Aventurine

How many different patterns does Sharon's book have?

Anyone familiar with these books -- which of these will have more actually usable patterns or guidance for making patterns? They are both expensive so I need to make a careful choice.

It does exist. It is expensive and almost impossible to obtain unless you are a design house buying it wholesale. It is naturally weak but strengthened by treating it with lactic acid derivatives or impregnating it with polyurethane, so in the end it is a rather highly processed product, and depending on how it is dyed it is not necessarily environmentally friendly. https://www.mycoworks.com/products. https://mylo-unleather.com/impact/ Another kind of "leather" is amadou, an entirely natural and lusciously suede-like mycelial material traditionally made from horse hoof fungus. I got a piece large enough to bind a book with, and I mean to use the other piece to line a jewelry box. Fly fishers use tiny bits of amadou to wrap their flies because it dries the fly and hook rapidly and imparts a natural odor that won't alarm the trout. Black powder aficionados and traditional survivalists use it as a tinder. Unfortunately, amadou is not tough enough for anything that must bear weight, like a tote bag, or resist stretching, like a belt, or withstand friction, damp, and pressure, like shoes. I am pretty sure it could be made tougher through treatment with natural or lightly processed chemicals, and I mean to fool with it some time to see if I can improve it. But because it takes 100 years to get a fungus big enough to provide enough leather to make a shoe, it isn't environmentally sustainable by any stretch of the imagination. https://medium.com/@istvan.daraban/the-worlds-last-amadou-makers-korond-iii-9694114ffa4a https://www.slowtours.travel/shop/amadou/amadou-hat/ Amadou makes a nice hat. Mycologist Paul Stammets wears one (pictured below). Final note, I love and respect everyone who wishes the world contained less suffering than it has and apparently must have. Leather is an innately brutal thing. We use it out of concession to the innately brutal business of living in this world and seek to make the best of it. Some people take comfort in the idea that this is what their god intends (as if any scripture laid out modern corporate agriculture and industrial slaughter?) or what Nature intends (as if Nature were a sentient thing with intentions, toward us in particular?) but not everyone shares those sentiments, or ought to. If there are better alternatives some day -- truly better, more ethical, more environmentally sustainable, scalable to human population, and involving less animal suffering -- not just more comfortable for squeamish or frivolously sentimental people -- we ought to embrace them. And I admire people who, however imperfectly or immaturely, struggle toward doing less harm in this life. I certainly admire them more than I admire people who simply equate the conventional with the good.

Thank you all so much!

Thank you, BillyBob. Now you’ve got me wondering if my big paper cutter table might be useful……

Hahaha Thank you Mablung. People here including you have been a great help.

Okay. I just finished ordering my first set of tools for cutting, skiving, grooving, stitch punching, and beveling. Now I need to plan for maintaining the edges. I have 3 grades of Arkansas stone already, a lot of equisetum, a piece of bullhide and a block of green stropping rouge, and fine mineral oil. Will I need anything else? Note, everything must be mobile, quiet , and suitable for use at a cabin without electricity, so no stationary electric grinders or power drills Hopefully I will never wreck an edge so badly as to need those anyhow.

Thank you!

Yes that flattened nail through a maple burl has been ground down nearly to tack size over the years Even on buckskin they do wear a point off and I have sharpened it many times, though crudely. I have a lot to learn about precision sharpening for sure. Yep, I have already bought some 5 and 6 oz undyed veg tan scrap (a local holster maker sells his scraps by the pound) to make some small items with it as soon as my minimal tools are all assembled. I don’t have the financial luxury of buying a lot of tools and then experimenting with this and that to find what works, which is why I am trying to make very well informed purchases specifically suited to basic shoes at the outset. I am grateful for everyone’s help. Tom thanks for the link.

What an interesting (and intimidating) tool.

