John’s reputation and that of his company were growing exponentially. In 1979 he launched the first Bianchi Cup pistol match. Today, it is the NRA Bianchi Cup, the crown jewel of international shooting competitions. By the early 1980s he had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and rekindled his childhood love of the Old West by adding a line of Western holsters and gun belts to the Bianchi catalog.

In 1982 he achieved another of his dreams, opening the Bianchi Frontier Museum, the first large-scale Old West attraction of its kind. Unfortunately, Temecula was too far from the beaten path at the time for it to be financially successful; the operating costs of the 25,000-square-foot museum and its staff were beginning to drain the manufacturing company’s operating capital. In 1985 John made the tough call. He closed the museum and sold his lifetime accumulation of Western guns and memorabilia to Gene Autry. “My collection became the basis for the Autry National Center, without which there would be no Autry Museum today,” lamented Bianchi.

As fate would have it, that period of his life also coincided with the most important project of his career. “One day in 1981 the phone rang and it was the Department of Defense. The caller said, ‘You’ve probably heard that the government is looking to replace the 1911 pistol and we haven’t made a decision on what that will be, but we need to concurrently come up with a new design for the holster. We read your book [“Bluesteel & Gunleather” (1978)] and we are convinced that you are the final authority on holster design.’ I was very flattered to hear they had read my book at the Department of Defense, and then they really threw me a curve. The caller asked if they could send a team of acquisition people out to Bianchi Int’l to get some ideas on how to design a new military holster.”

When the DoD team arrived they were carrying a copy of the book. “They sat down in my office and started going through it from one page to another saying, ‘This is fascinating, and this is fascinating, absolutely fascinating,’ and then they dropped the big question, ‘What should the new holster consist of?’ I said that’s a big question and it’s a dynamic challenge. Thirteen percent of the military is left-handed and there are no left-handed holsters, so it has to be ambidextrous to minimize inventory items. They looked at me and said, ‘That makes sense.’ And then I told them, it needs to appeal to Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, and Coast Guard, so that means it needs to be environmentally balanced, suitable for extreme cold, extreme heat, humidity, dust, salt water, everything.

“They looked at each other again and said they’d never even thought about that. I told them the carry method with the brass prong had to go. It had to be more secure; it had to ride higher on the hip. We talked about the holster needing to protect the gun against environmental factors, as well as abrasion, rolling on it, and falling on it. It had to be able to be cleaned very quickly. And it couldn’t be leather. If it is leather and it gets wet, it takes forever to dry. Troops are in the field, and can’t have a wet holster. We talked for three days, and they jotted down everything I said. They toured the plant and left.” By this time Bianchi Gunleather was in its new home in Temecula, Calif., with a facility that covered more than 50,000-square-feet and employed more than 350 workers. Bianchi had no idea of the impression he had made. About six months later he received a Request for Quotation in the mail to design the holster.

“I looked at the RFQ and it’s this thick,” Bianchi said as he held his thumb and index finger about an inch apart, “and it had 64 points of compliance! Did I say all that? Everything I had suggested they put in the RFQ! They wanted a quote for the design and creation of a prototype, so we got our team of accountants, production managers, and designers together and worked out a design timeframe of 18 months and a bid for the project. We sent it in, and two months later we get a call. We’d been selected and were to begin work within 30 days.”

In typical fashion, Bianchi decided not to wait for the money and immediately started working on preliminary designs. They were two months into the project and they still hadn’t heard a word from Washington.

“After six months we finally get a phone call. ‘Bad news, Congress cut all developmental funds. We thought you ought to know. You can continue with development if you want. There’s no guarantee when you’ll be paid.’ If it were any other public company they would have stopped development right there. Stockholders wouldn’t have put up with it. Well, I was the principal stockholder,” John said with a laugh, “and I decided to proceed. Luckily, about six months later the funds were reinstated and we began getting progress payments.”

The holster’s design posed some enormous challenges in synthetic materials development, manufacturing, and in achieving John’s first caveat, it had to be ambidextrous. That was a strategic word in Bianchi’s vocabulary. He was left-handed, and had in fact been responsible for Armand Swenson developing the ambidextrous safety for the Colt M1911. Swenson crafted the first one for Bianchi.

Bianchi got to the point at which the holster was completed except for a functional ambidextrous fastening mechanism. “One day I left the plant and on my way home it hit me like a bolt of lightning. Whammo! There it was. I saw it in my mind’s eye. I rushed into the house, got a coat hanger and a beer can and I fabricated a working model. The next week our design staff made the first prototype by hand out of sheetmetal and a spring wire clip. We put the finished holster together and submitted it for approval.” The Bianchi design was accepted by the DoD in 1984, and that is where the designation UM84 (Universal Military 1984) originated. Bianchi Int’l initially produced around 70,000 M12 (the military designation for the UM84) holsters.

Just about every holster Bianchi has designed, or some variation of it, is in use today somewhere in the world. As for the M12 it became the most successful military holster ever devised and is still in use by the U.S. more than 25 years later, while Bianchi Int’l (which John sold in 1987 and retired from in 1992) continues to offer civilian UM84 versions in a variety of configurations and colors for the Beretta 92FS and other models.

Looking back on the development of the UM84, Bianchi admits that it was the most demanding, expensive design project in the history of the company, but through the years its technology led to the development of the Ranger line of synthetic holsters, belts and accessories and the AccuMold Elite police duty gear in use today. Like many things throughout Bianchi’s life the UM84 went beyond the profit motivation and truly became a labor of love. “Our goal was to design a holster that would be in service for the foreseeable future, and we achieved that goal,” he said.

“Voids beg to be filled,” said Bianchi. After about a year in retirement, he established Bianchi Frontier Gunleather, specializing in handcrafted Western holsters and gun belts. It is now in its 17th year. And that is the stuff legends are made of.