“What is the difference between a cowboy and a buckaroo?” you ask.
A Great Basin buckaroo drives a beat-up old pickup with a fully tooled $5,000 saddle resting comfortably in the bed. He wears silver spurs made in Elko in the vaquero tradition, meaning silver is hanging all over them. His horse is decked out with a hackamore, Santa Ynez style reins, bosal and headstall made by Luis Ortega, hanging on to a spade bit made by Mark Dahl.
A cowboy, on the other hand, drives a brand new pickup with a $125 beat-up old saddle thrown in the back and his Chihuahua spurs have no maker’s mark. They do have wide heel bands and look like they were horseshoer’s rasps in a previous life. There’s no silver adornment because it wouldn’t last two minutes in the brush of south Texas. A cowboy’s gear is built for functionality, not for beauty.
It’s been said that the cowboy can gather two pastures while the buckaroo is still decorating his horse. But to be fair, the buckaroo with all his or her horsehair, latigo and rawhide contraptions, might just be, as a class, unrivaled in the making of a cow pony.
I’ve been collecting old bits and spurs for half a century and have learned how to craft all the old tools of the cowboy trade by fixing up old spurs, saddles and anything else made of leather.
A restauranteur who inherited a valuable pair of old G.S. Garcia spurs came by my place several years ago and wanted to know how much I’d charge for a pair of spur leathers with silver conchas and buckles that would match the engraving on the spurs. If I recall correctly, I quoted a price of $350 and the guy blew a gasket. You’d have thought I killed his dog or had a sordid affair with his wife. I thought he was gonna stroke-out on me!
I tried to explain that to make each concha I’d use a silver dollar, then worth $25 apiece. I’d also use a silver dollar to make each fancy buckle that would also be heavily engraved. So you can see that before I’d even begun to pound or engrave I’d already be out a hundred bucks. To make the actual spur leathers I’d use only the best Herman Oak leather which would add another fifty dollars. I’d use a four step process to get the new leather looking old which requires an assortment of expensive finishes. I also had to tool and sew them, burnish the edges and solder backs to the conchas to mount on the spur leathers.
Long story short the guy took his business elsewhere.
Years went by and the restauranteur was back in my garage/shop with the same old spurs hanging on to what I presume were spur leathers. By committing what I think should be a felony someone had assaulted the spurs with a wire wheel to remove all the beautiful old patina which devalued the spurs by about 90%. It seems the restauranteur had taken his business to a guy who sharpened knives for a living and had heard from someone how a new lucrative career awaited him in the uncrowded restoration field. The leathers were made with inferior leather probably tanned in urine in Mexico, the stitches were frayed and nothing was tooled. But the restauranteur said the knife sharpener had stressed that the conchas had been made out of the finest German silver.
Now in addition to a set of spur leathers, conchas and silver buckles the restauranteur asked if I could restore the shiny spurs to their former glory. I told the guy it would now be $750 for everything, hoping it would scare him off. When he once again objected to my price I mentioned the higher price of silver. He interrupted and asked if I couldn’t just reuse the German silver that the knife sharpener had insisted was the very best.
I took great pleasure in asking him, “You do know that there is actually no real silver in German silver don’t you?”
The restauranteur looked like I’d just barfed in his Bouillabaisse. After he finished choking and was able to breathe again he said, “Sure. Who doesn’t know that?”
