Singin’ Sam sold his western jewelry at dude ranches all over the West.
As early as 1939, he had started traveling around the western states,
playing and singing.  He soon found that a symbiotic relationship
existed between his jewelry making and his music:  by performing the
old cowboy songs a dude ranch clientele wanted to hear, he developed
an audience for his songs and a ready market for his jewelry.

How it All Began
 
As a young man, Sam learned and studied the craft of leatherwork as an apprentice for some of the finest saddle makers in California.  Saddles were bulky and difficult for him to work with so he began to specialize in small items like purses, belts and wallets.  He was doing this as a hobby while he worked at the Air base.  When he left Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson around 1939 and struck out on his own, he turned his hobby into a vocation, or as he would say, his "avocation became his vocation". 

He continued to make the small leather items and eventually produced only belts, as there was a larger market for them at the time.  Sometime in the early 50’s he started making jewelry items out of sterling silver.  Mostly rings and buckles for the belts he was making.  He had learned the art of silversmithing from various silversmiths, including the Native American Indians on the reservations. Sam spent many-a-weekend traveling to the reservations to study and learn their techniques.

Sam’s jewelry venture became so successful that he began doing less leatherwork and concentrated more on the jewelry end of the business.  He started incorporating semi-precious stones such as turquoise and chrysocola, which then led to the great "rock shop era".  There wasn’t a rock shop in the West that Sam hadn’t been to (maybe I should say, “he left no stone unturned”).  Anyway, anytime he saw a rock shop, he had to stop and look for material.  He soon realized that the cut and polished stones were very expensive compared to the rough material so he bought an assortment of rock cutting, grinding and polishing equipment, and soon became an accomplished lapidary. 

By the late 60’s Sam had stopped making belts all together.  All of those years bending over a bench hammering and tooling the leather were starting to catch up with him and the money was much better in the jewelry business.  Once he decided to concentrate all of his efforts on the jewelry, he began studying goldsmithing under the Master Italian goldsmith Joe Ficarra.  He soon added jade to the list of stones that he cut and polished as it was particularly well set off by the gold.   Later he added other stones and lost wax casting for his customers as well. 

Sam also taught others the crafts he had learned.  He had obtained a grant from Vocational Rehabilitation to study goldsmithing and part of the conditions of the grant were that he teach other disabled people braiding and leather making skills, which he did during the time he lived in Phoenix in the early 70's.

Sam finally got out of the jewelry making business during the mid '80's when some of the nerves in his hands deteriorated and his eyesight, even with the aid of powerful loupes and magnifiers, was not good enough for the critical tolerances of goldsmithing.  He then concentrated all of his efforts on singing, recording and teaching about folklore.