GTF Tooled Cases 2013

JB Cases

JB Cases

www.jbcases.com
Silver Member
These were finished up in 2012 but they are being delivered now.

I am really happy with how they turned out. When we do these we never know how each piece of leather will take the colors so often we end up blending colors and that leads to some pretty cool uniquely colored cases.

All of these are tooled across the seam on the back as well. I think we are the only maker doing this regularly. I have seen very few cases done in this style that are tooled on the seam but we have figured out how to do it precisely.

All of these cases have laminated leather endcaps. Each cap is meticulously hand-worked and colored to match the body. Using leather makes the case a bit warmer to the eye in my opinion as well as providing a great amount of flexibility in design.

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These are amazing John! I like them very very much!

To add, your pictures are much better now! Haha. Much better composition.
 
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On another note though...it worries me to see you with that many cues...I don't recall you owning that many cues John..not a good sign...hmmm..
 
Jive said:
These are amazing John! I like them very very much!

To add, your pictures are much better now! Haha. Much better composition.
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Agree with both your comments, Jive.

Great cases with much better photography to make the cases look better.

John,
Your old pictures suck as compared to this few pictures.

keep the good work on the cases and your photography, John. :D
 
I thought u were only full custom... Not cookie cup factory molds.. Like u have said in ur movies( or u tube thing..)..
 
Worminator said:
John, will these cases be for sale through a dealer?
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Yes, through IndyQ.

VolturiCases said:
I thought u were only full custom... Not cookie cup factory molds.. Like u have said in ur movies( or u tube thing..)..
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We are a full custom shop that can do anything a customer desires. Almost anything that is. But we also do private label small scale production for our dealers. GTF, J.Flowers, Prototypes, and the Basic Rugged cases are several brands and models where we use a part of our shop for the production.

These GTF cases though are all handmade. Very meticulous work. Even though there are several tooling patterns each one is tooled by hand and then colored by hand.

What I mean when I say we are not cookie cutter is that we don't limit ourselves to just a few models or choices. Anything we do can be customized to the limit of our abilities.
 
Well that table full of cases .. Which r really great n well tooled... Starts to give the idea of mass production.. Glueing leather n stamping leather is not an art... Art is creating those patterns ... N u did a good job.. U read many books( well atleast for people who don't know leather work ...).. It's just nice tidy work... But the reason that made me post a comment wasnt about the. Cases.. It was about ur contradiction... Those cases r Nice but.. Hmm just no hmmpppfff
 
VolturiCases said:
Well that table full of cases .. Which r really great n well tooled... Starts to give the idea of mass production.. Glueing leather n stamping leather is not an art... Art is creating those patterns ... N u did a good job.. U read many books( well atleast for people who don't know leather work ...).. It's just nice tidy work... But the reason that made me post a comment wasnt about the. Cases.. It was about ur contradiction... Those cases r Nice but.. Hmm just no hmmpppfff
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Are you trying to say he's making too many cases?

-roger
 
VolturiCases said:
Well that table full of cases .. Which r really great n well tooled... Starts to give the idea of mass production.. Glueing leather n stamping leather is not an art... Art is creating those patterns ... N u did a good job.. U read many books( well atleast for people who don't know leather work ...).. It's just nice tidy work... But the reason that made me post a comment wasnt about the. Cases.. It was about ur contradiction... Those cases r Nice but.. Hmm just no hmmpppfff
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Ok, I think maybe you might be a little confused as to what we do. This is the About Us page from our website. http://www.jbcases.com/aboutus.html Here I explain what we do that is custom and what we do that is production. Also GTF is NOT my brand. I don't own it and I don't sell the cases. I am only happy that I was chosen to develop the cases and am allowed to continue to make them. That is why I promote them. On the GTF website they do say that these are handcrafted custom cases. This is about the same as saying that Schon cues are custom cues. What they are is a production case that can be customized. We can make any design, any length, and any change to the case that the customer desires.

The GTF cases have always been production cases. That is a brand we started in 2008 for a customer and I have never said that they are custom cases. We have however done many custom and unique GTF cases along the way.

And I do disagree with you about whether or not the act of building is an art. As you well know making something can be a crude operation or it can be very skilled and meticulous work. I firmly believe that the highest degree of skill in building is itself art. But that said I never said that these cases are art. I am merely presenting the latest batch of tooled GTF cases.

And yes the idea for this type of stamping came from Paul Burnett's books titled Creative Belt Stamping. Paul's books teach a method of arranging common stamps to achieve interesting designs. None of these are copied from Paul's books though. In leather crafting it is not always necessary to reinvent the wheel to achieve a beautiful result. Here we have taken simple tools and arranged them precisely, and as a leather worker yourself you understand that stamping precisely is not easy, to create nice patterns that we can then color in equally interesting ways.

So we can take the classic slip-cover form and dress it up also in the classic style to create some beautiful cases. We don't run an assembly line though even when we produce more of one model. Each step is done the same way whether we do one or one hundred pieces.

