Buckets and buckets... Pistol buckets.

So back in the day, before we had kydex and various synthetics, wet molding and custom formed ways to carry firearms (hereto after referred to as holsters), man hadn't thought of how to carry his "fire arms". On the battlefield we had knights, archers, pikes-men, and the like but the average soldier was not so specialized... He carried a sword and a shield... When black powder and the various incantations of it entered warfare, we added Musketeers... and artillery... Given time and the weight of these new arms, Muskets moved to cavalry and the knight found himself more and more obsolete as his armor could be defeated by musket ball...

 Mobility and massed fire came to rule the day... muskets became musketoons and horse pistols...  In the axiom of carrying horse pistols on harness, various scabbards and pistol buckets came into being... The pistol bucket is the great great grandfather of today's holster... Generally they were leather affairs, well constructed (as most horse tack and harness should be) and suitable to the harshness of war... round and tapered to ... well carry a pistol, or two, or three... Strength in numbers, no? Well somewhere in the past few years, I came across a photograph of a cloth pistol bucket... Something for a pair of pistols... An elegantly simple affair with some rather ornate designs in the fabric it was made from... I decided to make myself such a bucket... an experiment to be sure... a proof of concept. When I was done it was a bit oversized, so I did what any self respecting pirate and sailmaker would... I started hacking and slashing... the result was a better fitting design, but now more experimental than originally planned... On a recent night on the town (the eve of the new year no less) I found myself in the awkward social situation of dealing with two souls armed with sword and pistol... While my freshly acquired Ketlands proved fine to the task, I found myself later wishing I'd had me boarding hatchet... So the past few evenings by candlelight I added the necessary canvas and brocade to form an ax loop... I'm most pleased with the results...