A Briefcase Built Around a Bad Day

The MacArthur 1235: a leather case with a second job nobody hopes to see done

Every briefcase I make carries papers. This one carries an argument too: that a thing can look like a gentleman’s accessory and still be built for the worst afternoon of your life. I built the MacArthur 1235 in black English bridle leather, hand stitched, with a ballistic pad set into the front panel and the back flap.

Video: “Bulletproof Bridle Leather Briefcase Hand Stitched,” Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube, January 2016.

The video has no narration, so the facts below come from its description and from the product listing, and every protection claim in this post is mine, not a laboratory’s. I’ll keep saying so.

The leather first

Look at it before you think about what’s inside. The leather is black Wickett & Craig bridle, thick and waxed, with a flat front, a plain top handle and brass D-rings at the sides for a strap. Nothing on the outside says anything about armor. That was the point. A case that announces itself as protection gets treated like a prop. This one gets treated like a briefcase, and the other job stays private.

The size is 16 by 12 by 2 inches, a slim single section. Slim matters. The ballistic layer has to lie flat and stay out of the way of the case, or the case stops being a case.

What goes in the panels

The pad is Dyneema, an ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene. My listing says it is 15 times stronger than steel, 40 percent stronger and lighter than Kevlar, and holds its performance when wet. Those are the claims I make about the material, and they come from my own listing copy, not from a test report I can hand you. I set the Dyneema into the front panel and into the back of the flap, so the case is covered twice where it matters.

This photograph shows the flap raised and the strip of leather riveted across its inside edge. I won’t tell you the pad is visible here, because it isn’t. Good armor, like good lining, should be something you take on trust until you have reason not to.

The test that failed first

I should tell you about the first test, because it’s the reason this case exists in its current form. In August 2015 I put a Dyneema pad inside one of my bridle leather briefcases and shot it. In my own words from that video’s description, it stopped a 9mm, a .44 and a .357. It did not stop a very fast 9mm +P+ round, which I expected. And the first .357 went through.

It went through because it hit one of the cross-stitch lines in the pad. The stitching was the weak spot. So I took the cross stitching out of future pads. That is the whole design story: a flaw found by firing at it, then removed.

I like that story better than any claim I could make. It’s what craft looks like when the consequences are real.

Opening it up

Inside, the case is lined in bridle leather, and the shoulder strap is lined in suede. The lock is Italian, solid brass. The case in the photograph holds a spool of yellow thread, because empty cases photograph like empty rooms. I now use an English lock or a combination lock on this model, and I can add a buckle strap if you want one.

What it is not

Here is what the listing says, and I stand behind it. I tested the briefcase empty against popular ammunition, and I cannot certify it as an anti-ballistic protector. Variables change everything. A book inside might help stop a round. A laptop might blast small parts into the lining. I haven’t tested that. No ballistic material gives 100 percent protection. I don’t ship this case to Connecticut or outside the USA.

That’s a long list of limits for an object I’m proud of. The limits are the honest half of the pride.

Why make it at all

Some objects exist because someone wanted to see whether they could. I can stitch a thick leather case by hand. Could that same case also be asked to do something harder than hold a legal pad? It turned out the answer was yes, with conditions. I like objects that keep their conditions in the open.

If you want a MacArthur, the listing is live and the button at the top of this post leads there.

Sources

• Bulletproof Bridle Leather Briefcase Hand Stitched (Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker, YouTube, January 4, 2016)
• Marcellino Leather Briefcase Bulletproof Test #1 (Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker, YouTube, August 23, 2015)
• MacArthur 1235 Bulletproof Briefcase, product listing and disclaimer (Marcellino NY)