Horse Hair sporran question.

[artificer]

Careful, Chaps, You lot are going to make me blush!

Manxstralian- if you need further advice, drop me an email - artificer@customsporrans.net

I'll try to answer as quickly as possible, but sometimes it takes me a day or two. It's not terribly difficult for me to spend 1/2 of a 'normal' work day on communications.



A few notes: The biggest thing to pay attention to with horse hair is the stitching. If you're doing it by hand I'd recommend no fewer than 2 rows of stitches (ideally each stitch would be no greater than 5mm / 3/8")

The problem being, once hair starts to slip free there is more room under each stitch for MORE hair to slide free as well.

When I make a horse hair sporran I triple stitch the hair, additionally I double glue and lap it under another layer of leather.
This is a piece from a few years ago-


There have been any number of techniques I've seen employed.

The earliest was a single layer of horse hair OVER goathair,

Later you see multiple layers of hair with panels of shorn goat or similar in between to 'fill' the body out a bit.

Most new piper's sporrans have 4-5 layers of hair stitched in with no fill or lapping.

I haven't handled a new RRS hair sporran personally, so can't speak to that.

ith:

BTW: beware a bit- horse hair is VERY coarse, and you CAN get 'slivers' from it where the hair pokes and works it's way under your skin.