Any demand for bespoke buffalo leather bikini lens protectors?

Yep or no?

  • Like them and would pay £30 delivered.

    Votes: 18 69.2%
  • Like them but not worth the cost for me.

    Votes: 3 11.5%
  • I prefer a combination of water marks and scratches on my lenses.

    Votes: 3 11.5%
  • I prefer spooking deer with the plastic click from my existing caps.

    Votes: 2 7.7%

  • Total voters
    26

Cottis

Well-Known Member
I have made a few sets of these over the last few months which have been in use by me and a handful of other people to good effect. No issues with longevity and they seem a good solution to protecting optics whilst giving immediate, simple and more importantly, silent access to your optic when needed. They are like the bikini covers that come with many scopes but unlike those that tend not to be repairable when the bonded rubber straps break, these will just need easily obtainable elastic threading back through in the event you might catch it on brambles or barbed wire or something like that. The leather is a vegetable tanned buffalo leather which also has a small amount of chrome tanning as well, so an element of weather protection will be provided. Complete saturation would need to see them dried out naturally and then some renapur or leather cream would need applying like your other leather kit like boots etc but these should stand up to heavy abuse for a long time. Light shower or mist will be fine. The elastic can also be tied to your desired taughtness. They are made so they only need about 1 inch or so of stretch but you could tighten it up if you wanted more tension. Me personally, I dislike the bikini covers that come with so many scopes as they are actually quite tight and need too much effort to remove and replace which then leads to rubber fatigue and breakage. These are much easier.

They are box and butt stitched. The amount of leather used is not a huge cost but they take time to make properly and postage/packing annoyingly forms about another fiver so whilst they are nice enough things and offer decent utility, I am not sure if they are worth offering for sale price wise. They can be made to your exact scope objective and ocular bells sizing and there would be various thread colours to choose from as usual, so you can have it how you want. Dark green or dark brown elastic available. I could get them to your door for £30 but wanted to assess demand etc before getting trade membership for a month or two and getting all the stuff back out again.

Let me know if this is something you would pay for or if it is basically excessive for something dull and boring.

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Get yourself in Africa hunting forum mate! The Texans will eat them up!
Cheers for the headsup but not sure I want the hassle of posting abroad. It's more something I do as a hobby from time to time rather than a job but they take a while so I don't want to give them away. At the same time, people have to prioritse what they spend money on. It is hard for me to objective about it as I make them so there is a time investment but the reality is that people can probably not bother with stuff like this or even find cheaper and more nasty solutions made on production line. These might lend themselves to folk with wood and blued rifles who use older scopes that are not serviced by the myriad of plastic caps available.

My gut feeling is that it is coin flip whether there is a market for this but I err on the side of no. Will find out in a few more hours/days :rofl:
 
Very, very nice! Excessive? Perhaps. But then again bespoke equipment is a joy to have forever. I'd certainly buy a couple!
 
Posting to US is easy, and Americans would pay £80-£120 for such a set
Really? That seems a lot. I suppose if you have tons of money and put a premium on tradition I guess but I was sort of looking at them just as a slightly nicer utilitarian sort of thing. Will go find the forum at some point to check it out. My mate is probably on there as he goes all over the world each shooting random stuff. Cheers.
 
Could they be customised/made to measure, for example with a cutaway on the underside of the objective cover, to enable it to slip over the rear sight?
(For those of us who have such primitive things as open sights on our rifles, in addition to more modern add-ons like 'scopes).
 
Could they be customised/made to measure, for example with a cutaway on the underside of the objective cover, to enable it to slip over the rear sight?
(For those of us who have such primitive things as open sights on our rifles, in addition to more modern add-ons like 'scopes).
What do you mean Tim? Does your rear iron sight sit very close to the bottom of your scope objective bell housing? Cutting out part of the cylinder element of the front cover would not help the integrity of the item I suspect. Would depend on how much would need removing. Picture tells a thousand words. It may well fit anyway but you are likely to know better than me. We could all go back to throwing spears and do away with all this stuff entirely :rofl:
 
I have made a few sets of these over the last few months which have been in use by me and a handful of other people to good effect. No issues with longevity and they seem a good solution to protecting optics whilst giving immediate, simple and more importantly, silent access to your optic when needed. They are like the bikini covers that come with many scopes but unlike those that tend not to be repairable when the bonded rubber straps break, these will just need easily obtainable elastic threading back through in the event you might catch it on brambles or barbed wire or something like that. The leather is a vegetable tanned buffalo leather which also has a small amount of chrome tanning as well, so an element of weather protection will be provided. Complete saturation would need to see them dried out naturally and then some renapur or leather cream would need applying like your other leather kit like boots etc but these should stand up to heavy abuse for a long time. Light shower or mist will be fine. The elastic can also be tied to your desired taughtness. They are made so they only need about 1 inch or so of stretch but you could tighten it up if you wanted more tension. Me personally, I dislike the bikini covers that come with so many scopes as they are actually quite tight and need too much effort to remove and replace which then leads to rubber fatigue and breakage. These are much easier.

They are box and butt stitched. The amount of leather used is not a huge cost but they take time to make properly and postage/packing annoyingly forms about another fiver so whilst they are nice enough things and offer decent utility, I am not sure if they are worth offering for sale price wise. They can be made to your exact scope objective and ocular bells sizing and there would be various thread colours to choose from as usual, so you can have it how you want. Dark green or dark brown elastic available. I could get them to your door for £30 but wanted to assess demand etc before getting trade membership for a month or two and getting all the stuff back out again.

Let me know if this is something you would pay for or if it is basically excessive for something dull and boring.

CMB0crQ.jpg

3XvqI4H.jpg

xHVjuS9.jpg

wCAISly.jpg

lQntrfF.jpg

mCdwRhP.jpg

8DeWzxG.jpg

The competition

 
Your bespoke leather lens covers look tremendous, very traditional in style (apart from the elastic cord) (very practical for everyday use) unfortunately at the moment I don’t need any but if I do I know who to ask, and for that price delivered it’s a no brainer.

All the scopes l use already have their original lens covers from the 1940’s with the ocular and objective covers connected with a thin strip of leather (as wit the Rigby lens covers), if l had to replace mine with originals goodness only knows how much they would cost that’s if l could ever find any.

Lovely work Cottis.
 
Your bespoke leather lens covers look tremendous, very traditional in style (apart from the elastic cord) (very practical for everyday use) unfortunately at the moment I don’t need any but if I do I know who to ask, and for that price delivered it’s a no brainer.

All the scopes l use already have their original lens covers from the 1940’s with the ocular and objective covers connected with a thin strip of leather (as wit the Rigby lens covers), if l had to replace mine with originals goodness only knows how much they would cost that’s if l could ever find any.

Lovely work Cottis.
Yeah it just starts getting super labour intensive and adds more costly materials if I do leather straps. Also reduces margin for error on good fitment. I suppose I'm aiming for the best possible price for an item that does the basics well. Even that is not really totally possible
 
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