Thread: Polishing a problem Sam Black

Gents,

I have been fighting an uphill battle and scratching my head at the dismal progress of a new Sam Black.

Being a woefully underpaid colonial reservist cavalry officer, we tend to purchase cheap Pakistani buffalo leather belts and then work up epic amounts of elbow sweat making them presentable.

The current thinking is a liberal application of wet & dry sandpaper, followed by rigid adherence to the Butler's Bulling guide from ARSSEPedia. However, the wet & dry is working admirably on some areas of the belt, on others it has merely drawn imperfections from the leather, leaving me with a poor, rough surface to bull.

Have you any advice on how to tackle these imperfections in a Sam Black, as traditional methods such as burning merely cause damage/shrinkage.

My suggestion would be to send it by registered post to one of the guys in the mounted troops H.C.R. they could bull the bollocks on a dingo !!

PM The Butler on here - he is a shiny legend.

If the leather has become wet at all during the sanding then is has to be allowed to dry out. Trying to bull wet leather is a non starter. The surface should ideally be bone dry hence the use of plumbers gas torches etc.

wtf is a Sam Black? Sam Browne was a person, not a coloured object.

There's no short cut - plenty of elbow grease, beeswax, yellow duster and spit and polish. Welcome to the magic circle!

Fingers of fire!!

Have you had it beeswaxed yet? That might help a bit, but the only solution is to just carry on with the bulling. Try and get good polish too. Anything more than a week to get it done and you should be fine. Just be prepared for polish-induced hysteria.

Originally Posted by Queensman

wtf is a Sam Black? Sam Browne was a person, not a coloured object.

In our curious little Army all RAAC Regts wear black Sam Brownes and are colloquially known as "Sam Blacks".

Like Bond's, my first one was also a hideously cheap Pakistani job, and it stank like a stockyard. Even so, it was gleaming by the time I unloaded it to another subbie in the Regt who marched in 6 months before Bond did. I replaced it with a much more expensive one that polishes up very nicely.

And Bond, really, 'underpaid'? You've just been away on tax free pesos and tier 1 field allowance!

The RTR wear Black Sam Brownes, and we call them Sam Brownes.