Hand forged in Montana Trout Country, our Missoula Moose Belt, a collaboration with Whiskey Leatherworks, is built for mountain life.
Hand-crafted from 9 oz. Horween Chromexcel Leather, from the famous Horween Leather Company, and finished with a hand hammered rustic copper buckle, copper rivets, and a copper leather keep, we're thrilled and proud to be able to offer this belt to you.
As part of our on-going collaborations with artists in The Outpost, we sat down with Dan, one of the co-founders of Whiskey Leatherworks, to give you some more insight about the company and their craft.
ABOUT WHISKEY LEATHERWORKS:
We started Whiskey Leatherworks in Dan’s workshop here in Missoula with the sole intention to simply create a handmade leather belt, paired with and handmade buckle, both of which needed to be sourced in America and as local as possible.
We wanted our belts to be rugged, yet refined, and reflect our affinity for the outdoors in the American West. We wanted a belt that would take us from an upland hunt with our over-unders, to sipping whiskey and swapping stories at the local distillery. We wanted a belt our wives would love, our friends would admire and our kids would inherit.
THE PROCESS:
Our pursuit began with an attempt to find a blacksmith that would be able to produce a high quality, handmade buckle.
We were fortunate to locate a local Missoula metalsmith and artist, Nathan Kimpell, and went to work designing a very unique set of buckles.
We also looked at numerous leathers from various American tanneries. We selected a few of the very best and realized we had found a unique combination of buckles and leather like no others on the market. We are very proud of the belts that we created.
ON WORKING IN THE ROCKIES:
The R&D process of our products involves many hours and miles of use in a variety of extreme conditions notorious in the Rocky Mountain West.
We put our products through the spring time rain and mud, the dusty dry heat of summer and the cold and deep snows of winter.
We drag them through everything from the dark timbered hillsides of elk country, through the thick brush of an upland bird hunt, to many miles on river float trips.
This type of product testing typically results in construction materials being changed, attachment points being moved, and hardware exchanged, added, or eliminated. This yields a product design that has been heavily researched, built to hold up to many years of use and a beauty that truly increases with age.
It’s a long process, but it’s one that we absolutely love and enjoy.
HOW DO YOU TRUST THE WILD?
We try to spend as much time as we can on the rivers surrounding Missoula during the summer. The river is where so much of our inspiration and so many of our ideas are born. Brainstorming while rowing and fly casting seems to be the process that works for us.
Fall is known as "The Montanan's dilemma" around here, with warm days and cool nights. The dilemma involves pheasant hunting behind some great bird dogs, chasing deer and elk in the high country and fishing the last few hatches of the season. On a perfect day, we accomplish all three!
As fall turns to winter, we turn our attention to skiing. Whether that's skiing hut to hut in the Bitterroot Mountains, or trekking up to Whitefish Mountain, we, like most Missoulians, find ourselves chasing powder all over Western Montana.
