Samurai R-D1
Samurai R-D1
Well, I got around to it. Here is my Epson R-D1 clad in Japanese stingray (or '
same') leather. I deliberately included the piece of cartilage (from beneath the dorsal fin) both for sex appeal and even better grip.
Unfortunately, my prowess with scissors and a Stanley knife leave a lot to be desired in terms of cutting in straight lines. It would be cool if cameraleather.com offered this precision cut to shape. I found the residue adhesive beneath the original rubber coverings was enough to stick the new leather in place. Perhaps a dab of super glue along the vertical edges is all that is required.
This leather is extremely tough and the grip is unlike any other material I have ever seen (either natural or man-made). Little wonder the samurai used it to cover their sword handles. Here is a quote from
www.tropicalleather.com:
"There are very few
stingray species that provide suitable leather hides. These are called "scaly species". The skin of these stingrays consists of thousands of tiny rock-hard pearls or scales. This
stingray leather is exceptionally strong and by many is called the most durable
leather in the world. It's definitely fire, water, tear and "cut" resistant.
The reason of these features lies in the structure of the leather. In regular leather, the fibres of the leather run parallel to each other, whereas in stingray leather the fibres run in all directions. In addition, all the tiny pearls with their roots are grown into the bottom layer of the leather, to the effect that you can neither tear the leather apart, nor cut it easily with a knife."