"This place is like a museum, has been for years," he says.
Twice, he's turned down offers to purchase his entire collection. Now, he'll consider offers. "My latest decision is, I can't take this stuff with me, and I'm getting on the old-ish side, you know. So anybody's serious and they want some of this work, they gotta make me an offer. If I think it's a fair price, they can have it."
Scattered amid the horseshoes, lariats, wagon wheels and leather-relief portraits of Will Rogers are more recent artifacts:
* Sly Stallone's boxing gloves, used as the model for a "Rocky 2" belt buckle, hang near Shelton's bench.
* A letter from Reagan gathers dust beneath a glass case, along with buckles commemorating Burt Reynolds' football team and Tom Selleck's "Magnum P.I." series.
* Sketches for guitar straps, leather chairs, buckles and script books, and overnight bags Shelton produced for Mac Davis, Glen Campbell, Jackie Chan, Angie Dickinson, Sally Field, James Garner, Anjelica Huston and Barbra Streisand are stowed among the belt-punching contraptions, sewing machines and electric saws.
Not that Shelton is, or was, particularly star-struck. "I never paid it much mind or let it go to my head," Shelton growls. "I just tended to my own business. Every job, I did the best I could, because every job, my reputation's at stake. You start cutting corners, something like that travels fast too."
Assuming a splay-legged stance behind the same workbench where he once took a belt order from Gable, Shelton selects a nail-shaped stamping tool of his own design, picks up a baton mallet and hammers a delicately dimpled pattern into a swatch of cowhide. He still possesses the smooth, pink hands of a 25-year-old, but decades at the bench have taken a toll on his hearing.
"You're pounding down the background so the design is actually raised up," Shelton explains. "That's basically what's the matter with my ears. I've got 80% hearing loss. All this pounding, pounding, pounding."
Shelton also has eye problems caused by a near-fatal 1936 car crash. "That pretty near killed me," he says. "Unconscious five days. Broken back. Hemorrhage of the brain. I was supposed to stay in bed until my vision got better. You can't stay in bed all that time when you're 16! So I still have double vision. Just this morning I had a flash. Well, I don't want to worry about it. I'm hoping to get this guitar carved before I get too far gone."
