Digit

When I started my leatherworking course at school, they offered a small kit containing a snap-off knife, silver pen, a sharp needle, an awl, a glue brush and a glue spatula. Except for the brush, these are all things I use very often (for gluing larger surfaces I use an old credit card for a spatula). To this set I added stuff on an as-needed basis: lighter, steel ruler, cutting mats (I started with an A3 size, but A2 is more convenient), two sizes of saddler's needles (of which I only use one) and a rotary hole punch. There is lots of other stuff you can buy, but you should first have some idea in which direction you're going. I've added some larger equipment pretty fast: a spindle press for setting rivets and an industrial cylinder-arm sewing machine (Adler 69), both second-hand. With all of these tools I now feel confident making small to medium items like wallets, belts, purses, handbags, and clothing. Once you're starting to get the hang of things, the most difficult aspect of leatherwork (imo) is designing things, creating patterns, and getting the idea in your head to a practical execution. When you have a pattern and know in which order all the parts fit together, the rest is just a matter of cutting, glueing and stitching. It helps if you have guidance from an experienced teacher: they can offer practical approaches and solutions that have a track record of use in the industry. Once you know in which direction you're going, you probably want to add other equipment to the base set: If you want to make shoes or boots, you'll likely need more specific sewing machines to stitch hard to reach parts. If you want to make stuff using very thick leather, you probably need a sturdier sewing machine. If you want to tool and/or color leather, you'll need a hammer, punches, a solid base, dyes, etc. The number of tools and machines you can buy for leatherwork is only limited by your budget, but in the end all leatherwork is very similar: you cut up a hide into pieces and then you combine those pieces again into something you can use. So the most basic tools you need are things for cutting leather (a knife) and things for combining leather pieces (needle and thread, glue). For visual appeal, add some stuff to make things beautiful (dyes, paints, tooling, ...).

How do you do precision embroidery? Leather is not like woven textile where embroidery thread goes through the natural spaces between weft and warp. With leather you actually pierce and weaken the material with each hole you make, so if you make your embrodery stitches too close together you're essentially making perforation lines where the leather can rip apart.

The sample image is very grainy, but I'd say the edges look skived and rolled.

The way I learned it is with double-sided tape (the narrowest you can find; I use 3mm), but stick the tape to the outer edges of the zipper's fabric tape and (machine) sew next to it. _________________________________________ edge of zipper tape ========================================= double sided tape ......................................... stitch line ----------------------------------------- edge of leather """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" zipper teeth So you basically sew next to the double-sided tape instead of through it.

Welcome to the forum! I'm looking forward to your projects; I think we might share some interests ;-)

You can also read the website you took the image from.

If it's chrome tan, then the rigidity comes from its shape in combination with a reinforcement material like Salpa. Metal wiring in the seams would show through.

The only thing I'd like to add is that machine stitching might cause your fabric base to fray: in order to sew leather, you need a sharp leather point needle to cut through the material, while when sewing fabric you use a round point. The round point finds its way between the threads of the fabric; stitching fabric with a leather point could cut the threads in the fabric, weakening the fabric at the stitch line and eventually making the patch loosen and/or making a hole in the fabric. It might a a bit far-fetched; surely other people here have practical experience with this.

I've bought a small splitter from AliExpress, which is basically a clamp for a snap-off knife and a spring-loaded roller. It's not European-made, but definitely within your budget: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005005967041306.html I have no idea how long the blades would last, but being standard snap-offs, you can easily replace them with something good. You can also strop those blades to keep them sharp. As for splitting straps, I found that starting at an angle and moving the leather side-to-side so that the knife makes a cutting motion accross the leather (similar as to how you'd properly use a wood plane) makes it easier to pull the leather through. I you have (a budget for) a bell skiver, you can also use that for splitting narrow-ish straps, possibly in two or three passes. Finding an affordable one second-hand can be challenging though; I've found a nearly-antique Fortuna for 450 euros last year on the Belgian variant of kleinanzeigen.

Leatherhouse in Germany sells Crazy Horse: https://www.leatherhouse.com/leather/crazy-horse-leather.php Check 'turkis' or 'blue' I haven't ordered Crazy Horse from them yet, so I can't say anything about the exact color.

Salpa is Salamander (brand) leather reinforcement (factory-made by the roll from leather scrap mixed with latex and pressed to uniform thickness of .4, .6, .8 or 1mm). I guess the OP has cut out some forms and glued/clamped/pinned them together to form a rough prototype. At school we use salpa to reinforce chrome tan leather to form shape-holding bags and accessories. If you mostly work with veg tan you probably don't need it.

Also found it under the name 'rope clamp': https://www.pethardware.com/en/rope-clamps/metal-rope-clamp-nickel-plated-5961/

I don't think Fred meant you to seach for your exact truck. Those metal mounting brackets are pretty generic; I've encountered them before on cars from different makes. Just look for panels with this kind of mount, saw the plastic mounts out of the scrap panels (take at least an inch around the mounts so you have room for screws), glue/screw them to your MDF board in the right positions, and finally upholster the MDF in leather.

At school we learn to cut liner a bit larger than the leather panels to glue it to. That way you have extra space to apply glue so that the glue extends to the very edge of the leather. Afterwards the excess liner is cut off. We also always stitch edges so that the liner doesn't come loose. If liner and leather is properly glued together and cut to the exact same size, painting the edges shouldn't be a problem. I've painted edges with three layers (outer leather, salpa reinforcement, and pigskin liner) without a problem. If stuff doesn't exactly line up you can start with a coat of filler before applying the first coat of edge paint.

If by microsuede you mean something like Alcantara, then it's a woven fabric. Woven things always fray eventually. You can limit fraying by stitching in addition to glueing: if you stitch parallel to the warp, you secure the weft so that only warp threads on the 'free' side of the stitch line can come loose (if they're not glued). You should never apply rolling pressure when glueing something non-stretchy to something spongy: by pressing it down you make the spongy bit expand. When you remove the pressure it contracts again and the surfaces of both materials won't match anymore. This can result in wrinkling or warping depending on either materials' strength.