I guess I'd be willing to put 8 or more hours into it if I knew what I was doing or could learn without wrecking it. I don't think that's the case though, and if it were to take that much work I don't think I could pay anyone else to do it either. Thank you for the good and cautious advice.

Bruce, isn't it beautiful to have a tool that has spent so much time in the hand of a dear friend? I am glad you had such a good friend and now continue with his good tools.

Book sold out, alas! I'll watch for it to come back. Is there a Leatherworker.net discount code for buying it, or the DVD?

What a wonderfull thing to do for your daughter!

Very nice! Did you use a hand awl to stitch the soles? Could you please list your materials and all the specific tools you used for these shoes?

What a completely fascinating thread. If any of you folks who posted here are still active I'd love to learn what more you've learned on the subject. For what it's worth, I've treated leather with linseed oil and Prussian blue and turpentine (traditional artists' blue oil paint in other words). That was 5 years ago. It hasn't developed a rancid flaxseed oil smell. I suspect the metal has a preservative effect. Also the turpentine may promote some kind of polymerization that resists decomposition of the oil?

@Fred, I like that idea. Hmm, we have oak and hickory stumps on the property. Too hard? We might be able to get a big-enough slice of fallen tree from someone's yard in town after the next wind storm, and dry it properly. Magnolia, Bradford or Callery "pear", Ginkgo, soft maples. Maybe cottonwood? It's very soft.

Thank you, Art, Mablung, Fred, Dantan.

Or this one for 85 dollars US ?

Saw this on EBay. I don't have the tools to restore it to good use. I suppose I might find someone who does. Is it beyond hope? https://www.ebay.com/itm/196480728961?itmmeta=01J2MWTR3WQEJNZZVQN5WWX0DR&hash=item2dbf29ff81:g:Ym8AAOSwmVdmguUX&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA0EBcaPD%2BKROTsCo%2BB7%2BnhFPkwzmiVPebJYp0vzoHAGIldkEokhPFr9qXY%2FN8AAUiJz6Ayj%2FuGiQlb7S%2FRTJqMp4jCAWF8FYl2EeAaoQHVBeBY1kGk64UprZSRedlfknhHr8V6wZa%2F3UIf75bDoGFwlK1nc4prj7Jxl4Tf4DH6m%2BE75t1mdopbQN54V%2FFYJBXhw0YPd2furdNBcqmQZZMAD5nprS5LycuMicnpcMGA6GWnZzoHPA8C3ylt%2BrKwLAP49iU%2FemtApIXtRFs8zbzQIQ%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR4KC65yVZA

@Zulu I might go that route, buy good Osborne awl blades and put them in hafts myself. (My current old awl is a ground-down nail stuck through a maple burl, not quite so refined as I will need going forward. I have enjoyed that funny lump of maple though.). It annoys me that the Osborne website tells you how long their awl blades are, but not how wide a cut they will make. Really! how in the world does anyone starting out alone in this craft figure out how to buy anything?? The necessary information is all folkloric.

Yes, I have a couple messages in to Rocky Mountain Leather and they might become my go-to vendor if they are willing to answer a lot of questions about their gear. I won’t necessarily buy from Amazon, but they are convenient for surveying several brands. I’ve pretty much settled on Owden and Wuta for several things because apparently the consensus is that they are decent enough quality at moderate price. Locally my options are Hobby Lobby (I don’t like giving them my business) or a local holster maker and boot repairer, a surly fellow who isn’t really in the tool business and doesn’t like to be bothered with it so he charges a shocking mark up. Tandy has an unsteady reputation so I want to only order Tandy items that have been vetted by experienced folks such as yourselves.

Yes, the reason I'd get it would be to recess the stitches in shoe soles, no other use. I wouldn't groove leather and weaken it just to mark it. (People do that???)

Does anyone use this set of awls? The ad doesn't say what exactly the measurements are. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L3ZY9M2/

Billy, Zulu, Chuck, Fred, Mablung, Little, Sup, Thank you all!