Cowboy Chronicle byline article
By Stawk Pyler O’Guns, SASS #80490
Issue: August 2008

BIANCHI RETURNS TO ITS ROOTS WITH NEW COWBOY GEAR HOLSTERS AND BELTS

Bianchi International is taking the saying of “What is old is new” to heart and introducing a new line of leather holsters and belts for today’s competitive cowboy shooter. With a name long synonymous with the feel of the Old West, Bianchi heads back to its roots with this new line that combines several of Bianchi’s traditional cowboy designs with new features and proven manufacturing techniques to offer the cowboy shooter the look and the edge sought after in today’s competitive arena.

Those that don’t know the Bianchi name are few and far between, and for good reason. More than 50 years ago John Bianchi turned a hobby into a profession and began producing some of the finest leather holsters, belts and gear available to cowboy enthusiasts.

In 1958, Bianchi, while working as a police officer, began making leather holsters in his garage and selling them via mail order and a dozen years later Bianchi’s ‘Old West’ ad campaign introduced the world to the refined, top-quality western-style products of Bianchi. Two years later, the decade-long Histograph™ collectible poster series began and captured the essence of western style through a blending of history and photography to create these Old West scenes. Bianchi became the most familiar gun leather manufacturer, outfitting the likes of John Wayne, Elvis Presley, Paul Newman, Sammy Davis Jr. and Roy Rogers, among others.

The leather belts and holsters, along with the ads that helped make the Bianchi name synonymous with leather still hang prominently at the Bianchi International headquarters, serving as a constant reminder of where the company’s origins lay. Bianchi International never stopped producing top-quality, handmade leather products and has always taken pride in its attention to detail and handcrafted artisan approach to holster making. This year, Bianchi will introduce the Bianchi Cowboy Gear product line, a new line of leather holsters and belts specifically designed for Cowboy Action Shooting™ and Cowboy Mounted Shooting™ which represents a return to the roots of Bianchi itself.

No matter what it was producing, Bianchi International never strayed from its traditional and proven production methods and will continue to use the best materials and handcrafting techniques for the Cowboy Gear line. Bianchi selects full grain, vegetable tanned cowhides and the Cowboy Gear line products are handcrafted in the United States to ensure the utmost quality. Bianchi only uses shoulder or double-shoulder hide cuts and the Bianchi Cowboy Gear holsters are only made from the double-shoulder cut, which is the filet mignon of leather and results in rugged leather with very little scarring. And thanks to Bianchi’s 50 years of leather experience, the Cowboy Gear handcrafting process is an efficient one that helps get holsters and belts into the hands of shooters faster, while maintaining the top-quality nature of Bianchi leather products. While John Bianchi continues to produce his own line of high end custom Old West leather gear, the company that bears his name is taking his legacy and adapting it to a product line that is more accessible to most, while maintaining the high expectations and standards he helped establish.

To design and develop its new line of Cowboy Gear, Bianchi looked to Dave Anderson, a man who is uniquely qualified to combine the cowboy tradition and style with Bianchi’s innovative developments. Anderson’s background includes years of design work with firearms manufacturers, law enforcement agencies and even satellite programs, but it was Anderson’s passion for the Old West that led Anderson (SASS life member #107) to design an updated line of holsters and belts, driven from Bianchi’s earlier western holster and belt combinations. This combination of innovative ideas and tradition is the heart of the new Bianchi Cowboy Gear line.

Anderson, as many of you know, is more than just a designer. He is one of the elite SASS marksmen in the country, if the not the world, and his proficiency in both cowboy shooting and design expertise led him to develop a unique holster for mounted shooters and action shooters alike – one that combines the advanced designs of Bianchi competition holsters with the historically correct appearance required for cowboy shooting competitions. A truly new design, the Bianchi Hondo™ Holster, is the first of its kind as it has tension screws that allow the shooter to tighten and loosen the holster’s grip on the gun and swivels to allow the shooter to adjust the degrees of tilt to suit their own personal desires, yet maintains the authentic look and feel that SASS members need and desire.

“The Hondo™ Holster is fully adjustable like a tactical holster, but because of the Bianchi expertise in handcrafting leather you can’t tell it’s anything but a historically accurate leather holster,” Anderson told me. “This is the holster for those that are looking for the competitor’s edge and will help get accomplished shooters to the next level.”

Anderson didn’t apply 21st century technology just to holsters. Completing the rig is the Hondo™ Belt which also incorporates new design elements. Bianchi used a fancy-stitch design in the Hondo Belt which gives it a more flexible nature than most leather belts, making the Hondo Belt ideal for mounted shooting competitions when comfort and freedom of movement are of great importance. This belt and holster design is also available for action shooters in a plain version with traditional woven cartridge loops and is named the Clearwater™.

But just because Bianchi International sought to update some aspects of Bianchi’s earlier designs, that doesn’t mean that it left behind the traditionally designed and traditionally made holsters and belts. In fact, while Anderson was beginning this project he came across some of the tools that John Bianchi used 30 and 40 years ago to manufacture the leather goods that helped establish the Bianchi name. Thankfully, those tools didn’t end up in a museum somewhere and were put to good use, and much of the Cowboy Gear line of products are made with those very same tools.

With John Bianchi’s tools, Bianchi International is once again crafting authentic western leather belts and holsters. The Cowboy Rig, for example, are modeled after Silver Screen-era designs and takes traditional and authentic to the extreme, incorporating only materials that would have been available in the Old West.

“Between the Bianchi-original tools, the handcrafting process, the authentic designs and U.S. tanned cowhide material, it’s hard to get any more rooted in the Old West,” Anderson is proud to point out.

To ensure that the Cowboy Gear product line not only looks the part, but functions to the Bianchi standard, Bianchi International enlisted its elite shooting team, Team Bianchi to help test the Cowboy Gear holsters and belts. Dave Anderson and his daughter, Brittany, who is one of the most accomplished female SAAS shooters in the world, are proud to represent Team Bianchi. Dave and Brittany have several national and world championships between them and have put the Cowboy Gear line through the ringer with multiple field trials, functionality tests and standardized holster and belt tests to ensure that the Cowboy line and the leather work would live up to the Bianchi name and reputation.

“The Bianchi name means a lot to people who cherish and value what SASS is and does, and we were very careful that any leather product that carries that name lives up the reputation that John established,” Anderson said. “As SASS grows and more people become Old West enthusiasts we want them to not only know why the Bianchi name is special, but to be able to have a piece of that tradition for themselves.

This community holds us to a higher standard not only because of what they’ve come to expect from Bianchi, but also because the people of SASS have a different standard – one that draws from the honest values of the Old West. This line is a return not only to Bianchi’s roots, but the values of the time period we are emulating.”