Here is one example of a wholly unique GTF tooled and carved case, maybe this one is a little more impressive to you :-)

SHERIDAN-F.jpg
SHERIDAN-B.jpg
 
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VolturiCases said:
Well that table full of cases .. Which r really great n well tooled... Starts to give the idea of mass production.. Glueing leather n stamping leather is not an art... Art is creating those patterns ... N u did a good job.. U read many books( well atleast for people who don't know leather work ...).. It's just nice tidy work... But the reason that made me post a comment wasnt about the. Cases.. It was about ur contradiction... Those cases r Nice but.. Hmm just no hmmpppfff
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I don't think you have any idea what John's capable of and should check out his site to view his vast array of custom cases. If you think these GTF cases are simply mass produced cases then I strongly urge you to try making one. There's a good reason why these GTF cases aren't sold for $9.99 at Walmart.

If you visit Hermes store check out the Birkin Bag. There's a 3-5years wait list for that bag that cost $15000-$100000++ depending of leather used. Can we call it mass produced crap considering they sell hundreds if not thousands of those annually? Nope. Besides the luxurious branding, that item is a piece of well crafted leather piece that not any Tom dick or Harry who knows abit about leather can put together.

Just saying that your perceived idea of a custom case maker is probably too narrow.
 
Jive said:
I don't think you have any idea what John's capable of and should check out his site to view his vast array of custom cases. If you think these GTF cases are simply mass produced cases then I strongly urge you to try making one. There's a good reason why these GTF cases aren't sold for $9.99 at Walmart.

If you visit Hermes store check out the Birkin Bag. There's a 3-5years wait list for that bag that cost $15000-$100000++ depending of leather used. Can we call it mass produced crap considering they sell hundreds if not thousands of those annually? Nope. Besides the luxurious branding, that item is a piece of well crafted leather piece that not any Tom dick or Harry who knows abit about leather can put together.

Just saying that your perceived idea of a custom case maker is probably too narrow.
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I don't think Roger means it as a knock Jive. He is just commenting that a table full of cases with similar patterns looks more production than custom. Which is true in a sense and speaks to the age old question of what is "custom"?

I don't consider these to be custom case and neither are they strictly production cases when "production" means assembly line identical goods.

Each and every one of these cases is hand-made, hand-stamped and each is hand-colored, the veg tan leather takes the colors differently from piece to piece and that requires some judgement to blend the colors in a pleasing way. Each case has it's own unique character and flavor just like a person and just like the people who made them.

So basically, they just exist now as individual examples of a nice style of case that has endured for the past 40 years.
 
JB Cases said:
I don't think Roger means it as a knock Jive. He is just commenting that a table full of cases with similar patterns looks more production than custom. Which is true in a sense and speaks to the age old question of what is "custom"?

I don't consider these to be custom case and neither are they strictly production cases when "production" means assembly line identical goods.

Each and every one of these cases is hand-made, hand-stamped and each is hand-colored, the veg tan leather takes the colors differently from piece to piece and that requires some judgement to blend the colors in a pleasing way. Each case has it's own unique character and flavor just like a person and just like the people who made them.

So basically, they just exist now as individual examples of a nice style of case that has endured for the past 40 years.
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I know he didn't mean knock off but he's slightly condescending/twisted idea of production just didn't sit too well with me. Thus my example of the Hermes bag, in his context those would be considered production leather bags as well which isn't entirely wrong but so? Infact Southwest cues would be considered production cue too huh?
 
JB Cases said:
Ok, I think maybe you might be a little confused as to what we do. This is the About Us page from our website. http://www.jbcases.com/aboutus.html Here I explain what we do that is custom and what we do that is production. Also GTF is NOT my brand. I don't own it and I don't sell the cases. I am only happy that I was chosen to develop the cases and am allowed to continue to make them. That is why I promote them. On the GTF website they do say that these are handcrafted custom cases. This is about the same as saying that Schon cues are custom cues. What they are is a production case that can be customized. We can make any design, any length, and any change to the case that the customer desires.

The GTF cases have always been production cases. That is a brand we started in 2008 for a customer and I have never said that they are custom cases. We have however done many custom and unique GTF cases along the way.

And I do disagree with you about whether or not the act of building is an art. As you well know making something can be a crude operation or it can be very skilled and meticulous work. I firmly believe that the highest degree of skill in building is itself art. But that said I never said that these cases are art. I am merely presenting the latest batch of tooled GTF cases.

And yes the idea for this type of stamping came from Paul Burnett's books titled Creative Belt Stamping. Paul's books teach a method of arranging common stamps to achieve interesting designs. None of these are copied from Paul's books though. In leather crafting it is not always necessary to reinvent the wheel to achieve a beautiful result. Here we have taken simple tools and arranged them precisely, and as a leather worker yourself you understand that stamping precisely is not easy, to create nice patterns that we can then color in equally interesting ways.

So we can take the classic slip-cover form and dress it up also in the classic style to create some beautiful cases. We don't run an assembly line though even when we produce more of one model. Each step is done the same way whether we do one or one hundred pieces.

Here is one example of a wholly unique GTF tooled and carved case, maybe this one is a little more impressive to you :-)

SHERIDAN-F.jpg
SHERIDAN-B.jpg
Click to expand...
John,
send that ****ing nice Case too to thailand with my other Case.
Ralf
 
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