Next on the work bench is a piece I've been asked to make a new bag for.

Here is the sporran as delivered to me.


It's difficult to see, but look at the lovely scalloped edge along the top of the front face. It's mostly worn away, but can still be spotted on the upper left side.



I immediately believed the bag to be much newer than the cantle- even though the bag was old enough that the leather had severely dried out.

The empty holes for lacing are a very obvious marker that there have been changes made. These holes were not drilled out by a drill bit (at least not to this size). They are irregular in both size and shape, and show tooling marks.

Also immediately obvious was that the piece had suffered a traumatic event in it's past


The slotted screw is a repair. The other arm's hinge is held in place by a peened brass rivet. It would be my guess that the original either broke or had to be cut away to affect repairs when the 'event' took place. You can see the mis-alignment of the face with the rear body.

If you look at the first picture you can see the right side of the sporran's front face is dipping downward slightly. Keep in mind that the face has a thickness of ~2.5mm.

We'll come back to this later.

On to the bag's interior:

View of the inside front


Inside rear:


Interesting ring and wire attachment.

And very exciting indeed- the texture left behind from sand casting!


There are no seams to this piece. The rear body and top are one piece, as are the arms and hook on the front face.

The only soldered parts are the strap loops on the back, the interior rings, and the steel spring for the latch.

On the interior detail shot you can see the variation in thickness along the top edge. There is more than a millimeter of difference between the thickest and thinnest sections.





In this shot you can see some of the mis-alignment of the right side, along with a nice shot of the hook on the front face. The hook is cast in place and has been shaped with a file or saw. The front face is just over 2.5mm thick.



Lastly, a shot from the bottom up, showing the amount of bending this piece has experienced - and keep in mind this is not a very malleable piece!


A few decisions are being made by the commissioner right now, and then we'll begin the process of straightening the piece as much as possible and re-bagging.

Stay tuned!

ith: