Horsehide or Cowhide?
Posted by Rob Longenecker on February 25th, 2007
Tucker uses only premium cowhide for all his holsters, belts and magazine pouches. It’s vegetable tanned, durable and beautiful. Some potential customers ask why he doesn’t work with horsehide.
Number one, Tucker prefers cowhide and works best with cowhide. Two, there’s less high quality horsehide available than cowhide; and three, horsehide is not suitable for the decorative stamping that so many of Tuckers customers ask for.
A well-know English maker, Andy Arratoonian, who has a fine reputation and a dedicated customer base has written some excellent articles on holstermaking and working with leather. Perhaps his article on the pro’s and con’s of horsehide and cowhide will be interesting to you. Here’s the link.
For those of you who wonder why I’d send you to another maker’s website, we have plenty of business and don’t mind sharing resources.
Visit us at Tucker Gunleather if we can be of service.
March 16th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
I’ve only had one horsehide holster. I wont mention the maker, since I ordered it in horsehide, specifically; it wasn’t his fault. It was my mistake and I own it. As Rob, Tucker and Andy Arratoonian agree, it simply doesn’t shape, or hold its form as well as cowhide. It also, at least in my case, loosened considerably and that process never seemed to stop. While cowhide will loosen up a bit, it seems to stop once it gets to know the specific gun. I also highly recommend Andy’s article. I just wish I’d read it before ordering that holster so long ago.
I’m not sure what horsehide is good for, but it doesn’t seem to be holsters.