Bondurant

Leela Valley, thanks for the comments, Im going to start checking on some wax and see what I can get,,,,,,,,,, will let you know what I come up with,,,,,,,,

Alamo, Thanks, video was awsome and gives me a great place to start. Will let you know how things work out.

Im working on some new projects like knife holsters and mostly they are for usage in a freshwater tropical environment, namely, the Everglades. At the same time I have some stuff that is saltwater maritime and I do not want to go to kydex so I was trying to figure out the best way, if there is even a way, to prepare leather so it can be dipped in and out of saltwater during normal maritime uses, fishing, sailing, boating, and such. My first thought was to just do my normal thing and heavily treat with SnoSeal or a similar product. It seems to me the thing to do would to be to try and close the cells or fill them. I normally sew with natural thread coated in wax but second guessing that too. Ultimatley I would like to find a workable solution so I can make all holsters and sheaths the same without having to say this is for saltwater, this is for freshwater. Any experiences or ideas on the subject would be awesome. I know all the old sailers used leather holsters and sheaths, its just they did not hold up so great. I would like to improve on the wearability if possible. Thanks in advance.

I just use two pieces of board in a vice. Then I got fancy and hinged a couple boards together which I squeeze with a c clamp. The fancy one can be c clamped to my favorite desk top. A stitching horse is great but plenty of stitching gets done without them.

For a cover why not just sew up a nice piece of canvas, the kind used on wall tents. Looks great!

Thanks for the tutorials and all the pictures.

Having a firearm, accessing, discharging, hitting your target, stopping a determined/high BG, ending a fight, then doing the paperwork is a unpredictable process. The "I have a gun, I win" attitude is one that gets people killed.

Something to think about. If you use welded steel d-rings and o-rings with heavy leather around your upper body it can be used against you as a dog collar in a struggle. In a wreck of any kind you will be hung up and need to be cut free with a knife. Making things heavy duty can be a good thing but if you have ever been around when a cowboy was hung up on anything it will leave you thinking about getting away from stuff. One guy I know went down and had his gold wedding band sliced so it would come off in a wreck without ripping his finger off. Just the same I see guys putting titanium wedding rings on, it makes me very uncomfortable just thinking about it. Weapon Retention is an entire subject to itself. The only time you ever want a weapon or ammo coming out of a holster is exactly when you want it coming out, not any other time.

Some Tandy stuff is a waste of money if you use your tools hard. Anything is OK for starting out but as you go along you will look for better tools. They do a better job and last longer, its the same as a cheap knife Vs. a custom one. In the end you get what you pay for. After having others make everything for me for years Im now making my own stuff. Hanging around a friends saddle shop a couple months one winter gave me lots of basics. Just figure out what you want to make and set up for that. You do not need a thousand bucks worth of stuff for starting, just get exactly what you need for making simple stuff like bracelets and dog collars, maybe cowboy wallets, whatever, then expand off that.

Pendon, glad you got a couple sales, thats a good suprise. Whats your user name on Twitter, Im @ar549

Some have marks, others wont. You can measure them up and contact the big tree makers to find something similar. You will have to rebuild some of the parts to make everything fit but say you have a 14 inch association tree, that's pretty generic for most of the parts of a used saddle. I'm not a saddle maker but spent plenty of time around the saddle shops dealing with used saddles and repairs. Maybe some repair guys would have something to add-on replacing trees?

Your domain is a tough one, you can buy a second one like daksaddle.com and similar and forward it to your main site. That way you can say D A K Saddle Dot Com on the phone or on a card without the complicated spelling. Take five minutes to write something for your Info page, you can fix it later but I hate seeing blank pages. The only other thing is the saddles you have for sell do not show pictures, if your building them now you could just put up a picture of the tree and leather. Maybe even a picture of you working, anything as long as it's a picture. Overall looks good, I like the BW pics, simple is better than fancy and this lets the site focus on your work. Nice Job,

Are they making trees or reselling Hadlock and Fox or similar brands?

See if you can find some old wore out saddles or something with a broken tree. Then take them apart, make yourself a pattern, replace the tree, replace what needs replacing, fix what needs fixing, keep it, sell it, get another one. Thats how the best saddle maker I know told me he got started, worked good for him. The saddle kit thing might be OK but don't expect anything high quality. If its cheap enough and you just want to mess around go for it.

