I think the Adventurebilt Leather Co. has hit a homerun here. While Kim was working like a horse on the holsters (still is) and continuesly kept improving small details, I was lucky to purchase three mint condition vintage MKVII bags and could hardly wait to put my MBA strap on one of them. But that buckle was just sooo not what I wanted, that I started looking elsewhere. Since there are plenty of offerings to chose from and non of them looked exactly the same, I wanted to know who actually had the best one. So I contacted the Agent5 Consulting Agency and asked if Jason could help me out with some screen graps, because the things that I saw on my screen couldn't be purchased from anyone. Which was quite a surprise to me, considering how much effort had gone into this particular item over the years. Always kind and helpfully as he is, he sent some to me and I was able to examinate them a little closer.
That didn't help. To me the buckle on the screen graps looked like a piece of sheet metal!!!
So I called up Kim and asked him what HE would see... The theory became stronger and stronger and no matter how hard we looked, we couldn't see the rather thick, rounded and solid buckle that we BOTH had on our bags for the last years.
So, since we couldn't get what we want (and BOY did we want a screen accurate bag strap buckle all of sudden), we thought about having them made ourselves. So we went at it with screen graps, technical drawings and the priceless help from Jason (thanks for the countless hours discussing such a tiny piece of gear Jason). Finally, the drawings looked exactly as what we saw on screen.
So what now? - Should we have it cast? We gave it some thought and stuck with what we feel that the AB name always stood for: real gear for a real world. In this case this could only be solid stainless steal. And it hat to be laser cut!!! Not only for the kick of it, but also to guarantee a zero tolerance to the drawing that took us so long. And a solid stainless steal would guarantee that no matter how many trucks I'd be pulled behind of, no cast brass or rust would ever show up. Working for Europe's leading tool supplier, finding a firm who could laser cut the buckles from solid stainless steal was a kids play. But having 10-50 pieces made, THAT was something that would have cost as much as 10-50 complete bag straps elsewhere. Again Kim and I sat down and discussed. Could it really be that other would be as fanatic as us and like to have one of those? - It WOULD be less expensive (per piece) if we could have 100 or 200 pieces made. So we took the plunge and today they arrived. 200 custom made laser cut solid stainless steal AB bagstrap buckles.
With flash:
Without flash:
When I came home, I quickly grapped one out of the box and distressed it with some 60 grit sandpaper for ca. 5 minutes. And there it was. THAT was the buckle I wanted for my MKVII bag.
and the real deal:
Hope you like them as well (we've got PLENTY of them). Thank you John for hosting!
Regards,
Marc
send me one 
I can't wait.
