Quality Sporrans for less money

[OC Richard]

On that sporran I just got the "antique finish" appeared to be grey paint or some such.

I knew the cantle could look much nicer! My inspiration was Miller's sporran:

IMG_7451.jpg

So I took off the cantle to see if the reverse of the cantle had the same finish as the front. It did, giving me a nice big surface to experiment with, to find out what the metal underneath the paint looked like.

I tried polish, and steel wool, and finally fine sandpaper. Under the ugly paint was pretty nice-looking silvery metal, possibly aluminium.

So I went to work on the front of the cantle, using first very fine sandpaper, then steel wool, to get the raised portions of the design to look a bit more silvery. I didn't want it too shiny, I wanted to keep some of the "antique" look.

Here's what I ended up with, the new $40 Ebay sporran on the left an a century-old solid German Silver cantle on the right, both having nice knotwork and cool bird heads.

That new sporran cantle is a very nice sculpt! I wonder who did the sculpt, and when.