Sporran belt vs. chain

[Todd Bradshaw]

I own plain leather straps, embossed leather straps "brogued" leather straps and chains with adjustable leather straps in the back. To my eye, the chains make better formal wear and the straps usually tend to be better when used as day wear. The thing about chains though, is that an awful lot of the sporran chains that you see have pretty cheap lousy chain on them - often with little sharp edges and looking like something from a hardware store. Ideally, you would want chain which is aimed more at the jewelry market than the hardware market. It does exist in a wide variety of sizes and patterns, silver or gold-tone from a variety of metals and smooth enough to wear next to bare skin, so it isn't likely to tear up your kilt. Do an eBay search some time for "curb chain" (whatever that is) and you will see many examples of jewelry-quality chain, and many of them are available in a variety of sizes and lengths at quite decent prices. If you have a sporran with poor quality chain you can probably buy one of these, transfer the end fittings if needed and end up with a much nicer piece of kit.

It seems to me that the typical sporran strap or chain usually reflects how much effort went into making it, and even on some of the nicer sporrans, that may not be much. I don't see any reason why that part of your kiltwear shouldn't get the same sort of attention that the other parts get.

[Moses]

I own plain leather straps, embossed leather straps "brogued" leather straps and chains with adjustable leather straps in the back. To my eye, the chains make better formal wear and the straps usually tend to be better when used as day wear. The thing about chains though, is that an awful lot of the sporran chains that you see have pretty cheap lousy chain on them - often with little sharp edges and looking like something from a hardware store. Ideally, you would want chain which is aimed more at the jewelry market than the hardware market. It does exist in a wide variety of sizes and patterns, silver or gold-tone from a variety of metals and smooth enough to wear next to bare skin, so it isn't likely to tear up your kilt. Do an eBay search some time for "curb chain" (whatever that is) and you will see many examples of jewelry-quality chain, and many of them are available in a variety of sizes and lengths at quite decent prices. If you have a sporran with poor quality chain you can probably buy one of these, transfer the end fittings if needed and end up with a much nicer piece of kit.

It seems to me that the typical sporran strap or chain usually reflects how much effort went into making it, and even on some of the nicer sporrans, that may not be much. I don't see any reason why that part of your kiltwear shouldn't get the same sort of attention that the other parts get.

Wow a leather strap with broguing sounds perfect. I haven't seen it before but that seems great. I think the chain recommend as a finer quality chain may be worth looking into also and actually an easy solution, thanks again.