Ped's & Ro Leather Blog: Phone Pouch...Durability Test (007 Style)

Not long after I made the phone pouch with the credit card slot, I received a request to make another one for a work colleague. I'm more than happy to fulfill his request, he was the one that gave me the idea of putting a slot for credit card in the first place and gave it to him for free. The body of the pouch is stitched using red colour linen thread and treated with neatsfoot oil to give some protection. Knowing him, he will try to stuff a lot of card into the slot so I made the slot body shorter which will give his finger more leveraged to pull the card.

Before I go deeper into his phone pouch, let me fill in some details about him.

He's a typical Aussie bloke, big, loud, brash and rough around the edges. He idolises James Bond and trying his best to live the life of the secret agent character. Let's call him 007 in this context. He drives a very fast car (C63 AMG), known to be a real player with women and loves high adrenaline sport. 007 also carries his Iphone all the time as his work depends on it. 007 is the perfect testing ground for the pouch. He will give it a real workout and pushes it to the limit.

One weekend, he took his phone with the pouch jet skiing. Turn out that luck wasn't on his side and he sunk his jet ski. Somehow he managed to keep his phone above the water surface and survived the ordeal. He told me this the next day and I wasn't quite sure how salt water and hydrocarbon will affect the leather. The cosmetic damage was apparent, oil/petrol residue on the surface and just plain dirty and disgusting, pretty sure the leather received a healthy dose of salt water as well. The thread looks dehydrated and I can see some stray individual thread. It was in a very sad states

Anyhow, he kept using the pouch until now and to my surprised it has developed a unique patina. The stitching still going strong and overall it's still in a goo nick. Impressive! The colour of the leather reminded me of a vinagroon (vinegar and iron oxide) treated leather. He put more cards into the slot and it seems to hold up quite well even until now.

I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Brand new, side by side with my personal pouch, taken on 28/03/2010