Jazznow

Hi Harley corn I don't know If I can finish my project too do never mind, lol. I like your pic very much but it looks like itll be very ambitious I think. Good luck with that and if you need help don't hesitate to ask but i doubt that I an help ya with something lie this

Kingdomino: just join in when you have time for it. I will maybe not have time to work on my stuff until the weekend. So no hurry here. As far as I understood Cheryl everything should be easy going in this contest RaeNae: I like your design very much. One suggestion you may want to try out is to lift the segmented part a little by cutting that part loose with an exacto knife in a very flat angle. (not the whole thing only a little bit) then you can lift that part with a modeling spoon. I'm interested in our other design too. Maybe you can send me a pm with pic or pst it in the adult section. So here is what I did so far... Sketch is carved and beveled. I lready made an mistake. The center line between the front and back part of the grave stone shouldn't have been carved. I don't like how it looks now, but I won't start new, cause I can't afford to toss that much leather into the bin. I will do some detail work at the hand, lift certain parts of it. At the bottom end of the arm, I will add some more lines to make it look more disturbed as suggested by Cheryl. I will use a matter around hand, gravestone and moon/cloud to make it more 3d. The earth will get some detail with modeeling spoon more or less the same as the carved lines but only modeled. Two ting I still have to find a decisions is how to texture the stone, because it looks so empty and wether I should add a silhouette of a bat in the upper left corner which looks empty too. Have a nice evening Jonathan

Hi there I think you adopted that artwork very well and you did a great job on carving it. Jonathan

Hi Cheryl I think your sketches are great. One thing I would change is rotating the eye 90 degrees clockwise. But I think this will turn out different when craved anyway. Jonathan

Hi welcome aboard I can't see your sketch. Can you have a look if you have uploaded correctly?

Hi Cheryl I know what you mean. I will see what I can do (I already started carving, had a bad day yesterday and needed something to pound my aggressions into, lol). Maybe I can fix this on he fly. I wouldn't make it as strong as in you sketch because the viewpoint in my draft is lower than in your sketch I think, which means you wouldn't see as much ofhe crater. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm no artist and no expert in perspective as you can see.

Ok here is the draft. Feedback is appreciated although I will start carving this afternoon. I had to upload the pic to Facebook first, because I can't upload pics from my handy or iPad to leatherworker.net Best wishes Jonathan

After talking to Cheryl in chat some days ago, I decided to do something for the challenge too. I drew a hand that's breaking through the earth of a new grave yesterday. I will see if I can I scan it or make a picture today because I could need a little feedback too

Good job. Turned out really nice.

Great job. It's looking fine now.

Hi studied history and German studies at university to become a teacher. Realized that the German education system is screwed enough to drive me mad if I would have to go to school every day and fight that system while trying to educate kids at the same time. Now I'm an apprentice in orthopedic shoemaking, working 4 days a week in a small workshop with my boss and another employer. 1 day I have to go to school to learn the theory. at the weekends I recover from working or do leatherwork.

Machine sewing is actually hard to learn. You need lot of practice. Some thigs that helped me a lot: Start sewing slow. It's harder to get a straight stitch line in slow speed but you learn to handle your machine. Mark your stitch line, even if it's only straight. That way you see when you get off the course. If you make a mistake and run off of the marked line, don't make tight curves or corners to get on the line again. Make a wide curve instead. Tat seems odd but 6 or 7 stitches slightly off of an straight line are not as eye catching as changing direction every two stitches. Make sure the machine s setup correctly suitable or what you want to do. Wrong tension of thread or sewing 8 mm f veg tan with an shoe patcher machine will result in a bad look. To prevent bulky look at theirst stitches try to hold the ends of the thread with light tension away from the stitch line (dunno if ths is possible with every machine. It works with Adler and singer shoe patchers. Good Luck

You could try acetone for getting the finish and maybe even the old dye off. If your lucky, enough dye comes of so Thant you can redye with another color than black. We use acetone for getting finish of shoes before dyeing them black. But I can't guarantee, that this will work. Maybe it could even ruin the bag. It all depends on the leather.

Had difficulties using it too, especially on thin leather and with angled blades. Use a standard blade, tilt the knife away from you and start cutting. Be careful to net press it too hard against your edge to avoid marks. Everything else is practice

Very cool stuff. Like this two wine look too. How do you achieve it? Just eying very carefully or s there a trick?

Those things are used to roughen leather on the upside, to get a stronger bond with cement. We have an item like that at the place where I'm working (shoemaker) but I never used it in 2 years. I just use some coarse sandpaper (80 grit). It does the same job and is in my opinion easier to Handle. Have a nice day Jonathan

Nice one. I like the idea to stamp the name on a separate piece of leather and rivet it on. This could be a good solution for producing several collars to sell that you can still personalize.

And try to not forget your plan, when you touch the leather with a tool for the first time. in the beginning I started to panic as soon as I started to cut the leather. It was like oh my god I'll ruin this entire hide, I will have to throw it away... Never actually happened but I still (6 years later)feel uncomfy sometimes when cutting or dyeing. So stick to your plan and be sure you know what your doing. That helps a lot

To make a bad situation worse: this is the link to a german knife maker who makes some great head knifes. Check it out Site is in German but pis are nice. http://www.wolf-borger-messer.de/leder.htm

Wow. I like your work. The carving is stunning (especially tht scorpion)

That's Cool

A dull knife is a dangerous knife believe me, I know that for sure

We use renia Europren 2028 at the shop. It works with most of the materials we use.

Looks fine. He will be glad about this