MG 34 leather pad repros

[sam game]

Where can I find a set of leather back pad repros for an MG 34 lafette? How about the quality of these repros? Same as originals or different in size, thickness, etc? Thanks in advance for any input.

[BELTLEAD]

One of the members,Ryan Schnee sells them for around $50

[DARIVS ARCHITECTVS]

Ryan is no longer on this forum. His website is http://www.zwillingssockel.com/. You may contact him at reschnee@NOSPAMearthlink.net. (Take the NOSPAM out). He takes a long time to answer e-mail usually, since he get so much of it and checks it infrequently. The back pads he made for my Lafette 42 are excellent.

One of the comments he had while refirbishing my lafette 42 is that the padding material he removed from the pads during the rebuild was believed to be human hair. He respectfully buried the contents and replaced them with a foam material that approximated the pliability of the original padding. It was the honorable thing to do. Remember who built these guns, fellas. The pads of leather are a real pain to stitch to the metal backing plates on the lafette, so be prepared for some tough and tedious work stitching by hand.

[saddler]

If I can get dimensions I can make these up to order

Also - theres a good chance that the hair in the originals may well have been horse-hair - er - but also a good chance it wasnt. Best err on the side of caution in such cases...

Jon

[DARIVS ARCHITECTVS]

Horse hair was probably used in pads since it doesn't rot easily and makes a great pad.