Club Obi Wan

The jacket Indy is wearing in the well of souls/wing scenes with the German Mec. is my favorite Indy jacket. The beat up dusty greyish flappy jacket with the dusty hat and the heavy distressed gloves. WOW! that is Indiana Jones gear to me and I want that jacket! So I decided to pull out my dark brown lamb wested which I destroyed last year. Long story short, the collarstand was ripped off from the front panel which I carefully glued shut again. anyways, after this accident I it gave me a reason to really distress it.

The glued snag under the collar just adds more Indy character to the jacket now. so it's all good! I think it came out pretty cool.

items used,

alcohol,
acetone,
knife,
sandpaper,
water,
dryer,

all this and not one seam busted or hardly even touched. I think I used 3 hours on it...

okay, nuff talk..

here it is..

all I need now is a tall balled fat guy to play the mechanic. Hey, _, mind shaving your head? (kidding,kidding)




The snag under the collar

Thanks pal!


yeah, I agree with you on the open shots. that jacket is sweet!

I'm not a fan of artificial distressing, but that looks as believable as any I've seen. Well done!


LJ

BTW, there is a slight difference in connotation depending on how you spell "bald".

Long John Tinfoil wrote: BTW, there is a slight difference in connotation depending on how you spell "bald".

TMFR

You're one of my distressing inspirations, Holy. Looks great!

alittle update.

I carefully distressed the jacket some more. I wanted to go away from the grey brownish distressing and on to a more real red brown undertone like we see on Indy's jacket in most scenes and like on real distressing that comes over time. So, I gave it a bath and when dry I dyed the distressing, I will pecard as soon as I get some in.


my inspiration. a real 20 year old naturally aged wested with the redbrown undertones just like we see in many scenes...



and now mine. a distressed 1 year old wested.

Looks really great Eric...

Really nice work on the tonal distressing too...I loved the colours coming through there..

Holt which color did you use to dye that shade? I'm trying to buy a jacket based off of that exact look, but I don't need to worry about which type of jacket I get (Wings, Wested, GB etc.) if I can just recreate the look like you did here. Bravo with the end result.

Nice work on your jacket! Glad you brought up the red undertones...



When I scratch the surface of my Todd's BW, it's dark gray under the (thin) shiny brown surface, yet Indy's jacket is obviously reddish. Simply put, why the difference?

Oildale, from what I've read it's probalby due to the way the leather was tanned. The leather with grey undertones was probably chrome tanned, where the leather with reddish undertones was veg tanned.

Duly noted. I like the look of the US Wings veg-tanned lambskin, but for the price of the Signature Adventurer, I'd want something more Raiders SA.

I wonder if Todd might consider a line of premium jackets...

...or should I just think about getting a Wested?

On the less-expensive side of the equation, is there any way to lighten the underlying leather so it will show the red dye? (I've tested my BW with brown shoe polish but it just darkens the distressed areas further.)

You might have some success using acetone. I used it on my Wested Raiders goat with pretty good results. Obviously your results may vary, but....it turned out nice on mine. Slow and easy is the key though. Just make sure you test it first on an inconspicuous spot.

And sometimes Google is my friend.

Bleaching: (1) the process of removing oxidized tannins and insoluble materials from the surface layers of leather, in order to prevent crackiness of the grain. Bleaching is performed by dipping the leather in a weak alkaline solution to render the tannin readily soluble, dipping in water, neutralizing in weak acid solution and washing. (2) the process of lightening the color of chrome leather by treating with synthetic tannins or precipitating white pigment in the surface of the leather.

http://www.leatherchemists.org/dictionary.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Not implying, of course, that I would want to bleach an entire jacket, but I would like some selective reddish details.

Same thing happened to my Wested TOD... The first two looked spot-on to the NH jacket, but this one has grey undertones instead of red/brown. Unfortunately I have stopped production on distressing this jacket bc I don't know how to get it to the red color...

Thoughts?

Kyle

For my part, I decided that there's nothing I can do about the leather being gray—so, like you, I have stopped messing with it. Sad, because I really like the BW otherwise. Fortunately I found a jacket that distresses exactly the way I want it to (standalone post to come) and I'll be divesting myself of the grays to fund a new Todd's standard. (As long as I can confirm red undertones, which I think someone did in the Todd's thread.)

Awesome jacket Holt! Love that dusty look! Is that all just from distressing? No Fullers?

I had the same problem with my Wested ToD. I distressed it heavily, then I went over it with reddish brown shoepolish. The distressed areas just soaked it up. I also darkened the jacket with thinned down black dye. I just mixed it up with water and applied it with a sponge. Let it dry and did it again on the parts that needed it. It gave it a nice patina.

Here's how it looks now: