WyomingSlick

The fine point pen is a fine idea as many ball tracing stylus tools are too big for tracing small figures. I would also advise that you learn to trace lightly, only just enough to have a visible guideline. This is particularly true when it comes to the dotted lines used in many patterns that are used to define muscles and other details which are not cut with the swivel knife. Little dashes that are done too deep are hell to smooth out on small details. As you gain in experiance, you may wish to leave them out entirely and only refer to the original pattern when using your figure beveling tools. If you use a craftaid, you will also want to just press the dotted sections in lightly for the same reason. Another reason for tracing lightly is that it is easier to correct any tracing mistakes. Nothing looks stranger than an animal with one leg thicker, or thinner, than the other leg. After tracing, and before carving, take some time to evauate the traced design carefully and make any corrections as needed. Once you have cut an error into the design....well..that is what you are usually stuck with - an error.

This is a quide for your problem which I have had posted in my ebay guides for many years. I have used this procedure on hundreds of chrome plated stamps as well as other chrome plated tools with excellent results If you have leather stamps that have a bit of rust on them, take a hint from Ron Ross at the International Internet Leathercrafter's Guild. Note - this is generally for chrome-plated tools only! This mixture may corrode steel tools. It may be used on them but try it first with a "junker" first! 1. Disolve a teaspoon or two of cream of tarter in water in an ALUMINUM pan and heat on stove until simmering. Cream of tarter is found in the baking dept at the grocery store. Do not use a steel or iron pan as it will react with this mixture. 2. Remove excessive rust with a fine wire brass brush or super-fine steel wool ( 00 or 000 ) if called for. Submerge tools in pan and let them simmer awhile. Stir lightly from time to time and check for progress. You will see the water become cloudy as the rust is removed (converted). 3. Check for progress from time to time and remove tools when satisfied. CAREFUL! Tools will be hot. Wipe residue off with brass brush, fine steel wool, or with Scotch-Brite pad. Rinse tools well in water and dry completely. A hair blower works great for this. 4. If you live in a high moisture area you may want to prevent future rusting. A very light coating of any of the commercial plastic spray coatings will work. I myself use Rain-X which is a micro-crystaline wax that can be found in the auto dept at stores. Just coat and buff; this will leave a fine layer of wax which will retard further rusting.

I think you have hit the nail on the head why this was ignored

Skulls ?? Hmmm........... everybody I know has one:cheers:

Are you going to tool this piece of leather? If so; then you had better consider this: Leather that is tooled will deform from the tooling. You can minimize this by temporarily cementing the leather to a stiff backing before tooling. Do a search on this forum for more information on that aspect of leather tooling. But ! Even doing that, some distortion may occur. For that reason, you may wish to wait untill the tooling is done and the leather is dry, before cutting the holes for the knob shafts, the pickups, jacks, switches etc. I watched and listened to a buddy who turned the air blue while he tried to fit a piece which had fit perfectly prior to him carving a beautiful design on it. He finally ended up doing the whole thing over and only did his final cutting of the holes just before he glued it down.

There is a thread here on the forum that dealt with the "wheel of life" (swastika) symbol that you are asking about and I think it was Bob P that posted some pics of old saddles that sound like what you are talking about. Do a search and you should find them. As far as the stamps go, McMillen made quite a few sizes of them plus some rolls that featured the symbol. You can check them out in the old catalog scans on my blog here : http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?app=blog&module=display&section=blog&blogid=31&showentry=79

Perhaps it a question of metal properties? Maybe nobody has been able to make a SS rapid rivet that deforms (re-forms) in a satisfactory manner to do the job.

Look to be very corroded anyway. Wonder what original purpose was. Anybody able to identify these?

The atheist votes for "Lord of the Dance" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Dance_(hymn)

It is not clear what you are looking for here? a construction pattern, or a tooling pattern, or both??? When you mentioned "classic" that brought to mind all the bowling bags that I have seen in thrift stores - you know... Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc..... How about finding one there you like, and with your years of experiance, and a little help from Al S., you should be able to reverse engineer a satisfactory bag.

Looks to me like Lou Roth was tinkering with the idea of a swivel knife with a light in it. Not sure why a person would want a light in their swivel knife, but as I recall, Louis had a flair for the dramatic. I remember reading in The Leather Craftsman that he had his Craftools plated with real gold and he used gemstones on his dye bottles to show the color. Lou did many, many tooling demonstrations around the country, and the world - perhaps he was thinking about a fancy light show to razzle-dazzle the audience with. LOL He and Al Stohlman were pretty good buddies and worked on many things together, Al got into jewelry making with Lou, and it was from this that Al ended up decorating his swivel knife with jewels and such (That knife is what the fancy one that Tandy sold or still sells is based on). I know that I, for one, and I'm sure there are others here who would love to see any more interesting tidbits out of the notebook

It would seem you have acquired a very interesting piece of Craftool history as Lou Roth was an inventive man who developed many leather tooling aids for Craftool. The most notable idea of his was of course Craftaids. Judging from your third picture; it looks like he was also the inventor of the "Select-A-Stroke Mallet" which didn't last long in the marketplace even though it was not a bad idea' - just not a great one. I would guess that most carvers would rather have a selection of mallets rather than fiddle around changing the weights on one. Here is the SELECT-A-STROKE MALLET as it appeared in a vintage Tandy catalog from the late sixties. It seems to have been dropped from the catalogs by the early seventies. There may be curators of leather museums out there, as well as private collectors, who would be interested in purchasing the notebook - something to think about!!!

Perhaps you could ask your friend if he knows where his grandfather lived in the period of the mid fifities to early sixties.

You might consider selling them as they can bring some good prices on eBay such as this auction which ended today: http://www.ebay.com/itm/130572507496?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649&autorefresh=true where an RBS 363 (dot flare) brought $37.89. Pic of tool That kind of money will buy a fella some very nice Barry King or Robert Beard tools. Just a consideration to think about.

Naw, they are worthless! How much will you take for them? LOL! Seriously, you have got yourself some goodies as far as collectors are concerned. And you really are not off topic as RBS was basically the successor to Cal-Carved. RBS was a partnership between Louis Roth ( inventor of Craftaids and other leather tools), Ellis Barnes a toolmaker who made stamps for Cal-Carved before the company folded, and Al Stohlman ( of course this was prior to his affiliation with Craftool). RBS stamps were only made for a short period of time from the mid 1950s untill the very early 60s when Louis Roth and Al Stohlman became much more tied to Craftool. Apparently, the left over RBS tools were then put in with the Craftool inventory as Ron Ross, president of IILG, relates that when he was a Tandy store manager in the early sixties; sometimes there would be RBS stamps mixed in with the shipments of new Craftools to the store. As you have noticed in your collection, there will be some variation in stamp quality; more than you will see in Craftools of the same era. While Ellis Barnes is regarded as one of the finest makers of leather stamping tools, I believe that there was someone else besides him also making the RBS stamps, perhaps an apprentice of his. I hope to have a post in my blog here on leatherworker.net soon that covers the early days of stamp making around LA as soon as I can hopefully find some more information - why I started this thread. Hopefully, you can help. Do you know, or can you find out, where the original owner of the RBS stamps acquired the tools? Some of my RBS stamps

That is the largest of the six sizes of figure carving bevelers that Craftool made, Basically they are bevelers that are specialized for toolng animals and scenery as used in "figure carving". You are rght in your thinking about shading, as they perform that function as well. Check out any of the figure carving books by Al Stohlman to see how the "Master" used them. Al Stohlman was also the driving force behind their development at Craftool in thge early 1950s.

Any way you slice it. I am totally impressed by what the man does with simple tools. Doesn't it kind of remind you of Al Stohlman relating his early days, when he was making leather art with a pocket knife and some tools made out of nails?

Are you going mad? Sounds to me like you are mad already. and rightly so. I also fail to see why you can't give us the seller's name. Other members have named suppliers here on the forum who failed to deliver in a satisfactory manner, why should this seller be exempt?

And your point is? ;................................ . He stated "Any critiquing is welcome" It looks to me like you are one of those guys who just likes to cause trouble on the forum. Did you go to the trouble of doing a search to see what other posts I have made? No, of course you didn't. If you had, then you would know where I am coming from, and you would have seen examples of my work. So go soak your head. And by the way - you need to work on smoothing out your beveling too! "

Critique: On the plus side, there is much to be admired about this belt. Excellent match up with the buckle set, the stitching is very well done, and the belt edge looks fine. Pretty fair tooling job with a few problems. The first thing that strikes me about the pattern treatment is that the flowers seem way under tooled. This type of flower commonly known as a wild rose is used in many older Porter and other style patterns. It is also very often used in "Sheridan" style carving. It looks to me like you are looking for a sheridan type effect with the minimalist shading. When you do very little shading and that confined to the outer edges of the petal...there is a larger area left in the middle of the flower that is bare. Sheridan toolers usually handle this by using a center shader around the seedpod. Also, the petal edges should come closer to the seed pod, if not all the way to it. It is very important that these lines be beveled evenly, particulairly if you are going to "antique" the work, as the darker coloring will show up any uneveness more dramatically. This would also apply to where the edges of one flower overlaps the other, In addition, I would suggest that you try to achieve more uniformity in your shading and seek to follow the natural flow of the design with it. I believe I see one petal where you beveled the wrong side of a line and for that I can only suggest that you study your pattern carefully before starting, and have it clear in your mind which elements are in front of other elements. I can't stress enough how important the process of pre-visualizing a design in your head is. This is why it is much better for beginner and intermediate leather toolers to learn by using designs with a photocarved pattern. With a representation of what the finished work should look like in front of them, it is much easier to pre visualize where they want to go.

I am having a hard time seeing how they are going to ban any prayer at a funeral. What the hell are they going to do? Shoot you? Maybe it will be live ammo in the rifle squads guns. LOL Seriously I am sure that "what we have here... is a failure to communicate" Anybody know the movie that quote is from? I am sure that whatever that lady thought she was doing, it will be straightened out before long, since she has obviously overstepped some boundries here, both constitutional and career wise. Her next job may well be in Nome, Alaska .

Hmmm .................. over 60 views and no "Attaboys" ??? They must be jealous! Here's 5 "Attaboys" 1. I Like this 2. Excellent tooling! 3. Nice dye and paint work! 4. Water coloring is very well done. 5. You have a lucky brother!

Nice aquisition! I too have run into the same cApiTaliZatioN pRoblem on the titles for my blog pages. Wrote to the moderators about it - but things haven't changed - the damn program still knows better than you. LOL!

Like I said above this just shows some of the old vintage tools, To see all of the oldies; go to my blog and see my index. Click on link below http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?app=blog&module=display&section=blog&blogid=31&showentry=68

Attaboy and congrats! Hoping it will bring in more business than you can handle cuz it's always nice to be able to pick and choose what you want to do!