Himel Brothers Leather Co.
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I'd say from appearances the Kensington looks better made than the Buco RMC JP cafe racers. I've not seen either in person though.
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Different leathers behave differently, thus I posted that people who are more drawn to chrome tanned May not be their thing. But it's relative to preference. David Himel tracks down actual vintage materials to keep the pieces accurate whenever possible. For instance, the lightning zippers throughout my jacket. It may not be appealing to your individual tastes, that's always subjective but make no mistake on the quality, materials, and construction, it's absolutely top notch.
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Ben, I posted this just to give you an idea of why himel selected the leather that was used on my kensington, it may help you understand how this leather develops over time. Again, it may not be your thing but is certainly not a selection of poor materials. It was chosen purposefully. Anyways, like I said before the best thing to do is plenty of research before commuting a large chunk of change to a jacket that in the end you will not be happy with. Your opinion is the only thing that matters when it comes to your own jacket.
old buco d pocket i found on the interwebs search -
It does look very well made. Also quick question, is it the vegetable dyed aspect or the semi-aniline part that leads to evo where the natural color shows up?
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every piece of veg tanned leather that I have seen from boots to jackets uses some form of an aniline dying process and eventually patinas to a similar look to different degrees. I stumbled across a few articles a few minutes ago that compares chrome tanned to veg tanned if you would like I can PM you the links this weekend. I'm no expert by any means, I only know about things that I am interested such as old motorcycle jackets, engineer boots etc. and the one's that I am drawn to generally utilize these processes. A very similar conversation was had over in "the Wild Ones" IH engineer boot thread between chris, MadMonday, and myself yesterday and covered a bit of information regarding the aniline process.
also, like i suggested earlier it would be a good investment of a few minutes of your day to email David Himel he can give you a good deal of information or even just get on the vintage leather jackets blog, it also has a lot of useful information and you can take your search to down the path your individual interests are peaked.
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I love semi-aniline veggie personally…
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ditto that sh!t bossman. gives me major chubbage.
*another side note, Your jacket, know matter what it is made out of is going to reflect how you treat it. I do not treat my jacket like it is going to break, it gets abused. It gets wet, it gets beat up, etc. I paid a ton of money for it and I plan to get every cent of wear out of it. If you treat it like its porcelain, it will certainly not age like mine has in the amount of time it has. About the only thing I make sure I do not do is hang my jacket up on a peg. When I get home and decide to take it off I throw it and wherever it lands, it lands. At the end of the day its a jacket. Thats it.
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I definitely respect the evo of your jacket and I think it looks kinda cool now, but I am not particularly a fan of it as it was really old….expect a pm!
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All good Ben, I was not trying to be argumentative and hope it did not come across as so. I can't tell you what you like or don't just trying to give you an understanding of how different leathers will age differently, and my last post was just to state I'm really rough on my jackets … They get beat up pretty good cause they are worn, and tossed without regard.
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About the only thing I make sure I do not do is hang my jacket up on a peg.
What's this strange thing you call a peg?
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Wall decor
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Holy crap. That looks like it's out of a Stanley Kubrick film
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It cool I wouldn't… Pegs are for sissys.
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Man, David Himel has been posting some HEAT in woolen jackets on his Facebook lately. This letterman jacket he's been working on with chainstitched Native American art on it is sick. He's also shown a jacquard patterned one woven on a 300 year old loom and a couple of other tweeds.
