New Prototype Wallet

nice work ! how do you go about making the card slots ? keeping the total thickness to a minimum

The card slots pieces are 4.5" wide x 2.5" tall. Starting at .5" from the top, I cut out a .5" wide x 2" tall piece on either side, leaving a .5" x .5" tab on either side of the top. I do this on all but the last card slot (the one at the bottom that has my logo in the pic). I mark two horizontal lines on the slots, as well. The first is 1.75" from the top, and this is where I stitch it to the slot behind it. The next line is 2.25" from the top and this is where the slot placed on top will stitch into this one. I get a .5" drop for each card slot that's stacked on top. The line also serves as a glue marker so I know where to put the contact cement.

I stack card slots, stitching one on top of the other. In this wallet, I didn't stitch the first slot to the liner so I would have a large pocket, but in others I have stitched it and made it a normal size slot.

I skive, glue and fold over in half the tabs towards the center. This means I am only stitching one layer of leather to the liner.

On the side along the edge, I trim off .25" from the tab and the same thing applies, I am only stitching one layer of leather.

After stitching all the slots together I place them on the liner piece and line them up with the outside and bottom edge. I mark the inside stitch line with a couple holes from an awl, then glue, poke holes with a stitching chisel then I stitch. I'll usually measure things again after stitching the first side of the slots, and sometimes cut a little off of the other side of the liner if I want to tighten things up a bit.

As far as keeping the thickness down, the edges that i stitch are pretty thin but the overall thickness is controlled by the leather thickness. This is 2.5oz or about 1mm thick leather. I also like using about a 1.75oz goat skin that makes a much thinner wallet. There are other ways to make slots, using a single piece of leather and cloth dividers inside, but my customers have been asking for wallets like this. I'm sure I'll try other methods though.