Twitter is important but not for everybody. If you have a website you should add a Twitter sidebar to it for collecting your Tweets. This gives static websites a quick way to update and present a few notes to your customers. In my case I use Twitter to cover things like the political crises in Thailand where I receive hundreds of tweets per hour from photographers who were on the ground in the heat of the action. For a leather worker its a completely different ball game but still a valid tool. I seriously doubt anyone will be getting a bunch of new leather customers from using Twitter but you could stay in touch with some of the people who follow you anyway. Some people will only receive a dozen tweets per day, others it's up into the thousands. I'm looking for information that happened in the last five minutes to break news stories. Plenty of people are casual users and read every single tweet. Example, "Hey, just finished a new saddle" then provide a link to images of the saddle. Even one Tweet per day will help your website SEO by providing links to it.

Nice work! Can you tell us some more about the class you took?

Good looking saddle,

The best way to break in a new saddle is with your butt. Sure you can try to relax the fenders with saddle soap and broomstick but all the gimmicks are nonsense, some are even destructive. If you have a nice saddle and for whatever reason do no not have time to break it in, just find yourself a cowboy or a horse trainer and give it to them for 6 months. In the end its about horse sweat, miles, and somebodies butt.

Think of the leather more like sponge. If you push a hole into a sponge after a while the hole will close up. Sure the hole will still be there but the thread will have the leather kinda shrink wrap it. After the leather closes it will not let air, dirt, or water inside the hole to rot the thread or leather. Good luck and I hope the drill press and needle works out for you. All this takes a bit of messing with but your well on your way,

Whats the logo? I have about 30 hammers and don't recognize the one in the logo. Are the tools for a Tinner? I think a big mistake people make with skulls is making them to clean. Rarely are you going to see a clean skull and often the jaw bone is displaced, teeth are missing, and there are sometimes chunks of the skull missing. The skull in my avatar was a headhunters trophy owned by the government of Malaysia on display at their National Museum along with a collection of head hunter swords I was there to see. They had all these dark red lights going on which came through in the image. You could add texture in the eye sockets, I like the black sockets with the red but not sure how your client would like that. If anything the logo seems to have many details that may not transfer well to the look your going for. Maybe you could dirty it up, focus on the overall concept, skip some of the details. Is the logo something that's been used a long time? Maybe with the clients permission you could add them as cross-bones below the skull. Having them behind like that makes the picture very busy.

Hey Noah, good to see you posting here. I've been a lurker for a few years then signed on with an account, mostly I just look at all the amazing work. I like your distressed leather style, thanks for all the pictures. How do you like the hemp thread? I need to get some new stuff soon, maybe I will try some of that. BladeAnvil is just about ready to come back online, just working out a few more details.

Texasnewf, You could get about any kind of awl, even cut the end off a ice pick or use anything pointy to punch holes. It's best to use the kind of diamond-shaped awls to tap your holes but you can use whatever you have, then just order you up what you need. Tim Lively was using an old wore out drill press with no motor and a sewing needle to punch his holes, the main point is to not drill or burn cause once the leather is gone the hole cannot close.

Whats the goal of the sheath, are they wanting fancy, practical, EDC, lightweight? Is it a new knife or something they already carried for a few years? Do you have a picture of the knife? I looked around but could not confirm the exact model in a picture. I know kydex is sacrilege to many in the leather community but its easy to work with. If they were only concerned about safety and happy with an ugly sheath in this one case it might be looking into. You could also mold a kydex tip to go on the outside of the leather, the inside of the leather, I've seen some kydex covered in leather. Myself I like copper and leather, silver and even steel goes good with leather. If you can make or get a tip made out of steel, you can get paint on blueing from Brownells. The leather and metal goes good with anything western but not so sure about the tactical gear if they don't wear a cowboy hat.

Not sure what your project is exactly but many leather scabbards are braced with wood and or metal. European leather sword scabbards are beyond my expertise but you're welcome to go to Dons and ask, somebody there will have answers for you. The picture below is a scabbard made by Ben Potter off a tutorial posted somewhere on the forum, I can probably find it for you if you want. Don Fogg Bladesmiths Forum