Club Obi Wan

I already own a Novapelle LC jacket made by Wested Leather and I am very pleased with the look except for one major thing.
Looking at the original jacket, where it has been weathered the leather shows through as a nice caramel colour.
My jacket comes though as a grey colour on the areas where I have weathered it. This means the weathering can hardly be seen.

I believe this is to do with the tanning.
The original jacket would have been veg tanned where as my novapelle has been chrome tanned.

My plan was to buy a custom made LC from Wested, in either Novapelle or authentic brown lamb but I was to make sure it was made in veg tanned leather.

The problem is that Wested only stock 1 type of veg tanned leather and that is shrunken lamb.

This may be fine for a Raiders jacket but I don't really think the shrunken lamb is the best match for a LC jacket

So this means I have the choice of having a Novapelle jacket that looks very close to the screen used LC jacket but without the caramel colour on the weathering OR a veg tanned shrunken lamb with the nice caramel colour on the weathering but not a perfect match to the jacket in the movie.

Is I possible to get a veg tanned novapelle/authentic brown lamb???
Can anyone help me out here please??


Impossible to buy???

Surely the leather is the least of your problems? The real problem is the Wested LC patterns which have the wrong seams, collar and pockets and look more like a CoS jacket. You need to request a series of mods if it is to look like jacket pictured here. The collar and the pockets as they come need significant changes.

I already have a list of specs to give to wested including those you have mentioned. It would be a shame to get the jacket made accurate with the specs but not be able to get the leather or veg tan correct.

If you ring Wested and talk to Peter he usually has small batches of hides that don't make it to the website. Make sure you talk to Peter personally though or you'll probably be just told what's on the website. Saturday mornings are a good time to catch him

ZOLTAR

Check with KT about the worn look hide, which is also cow. Photos of it in this thread. it makes a fine LC jacket.

http://indygear.com/cow/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=58189" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://indygear.com/cow/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=50758" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The crispe and SL are both veg tanned, I believe. The LC leather appeared to be a more natural looking skin, undoubtedly because of the veg tan method and the shoe polish applied to it to give it warmer undertones. For those reasons, a thinner, lighter weight cow might be a better choice? Chrome tanned lamb would not necessarily get you to where you wanted to be.

It would seem that Wested only have veg tanned shrunken lamb and nothing else.
I agree the novapelle/cow hide is the best match for LC (this is what I have currently)but this would be chrome tanned so the caramel colour would not come through when weathered. It would be grey as my novapelle jacket is now.
Wested tell me that they have never had a veg tanned authentic brown lamb as if a lambskin was veg tanned the final product would be a different finish. More rough than the normal authentic brown lamb.
What I don't understand is that IF the original LC jacket was Lamb and not shrunkem lamb how come the weathering shows up so well??? (assuming this was chrome tanned)

Yes it's very possible. Check out this one here. It's a HH 08 model I specced out and worked close with Peter when making it. At first the leather started out extremely dark, However after some work I was able to bring it down to the ''LC'' look.


Knibs also has one fantastic LC jacket which IMO has the best and most authentic leather for LC. Lambskin. It's can't be beat.

Anyways, Here is my LC baby..

Holt, the weathering on your jacket has come through a nice colour. Is this jacket veg or chrome tanned and if chrome how did you get over the grey colour problem?

My authentic brown goat has a tan body and my dark goat had a deep red brown, both are chrome tanned. On both occasions I asked Peter for samples of the hide's they had in that were dyed through and chose these from the one's I recieved.

Looks like I will be taking a trip to wested one Saturday morning and have a talk with Peter about this. Thanks for the help.

Good luck. On the grey undertones note, I have known people who have distressed the jacket by hand and then gone over the distressed areas with leather dye and then gone over them again with a little alcohol to soften the color a little. I did it with a wolverine jacket with good results.
Certainly not ideal, but it is an option.

