ClayB

Here is Jim Linell's BUSY schedule for the first part of 2009. If you get a chance you really owe it to yourself to attend one or more of these events. Jim's a great teacher and a great guy and you WILL learn a lot from him. January 17th and 18th I will be in Denver for the WESA show. On the 18th at 6:00 pm, the Columbine Leather Guild is having a gathering at which I will be doing some demonstrations. For more information and directions, people should contact Kathy Flanagan. The evening of February 7th, I will be at the Tandy Leather Factory store in Allentown, PA doing demos with the guild that meets at that store. I think the scheduled time is 4:00 pm, but for more info and directions, people should contact that store. Manager: Jeffrey Oakford All day on February 13th and until about noon on the 14th, I will be at the Baltimore Tandy Leather Factory store doing demos during their open house celebration. For more information, people should contact that store. Manager: Bill Davis On February 26th through 28th I will be in Denver, teaching at the Western Region 4-H Leader's Forum. If there are 4-H folks in the western USA that plan on being there, there is no cost for the classes, so be sure to sign up. On March 1, I will be doing a workshop at the new Tandy Leather Factory store in Cheyenne, WY. I think we will be doing a wallet and the only cost would be the materials used. We will start at 9:00 in the morning and go until we're done. For more information and directions, contact that store. Manager: Richard Lopez March 8th through 10th, I will be doing a workshop at the Tandy leather Factory store in Tempe, AZ. The project is the extreme 3-D embossing technique on the tearing out eagle. A picture can be seen on my web site The cost of this class is $50.00 which is mostly for the materials used. Participants should go home with a finished picture ready to frame, so they will be learning carving, embossing and painting. For more info and to sign up, contact the store. Manager: Jim Augustson March 13th through 15th, I will be doing a workshop at the Tandy Leather Factory store in north Phoenix. The project is carving the 2009 Tandy Leather Factory catalog cover. This project includes carving, embossing & painting. The cost will be $50.00. For more information and to sign up,, contact the store. Manager: Sara Swift April 17th through the 19th, I will be doing demos and a workshop at the Tandy Leather Factory store in Indianapolis, IN. The workshop would be on the 19th and the details have not been determined. For more information people should contact the store. Manager: Kimberly Carrison April 24th through 26th I will be at the Spring Leather Show being hosted by the Prairie States Leather Guild in the Chicago area. The dtails of demos and workshops have not been determined, but thos interested should visit their web site for more information. May 1st through 3rd I will be in Northampton, England doing demos the Tandy Leather Factory store. They will be having an anniversary event marking our first year in England. I would love to meet any members in the UK or Europe that can make it. For the latest information people should contact that store. Manager: Roy Fisher May 8th through the 10th, I am scheduled to teach a workshop in my home town of Miles City, Montana. This workshop will be hosted by the historic Miles City Saddlery. I'm very excited about doing this one because this is where I got infected with the leatherworking bug 42 years ago. There leatherworking roots in this town that go back much farther than that. In fact, Ken Griffin once worked at the Miles City Saddlery. Anyone leaving early to go to the Sheridan Leather Show should plan on spending the weekend in Miles City soaking up some of the rich leatherworking heritage that comes from this town. Leon Sevier is organizing the even and is who you should contact for more info contact Leon May 15th through the 17th is the Sheridan Leather Show in Sheridan, WY. I will be there and doing the free workshop for youngsters on Saturday morning. If you've never helped me do this workshop, you should. We have a blast and you get to be actively involved in making sure leathercraft is passed to the next generation. You can find more info about the show go to the Journals website June 5th through the 7th, I will be in Little Rock, AR at the Tandy leather Factory store. I will be teaching a workshop on carving portraits. The subject will be John Wayne. This will be a unique workshop and worth making. For more information, details, sign up, etc. contact the store. Manager:Vickie Baker

Hey Freak, Your ideas are always fun. Your carving is always great. I bet your paint ball gun really stands out in a crowd, just like you!

Kate, the pulls in the first link, leather covered metal were around $90. The metal pulls in the last link were the ones that were $875. But in their defense, it looked to me like it was a set of 8 pairs of pulls for that price.

Those first ones should be fairly easy to make. Take a piece of strap iron, around 1/2 inch wide, 1/8 inch thick or probably less. Cut to length. Bend the round into the handle over a piece of pipe the right size. Even a piece of heavy PVC pipe ought to work. Then stick it in a vice and bend the ends straight, or you could probably do this with a pair of pliers. Drill holes in the ends. You might want to coat the metal with lacquer so it wont stain your leather if you dampen it. Then cut strips of leather making allowances for the froming and stitching. Wet the leather, form it around metal. Apply Barge or other contact cement to hold the leather in place. Stitch around the edges, trim, finish the edges. Punch a hole in the leather matching the holes in the metal. Pick out some screw back conchos that you like and get some of the drawer pull adapters for them and you should be all set.

Come on Suze, dont exagerate. They only list for $875 and didn't you see the sale price? $874.91 How can you pass up a deal like that?????

The black safety skiver which several people here have called the "potato peeler" should work to do this. It works better for me if the leather is cased when you try skiving with it. It also helps if you take the blade out and carefully strop them. You can get a lot more use out of a blade if you strop it when it gets dull. And always be careful when you put a new blade in because the new blade will be so much sharper it's easy to cut deeper than you want too, especially if you change the blade in the middle of a project you are working on.

Silva Fox showed how she did this in a magzine article a few years ago. I had a copy of it hanging on my wall for the last couple years because it was one of those things I hoped to try someday. I must have put it away somewhere the last time I cleaned up (which isn't often) and now I cant find it. Anyway, I think this is how she did it. Set the stone on the piece of damp leather and press on it to make an impression. Then make a line just slightly INSIDE the impression. Cut that line with a swivel knife. Bevel inside the cut line. Background inside this area to press it down some. Then with a sharp knife, scalpel, x-acto, slice around the inside edge of this depresion you have created. Not sure if I can make this make sense. You are holding the knife horizontally with the leather and slicing into the bevel you created in the leather. Then with a modeling tool, raise that edge up slightly. The stone will be fitted into the depression you created and it will be surrounded by the "lip" of leather you have cut loose. Glue the stone in, and work the edge of the leather back smooth. If that makes no sense at all, I'll try and find the article.

Thanks for sharing these pictures Troy. I am not a big fan of ostrich, but I am a big fan of different, so this is really interesting. I was wondering how you did it too, if you could build a saddle out of ostrich (which I doubted) or if you had to line the leather with the ostrich. You did a really nice job of it. The silver work is really amazing!!! Now what do we have to do the get you to post pictures of the saddle you made for the president?

I think I would remember you if we'd been in school together Tom. Bet we'd have had some fun!

This has been talked about a few times before. Here's a place to start looking. Workshops

I think that piece looks great the way it is, not sure I'd mess with it either. But, if you have to change the background color, I think you could just paint over the background with acrylic paint. It should stick right over the sealer and then you could spray a finish over that to seal the acrylic. I have painted over sealer on pictures like that and had no problem. I am not sure how it would hold up to hard use though.

Hey Freak, They may be "fish heads", but you make them look pretty cool on leather. I really like the bio stuff you have been doing. I am glad you are back to making stuff and sharing pictures. It's always fun to see what your freaky head thinks up.

Thank you all for the nice comments. Brandon, I have had the opportunity to look at a lot of Robb's work at his sister's house, and when you see it up close, you realize that pictures just never do it justice. His attention to detail and his coloring are really amazing. Kate, the background for the pictures is supposed to be a purse, but I keep putting that off. I just needed something to cover up my bench cuz things get a "little" messy when I am working on something. Crystal, the eagle does still have the stick up his........ um, well the stick is still there. The stick is there to mount the eagle to something. One of Robb's suggestions was to drill a hole in an antler and have the eagle sitting on that. I like that idea. I've got a lot of antlers out in the barn so I'll have to see if I can find a suitable one. Then it will just be figuring out where and how to set up the mirror. If I ever get it done, I'll post another picture. Until then, It makes a great handle to hold the bird with and chase people around the house and peck at them (remember the movie The Birds?")

Ok, pics aren't the greatest, but here it is colored. Now I just have to decide how I'm going to display it.

Hi Josh, Looks like you figured it out. One of Robb's tips is to use a diagonal lined beveler to bevel the vein in the center of the feather. Then you use the lines from the beveler as a guide for the angle on your knife cuts. Other than that, each one you do will just get better. The hardest part for me is blending where the colors change, but it looks like you have that down pretty good already.

Thanks you guys. Robb was the master. I couldn't have thought this stuff up on my own, or figured out how to make it work. His videos come with the tracing patterns, and he goes through the carving, embossing, coloring etc. step by step. I have had this video for several years and didn't try it because it was pretty intimidating even for me, but it turned out a lot better than I expected for a first attempt. I would encourage anybody that is interested in one of his techniques to get a video and give it a try. You'll probably find that once you see how it's done, it's not as intimidating as it seems.

This is another project off of Robb Barr's video series (available through Hidcrafter). This eagle is made from one piece of leather, carved, embossed, filled with putty, folded in half and formed into a 3-D sculpture. I haven't painted it yet, but one side is to be painted as a bald eagle, the other as a golden eagle. I am going to attach a few in-progress pictures of the project to give you some idea of the process, but if you want to try it, you really need to get Robb's videos. Robb had some really great ideas for leather projects and his videos give pretty good instruction on how he created them. Here is the eagle with all the carving and feathering finished, ready to be painted. This picture shows the one piece of leather that is used to create the eagle. The carving, beveling and embossing are finished. The eagle on the left is feathered, the one on the right not. A closer look before feathering. A closer look at the feathering. The seams. The seam on the beak is rubbed and burnished to try and get it as smooth as possible. The feathers are fluffed to try and hide the seams there. Hopefully, painting will hide the rest of the seam.

Kate, Thanks for taking the time to do that little demonstration. I happen to like the eco flow dyes too, but the stuff I do doesn't get exposed to water. They are the easiest to get to blend colors that I have ever tried. It's nice to know that if you take the time to figure out what works, new stuff does work.

Vera & Michael, I'm glad your back too! Your work is always so unique and awesome to look at. I have a photo of a lion you did taped to the wall near my bench. It's always fun to look at and remember that "different" is a good thing.

Check out Hides to Art website. I think that's what you are thinking of.

Thanks for posting that Ian. I love this song too. I dont do Youtube very often, but I just listened to a dozen different versions of this song. One thing that made it even more special for me was at our kid's Christmas concert last week, my son played guitar to accompany this song and my daugter sang in the choir. Merry Christmas to all of you from me and my family too!

Hi Eric, What a neat idea. Those should make great keepsakes too. You could even use them as Christmas tree ornaments. I hope the kids are all home and doing well now. Welcome to Leatherworker and Merry Christmas!