holster that accommodates the 1873 7 1/2" barreled Colts, also accommodates the 1875 Remington, as well as the 1858 Remington cap and ball with the 8" barrel. In this way, only 8 holster patterns were required to fit all the pistols usually fitted with holsters in my patterns.
This fortunate coincidence should allow for space to add the spur leather pattern for Johnny Ringo's spur leathers.