Hollowpond wrote:Good luck. On the grey undertones note, I have known people who have distressed the jacket by hand and then gone over the distressed areas with leather dye and then gone over them again with a little alcohol to soften the color a little. I did it with a wolverine jacket with good results.
Certainly not ideal, but it is an option.

I think I will give this a go with my novapelle before I order anything new.

Post pics up!!!

I don't think you will get good results with dye and alcohol on a novapella. NP is a naked and dry skin with no top layer ( ala HH, Lamb, cow) so I think by adding dye on to a naked skin would just make ugly smears....

True...

Holt wrote:I don't think you will get good results with dye and alcohol on a novapella. NP is a naked and dry skin with no top layer ( ala HH, Lamb, cow) so I think by adding dye on to a naked skin would just make ugly smears....

Doh

You could still try it inside a pocket or somewhere not noticeable first. Just a thought...

Thinking out loud, I wonder if it is as cut and dried as: "Chrome tanned is grey underneath and veg tanned is brown". Some leather is brown/rust coloured on the reverse side. Often more so on the antiqued/worn looks. Now my understanding is the worn looks are specifically dyed a lighter colour and then a darker dye is sprayed onto the surface, when this wears off or if buffed off you get the lighter colour showing through, thus the 'Antique' effect.

On most other leathers the idea is that you don't want the under colour to contrast so you dye the same colour through and through... which is what happens with black leather. Not sure why the Authentic brown lamb often seems to distress to grey as the underside seems fairly dark in my experience.

Now, as far as the LC jacket is concerned, a lot of the rust colour we see is down to film timing. In many stills the undercolour does look remarkably close to what you get when you wet & dry distress the leather. There is a pic of my friend "The Character" around here somewhere with his off the peg authentic brown lambskin, and that looks very good in that respect.

I chose the thin worn look cow, it has a good brown surface and a light brown underneath. If you are over there take a note of the reverse side, if it is a warm rust I think it may help.

Kt,

Is that the 'pre distressed hide' option when ordering off the website? I have a Hero in that hide, and I've gotten a LC vibe from it. (The hide, not the cut.)

It's likely that it is similar.

There are a couple of kinds of pre-d leathers that Peter has. I chose the lighter weight one and with a rust coloured reverse side.

Thanks Kt, that's great info

You're welcome.

Remember! Single stitched armholes (the CS armholes have a double line of stitching. No over stitch on the back arm seam and no stitch on the hem of the body.

And the deeper collar and deeper pocket flaps.

Good luck!

While not LC screen-accurate, the double stitched shoulders are functionally more secure and aesthetically pleasing (to me, at least), including the over stitched sleeve seam. It just makes the jacket look more complete. Anyway, it's all subjective to each of us, running the gamut from casual Indy costumer to screen-accurate stitch Nazi. Personally, I've always walked the halfway point. I'm happy as long as my gear projects a reasonably accurate Indy vibe, but I don't lose any sleep at night because the bottom of my LC jacket has a hem stitch (oh, the horror!). It's not like the average person on the street will criticize (or praise) your jacket for being more or less authentic than Harrison Ford's wardrobe.

Man this thread really makes me want a last crusade jacket. Wish they would make a Hero crusade jacket I'd really be scared to death doing a custom order with Wested. Especially knowing how difficult they can be to communicate with them from the states.....I may have to pick some ones brain that has done a custom order and see exactly what they ordered from Wested.

skyhawker wrote:Holt, the weathering on your jacket has come through a nice colour. Is this jacket veg or chrome tanned and if chrome how did you get over the grey colour problem?

Didn't catch your Q.

Well, the underbelly wasn't exactly what I wanted to be. I wanted to have more of the motorcycle look. So I aded alittle rusty dye on the underbelly. It came out pretty good. I plan on going balistic on this jacket soon and I think it will become a fun project.

Here is a photo that was taken of me today while wearing it. Looking at it it really reminds me of the behind the scenes LC jacket.