Improve your Mandalorian cosplay with one easy trick!

One common piece of milsurp gear popular with ‘custom Mandalorian’ and other ‘OC’ costumers are Soviet ammunition pouches made for the trusty Mosin-Nagant rifle. While the Reds and their Eastern Bloc allies/puppets produced a great variety of pouches for the 7.62x54R round, there is one style of Mosin ammo pouch that is by far the most popular with the ‘Mercs. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Mando costumer ever wear any other style of Mosin pouch:

This should come as no surprise, as these postwar pouches are cheap and plentiful (standard double pouches like those above can be had online for $5 or less—and anyone who tries to tell you they’re collectible or valuable is lying). For a piece of starter gear to quickly populate one’s bounty-hunting belt, they’re…fine. The downside to these pouches, however, is that they are immediately recognizable and don’t quite fit the classic Star Wars aesthetic—as the vast majority of holsters, belt pouches, and bandoleers seen in the core six films are all-leather and usually from WWI or WWII. As you can see, postwar Mosin pouches are made of two materials: pebble-textured ‘kirza‘ (which is actually just a rubber-impregnated-canvas), and real grain leather for the corners, rear belt strap, and front closure strap. Because the leather used was almost always lighter in color than the kirza, an eye-catching two-tone effect is created. Thankfully, there is a very easy fix – one which I don’t think many costumers are aware of.

By hitting the actual leather elements with a strong leather dye (such as Fiebing’s Dark or Medium Brown) to better match the color of the kirza, we can limit the contrast between the two materials, making them look much more cohesive and much closer to the established look of onscreen pouches!

You’ll also note that the other key difference between postwar Mosin pouches and the majority of leathergoods seen onscreen is the prominent, shiny rivets holding everything together. Because GFFA gear is generally pretty streamlined, the less noticeable these rivets are, the better! Since fire-bluing will melt the kirza and masking for spraypaint is too much work, let’s just paint them! A drop or two of brown nail polish easily obscures the rivets; once dry, a bit of clear nail polish seals it. My wife didn’t have any brown polish on hand, so after dyeing the leather, I just used three coats of acrylic craft paint and two coats of ModPodge on the rivets. If it starts to chip, flake off, or wear through, no worries: think of it as extra weathering!

When Mosin pouches come up in discussion among costumers, defenders and apologists will point to The Mandalorian S01E06, where they made their onscreen debut worn by ‘Zero’ (aka the Maurice Moss droid pilot) – though at least there they were only seen in dim cinematic lighting, instead of brightly-lit backyards or convention halls:

In this case, I will again point to the relatively low prop budget of the D+ shows, and say that these pouches were just as plentiful when Lucas was making his films, and yet it took more than four decades and a big corporate sale before they found their way onscreen, so… just as in historic reenacting, when building your kit or impression it always pays to stick with items that stick closer to the visual rules of the setting, not the exceptions! Bottom line: unmodified Mosin pouches are farby when they’re onscreen, and they’re farby in real life, too. Change my mind! 😛

Personally, I’ve got more than enough Swarzy ammo pouches already, so if you like the looks of these, keep an eye on the SWLH facebook group for your chance to snag them as part of our tenth anniversary giveaway!

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