Alamo Fast Draw Episode 31 part 3 Bob Mernickle

22 September, 2008 (03:24) | Fast Draw Talk Show

Alamo Fast Draw: My guest one of these days, if I had my way.

Gunfighter Bob Mernickle: Pardon?

Alamo Fast Draw: He's going to be one of my guests on the show some day if I have my way.

Gunfighter Bob Mernickle: You know, and he should be he's a neat guy. He's full of knowledge and he loves fast draw and always has and I actually cut my first holster out on his floor in the kitchen. My problem was I didn't know the knife was going to go not only through the leather but the linoleum too, so his wife, Karen, was not overly happy with me.

Alamo Fast Draw: Well, I had heard that story, and if it didn't get in there, I was going to get it in.

Gunfighter Bob Mernickle: Oh, it was very true, it was just priceless. I thought she was going to kill me, but anyway, we got through that and I managed to live and I built that first holster and then I went and I critiqued it again within probably a month to two months. I critiqued it and I built another one but I changed things again and that's when I started understanding patterns and working with patterns and the second holster that I built – incidentally the second one that I built is on my shop on the wall here.

Blackbird: Does it contain any linoleum?

Gunfighter Bob Mernickle: Pardon?

Blackbird: Does it contain any linoleum?

Gunfighter Bob Mernickle: No, that was the first one. [laughs] I don't know what happened to that first one. I'd sure love to have it though. Anyway, the second one that I built, I went down to a shoot in Kenmore, Washington and I set my first world record ever, it was a sanction contest, records were available at that time and it was a vice-chairman, they had records available and vice-chairman contests in those days and I set a world record. Well, I set the world record and somebody that I had never met before came up to me and he says, hey! Where did you get the rig, and I said, I built it, and he said, can you build me one? And I said, sure! So there it started. And that was, oh god! That was in probably the early-to-mid seventies so

Blackbird: You really sound like a person who likes things just-so you have a picture in your mind of something special and you just can't wait to make it happen.

Gunfighter Bob Mernickle: Oh yeah, that's me, and the funny thing is I'll have people like phone me up or ask me about something and they have a requirement or whatever, because we do a lot of different things in our shop and sometimes I'll say look! Let me call you back, and it'll take me a month. And I'll call them back and I got it it’s in my head now. And sometimes they think, I thought you forgot about me and I go, no. I just have to figure out what I got to do. And sometimes you can't just jump on it you got to tink (sic) about it and sometimes when you're thinking about it if you think too hard you can't figure it out and so I keep it on the back burners until all of a sudden I start seeing a picture. Once I see the picture in my mind, then I can do it, and then I just got to start

Blackbird: Sometimes you sleep on it a little bit.

Gunfighter Bob Mernickle: Yeah, oh yeah. I haven't done it for years, but I used to sleep with a pen and paper by my bed. I haven't done it for years, now, but I used to sleep with it, because I would wake up in the middle of the night with an idea because I was sort of the up-and-coming holster builder and I was trying to – I don't want to call it create a name for myself because it really didn't have anything to do with that – but I wanted to have a product line that people would remember and I didn't want to just be another holster builder. I wanted to do my own thing, and that's why I've always done that, and I still am to this day and anything and everything you ever see on the my site is that way, and I'm hands-on. I'm constantly hands-on. I have.

Jim Martin: Well, you don't get to go out and shoot as often as you used to.

Bob Mernickle: No.

Gunfighter Bob Mernickle: No kidding! I'm sitting here as I'm speaking to everybody and I'm looking about a hundred feet away from me, we have a double French doors in our office here and I'm looking through and a hundred feet away from me there's a big black opening if if I turn the light on. I have a 16-32 indoor climate controlled shooting range in my shop that I hardly get to walk into