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ducjes

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About ducjes

  • Rank
    Member
  • Birthday January 31

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  • Website URL
    http://www.guardedgoods.com

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Minneapolis, MN

LW Info

  • Leatherwork Specialty
    Wallets
  • Interested in learning about
    Bags/Briefcases

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  1. Photos of both sets available here. I've had these for 3 years or so but never really used them. I figured I'd get them moved to a new home where they'll see some use. Vergez Blanchard #8 Set - 9 tooth and 2 tooth pricking iron Retail: $230 Price: $210 Vergez Blanchard #6 Set - 7 tooth and 2 tooth pricking iron Retail: $190 Price: $170 Shipping is included to the US. International adds an additional $15. Purchase both together for $360 and save $20.
  2. Wish I would have seen this a few months ago! I'm in Burnsville as well but just purchased a similar machine. Do you have anything else for sale?
  3. Ohio Travel Bag has done a smart move and decided to join the internet-era with a much improved website. You no longer need to download the 40mb PDF file and sort through all the pages to find what you're looking for. The new website has everything nicely grouped, allows searches, and easily allows you to checkout. They now include dimensions and country of origin among other things in the notes. Thanks for doing this, Ohio Travel Bag!
  4. Full image process here. Warning: Image album is 94 image of the entire process! So this is a bit of something different... I figured it warranted being posted here since it is made from an awesome pair of old shoes. The Backstory Someone on StyleForum messaged me and asked if I had ever made any wallets from old pairs of shoes. I told him I hadn't but I'd be willing to give it a shot but couldn't guarantee any results. He sent the shoes off and they arrived last night. Initially seeing the shoes, I didn't think I'd be able to make anything from them beyond a lanyard due to the limited space of "clean" shell. After thinking about it, I decided to get crafty and use anything I could. The Shoes He sent me a pair of size 7 vintage Alden 986 Leisure Handsewn #8 Shell Cordovan Loafers. The markings on the inside indicate these are from a year ending in 4. Based on their wear and use, I'd guess they are from either 1994. Could be 2004 or even earlier too -- it's just a guess. These had a ton of wear but are built like bricks. Deconstruction I wanted to check out the interior components so I ripped off the heel and started removing the uppers from the sole. It was cool to check out the steel shank and all the cork on the inside. The Process Luckily I have my cutting dies and 4 ton clicking press otherside this would have been significantly more difficult and messy. Removing the uppers was as easy as cutting along the bottom as close to the sole as I could with an Xacto blade. I messed around with a few different components for the card holder including using the folded portions of the upper near the top of where you put your foot in, but that ended up being way too thick so I had to rethink my plan. Burnishing, beveling and sanding were all the same process so that wasn't too difficult. The edges were tough because the shell had rolls in it from use but it ended up working out. Piercing all the holes and hand stitching was just like normal too -- actually probably easier because the shell was so soft. The result turned out a lot better than I expected. I think they are kind of a cool tribute to the Alden 986 and will allow the customer to have this repurposed item to use for many years to come. In terms of time, this took *significantly* longer than doing a normal card holder just because the deconstruction took awhile and making sure different parts were getting glued down properly. From start to finish, it probably took me around 2.5 hours. If I were to do it again in the future, it'd probably only take around 1.5 hours since I know a bit more of what I was doing this time. It was a fun side project -- maybe I can do something like this in the future.
  5. I thought I would put this up for other people to use. I frequently found myself Googling conversions for various things when conducting my business and figured I'd put together a full time Excel tool to have it all in one place to easily access. What can this tool do? Convert Thickness: Enter in ounces or mm to convert to the opposite metric in decimal and fractions Calculate Square Footage & Pricing: Enter in the length, height, quantity per piece, and pricing per square foot for your project to get a cost of your materials. Ex: Entering $15 per square foot for leather with dimensions of 8.5" x 3.5" for 1 piece shows you that you're using .2066 square feet and $3.10 in leather materials. Convert Currencies: Enter in a quantity and select the currency you're converting from and to. Utilizes current market rates for conversion. Refresh data to update. Ex: 300 EUR to USD = $327.84. Dimension conversion: Convert square feet to square meters or sq. m. to sq. ft. Ex: 20 square feet is equal to 1.86 square meters. Or .29 square meters is equal to 3.12 square feet. It is nothing earth shattering as all of this can be done quickly with Google, but I found myself doing it enough that it warranted being put in an Excel file that I keep on my Google Drive to access whenever I need to. Hope it helps someone else out! DOWNLOAD LINK HERE
  6. Check out Ponoko next time. Significantly cheaper and significantly faster. Guaranteed to get exactly what you want if you have some design experience.
  7. Cutting dies are amazing... but they can be a big initial investment. If you're not ready to jump into such a huge commitment, I think it is time for you to check out some acrylic templates. I have used this company prior to getting cutting dies made and still occasionally use them for mocking up more complex designs. They are very affordable in terms of what you get and the turn around time is fantastic. Company Details The company I use for acrylic templates is called Ponoko. From their website: What Can They Do? They offer a *ton* of different materials you can laser cut into. You can cut into various thicknesses and colors of acrylic, cardboard, wood, leather, metal and pretty much anything else you can think of. You need to have a pretty good understanding of Adobe Illustrator / Auto CAD / Inkscape (free) / CorelDraw for this to work out well. They have various "templates" where you can place your designs and they have specific directions on their website you need to follow to get everything to turn out correctly. You can do some awesome things like etching into the material to show it's dimensions or lines (in this case I used it show it was a 20mm width design as well as where the "fold" lines are). Pricing I got all these designs cut out into acrylic templates for $56.59 shipped. This was on the 31" x 15" piece of acrylic but they have smaller sizes too which cost less. The designs were cut out on 3mm thick clear acrylic. Turnaround Time This was the fifth order I've placed with them. The most recent order was placed October 23rd, went into production on October 26th, was shipped on October 30th and arrived on November 2nd. So roughly 10 days from order to delivery at my front door. Pretty wild. Outcome Here are a few of the templates I've had made which help in either deciding if I'm going to get cutting dies made out of the designs or for more one off designs. - Tall wallet - Two piece watch straps which I ended up turning into cutting dies. - NATO straps Final Thoughts As I said -- this is a good company to check out if you're still cutting out projects based off hand cut card board templates. This will definitely help your game! I know this sounds like a company shill post, but I'm 100% not affiliated with Ponoko and receive nothing from this post. I just think more people need to know about them since they're so affordable. Let me know if you have any questions!
  8. Looks great! I'll take it off your hands for $60.
  9. It depends on the project. I often use 4 ounce for exteriors and 2 - 3 ounce for interiors. All leathers and threads are chosen by the customer.
  10. Ignore all previous things in this thread. If you need assistance, contact Shelley Huard from The Tannery Row: shelleyhuard@thetanneryrow.com and the website is: http://www.thetanneryrow.com/
  11. Exterior is made from Japanese Brown Shell Cordovan. Interior is made out of Horween Burgundy Chromexcel Horsehide. 6 SPI with waxed linen thread. Has 6 card slots, 2 hidden slots and 1 main compartment. Very pleased with how it turned out.
  12. Clayton & Sons for this particular shell. Exterior is around 4.5 oz. Interior is around 1.5 oz. This is 6 SPI chosen by the customer. I can do 8 as well. They wanted a more casual look.
  13. I decided to document my process for making a hand stitched wallet a few nights ago. This is a fully handstitched 6 slot, 2 hidden slot custom bifold made from Clayton Navy Shell Cordovan and European Medium Brown Baby Calf. Just a warning, the album *is* 104 images in total... so I really do go into every single step. Let me know if you have any questions!
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