It’s the perfect fit
BLOOMSBURG —Welcome to the gun show — you best be prepared.
Mark and Wendy Finnegan of Shamrock Holsters in South Dakota are here to help you with that.
Made with supplies only from the United States, the couple has everything a hunter or gun collector could be looking for. They have holsters for handguns, revolvers and straight belts and drop belts straight out of Westerns. All of them are made out of leather.
"We started this a long time ago, 1998, and just kind of kept building and building and building," Wendy said.
"We lost count of how many holsters we have, but it's probably somewhere around 10,000," Mark immediately added.
The idea started with little money, but Mark wanted to do so because everything else was made with plastic and nylon.
"I sold one or two at a time and went from there, and my first display was a tote," he said. "Every holster I made was stored in that and sold in a weekend and now we lug thousands of pounds of leather down the highway. There isn't a gun in the world that we don't have a holster in stock for."
Mark compares the concept of shaping the holsters to that of breaking in a baseball glove. The biggest difference, he says, is that they use water instead of oil to make it snug to the shape of the gun. He takes the warm water and gun and puts them in an air-tight bag to take shape.
Customers can also purchase everyday belts, quite thick too, to wear around the waist. He estimates that with his machinery at work, Mark spends roughly 90 seconds cutting the leather and has less of it going to waste from making the holsters with more of it going to belts.
"I got tired of buying them every three months and having to throw them away," Mark said. "I made them better. I put screws in there and they don't break and ribbed the keeper in while others just staple them in. This was just something that I needed on my own."
The couple has never set up shop at the Early Bird Sports Expo. With a show being canceled in Michigan, the couple heard of the Expo from another vendor and decided to set up their stand this weekend before making their way to Harrisburg for the Great American Outdoor Show. It's right on schedule for the couple that spends much of their time on the road between January and April before producing more goods all summer long.
If unable to see them this weekend, find them at www.shamrockholsters.com.
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