Alamo Fast Draw

This posting starts off where the first part of the Alamo Fast Draw interview with Bob Mernickle left off and their will be more. But for now this is the second installment.

Blackbird: Well you did get the message out because we hear nothing but good about your fast draw holsters. I'm interested in them myself, especially those that are cut to simulate those used during the days of the cowboy hero on television on in the Saturday morning pictures. And I was curious whether you were working on any projects of research in that area.

Bob Mernickle: Oh, big time. A lot of people are familiar with the Roy Rogers / Dale Evans Foundation and there are companies, including Colt, who have donated guns for that for so many years and holster makers that have built the custom rig, like the reproduction of the Roy Rogers rig and stuff like that for that. Well, we just got contacted by Cal Alrich of the Cowboy Fast Draw Association and it’s not a problem me letting the word out at this point but Colt has committed for Cowboy Fast Draw a handgun fully engraved handgun for that and we are going to be doing a holster for that draw that you pay so many dollars for tickets and it’s going to go on, I think it’s 2009 it will be drawn for. It’s going to be a very very expensive but beautiful artwork on both sides of the scale, the gun as well as the holster. What our intent is on the holster which as a matter of fact it’s interesting I'm going to be on the air and saying this before I tell Cal because he told me to just do my own thing, so I've decided to do that. What we're going to do for a holster, we're going to do what's called in cowboy fast draw our CFD5 holster and we are going to have a likeness hand-carved on the side of the holster of Roy Rogers bucking on Trigger with the horse reared up and Roy Rogers will be all fully hand-carved on the side of the holster and then the rest of the holster is going to be fully carved because if I don't know if you recall this, but I'm sure you will, Roy Rogers absolutely loves carved rigs and so we're going to do a fully-carved rig but unlike most carved rigs, we are carving it inside and out. There will not be a piece of leather on the holster that is not carved. That means even right down into the tube where you insert the gun will be carved. The back on the holster will also be carved and what we're going to be working on and hopefully it will work out and things could change a little bit from what I'm saying but it won't change a lot. We're going to work on carving the foundation that they do, the Roy Rogers Foundation, the charity thing that they do – it’s for children, I know that.

Jim Martin: It’s the orphans.

Bob Mernickle: Yeah, there's a specific wording for it, and the word just evaded me right now for some reason, but anyway we're going to hand carve all that information on the back on the holster and if we can get the artwork which we're going to work through the Roy Rogers Foundation for the artwork. If we can get the artwork, we are going to hand carve on each side of all the wording on the inside of the belt a picture of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

Alamo Fast Draw: Is it Happy Trails.

Bob Mernickle: Happy Trails Foundation. Thank you, that's what it is. Happy Trails, it just evaded me.

Alamo Fast Draw: That's courtesy of Wes.

Bob Mernickle: OK, thank you! [laughs] I think it’s going to be quite the thing. It won't be drawn until next year but Cal's working on all the promo information for it and stuff like that as we speak, and I've already got sort of a heads-up on what I'm doing. It took me a while to do it but I thought about it and all of a sudden it just came to me and that was it, it’s going to be done, so I'm actually very excited about being part of that.

Blackbird: I did a great deal of the research for Jim Lockwood the first fifteen years of his operation, things like the cut of Roy Rogers holsters and thought and I'm curious. You told me about how one of the ways it’s going to be embellished, but I'm curious about the cut of the holster itself. Is it going to be in a Gilmore type.

Bob Mernickle: No.

Blackbird: Or is it going to be something unique?

Bob Mernickle: No, it’s going to be actually in my style. One thing you'll find if you spend any kind of time on our web site or brochures or anything. The one thing I've never done was copy what somebody else has done. I've done all my own renditions of anything and I've always enjoyed doing it that way versus somebody else has done it, it’s been done, and I love looking at the art work of other makers. I've got a picture of Arvo Orjala's holster on my wall. And incidentally, it sells for $32.95 according to the picture. That was a long time ago!

Blackbird: That was belt and holster.

Bob Mernickle: Pardon?

Blackbird: That's both belt and holster.

Bob Mernickle: That was everything. That's right and a double rig I think was $44.95, so it goes way back, so yeah, I've got some memorabilia here. I have memorabilia from Alfonso's of Hollywood when Alfonso Piñeda was actually alive and building holsters. I have a couple of pieces of his, so I very much enjoy what other people have done but I leave that to them, if you understand what I'm saying.

Blackbird: Oh, I do, yes.

Bob Mernickle: And so I create my own stuff and I trying to create it in a likeness or for instance the B-Western stuff. We're heavily involved in B-Western but what I did was I have created what could have been built or might have been built in all the B-Western movies of their day with what they might have been wearing and that's what I create and blend the heck out of them.

Blackbird: Well, you know, there are some things that were done, have been done before and in that sense, it’s kind of a gone by in terms of research interests. But there are other things that have been done in the past in Hollywood that are no longer done, not because they're passé or because they don't work as well. Just because the method of fashioning the holster has been lost. This nearly becomes so with the Riddling Holster and the 8H Hardy Holster which is very influential in Hollywood and the Heiser Holster is just now beginning to get the recognition it should get, and the influence it had in Hollywood. This is long before Arvo Ojala or Andy Anderson or many of the big names we talked about today.

Bob Mernickle: You know, you sound very knowledgeable on holsters and I very much appreciate that. It sounds like you know more about it than I do. And that's probably true, and the reason I say that and I say that very respectfully I have always been focused on what I do and not what other people have done or do, but I do really appreciate some of the early works that I've seen.

Blackbird: Well, that's traditional too because we worked with a guy named Bob Brown for many years and it took a lot of persuading to get him to do even the old pieces that he had done before. He didn't want to repeat himself.

Bob Mernickle: Mm-hmm [as in "yes"]

Blackbird: He didn't want to copy anyone else.

Bob Mernickle: You know, I'm much in the same boat as he is in that respect because going in to fast draw which is where I cut my teeth in building fast draw holsters and it also explains how I got started in building holsters was through fast draw, world fast draw, it was called the Western Fast Draw Association in it’s day which when that became the World Fast Draw Association and anyway when I first got started back in the late 60's early 70's and started shooting, I shot for a couple of years and I saw a guy shooting that I couldn't believe he was shooting as fast as he was and his name was Mel Stockwell. I don't know how many people know that name. he was from Balthal, Washington and he became oh, back in the very early 70's he became World Champion at the time and he was doing this draw that had never seen before called a twist fan and I looked at that thing and said that's a "me thing" I got to do that, but I couldn't find a holster to do it, and I had a guy build me a couple of different holsters and I kept asking him to do different things to it and I finally got frustrated not in his work. It was nothing to do with that, but he wasn't hearing what I was saying to try and get this holster to work correctly so I actually went down to Tandy Leather and bought a side of leather and some tools, went home and I didn't even go to my house, I went to Dennis Robinson and I don't know how many people know of Dennis Robinson up in Canada but he is probably one of the longest standing fast draw shooters in history, I swear, has been shooting' since the fifties and he's still shooting' to this very day.

If any of you Gunfighters would like to hear more of this interview you can listen to episode 31on the audio player(red) on the right side of this page. If you would like to join in the show live or listen live to the Alamo Fast Draw show or call 1-724-444-7444 show#16056. Whether you are a gunfighter or not its a fun show.

Gunfighter Gulch Is a great place to get a lot of info on Fast Draw History.

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