WyomingSlick

No, actually I wasn't referring to the comfort issue. Lacing on wallets that are worn in a rear pocket do not last very long compared to saddle stitched wallets where the thread lies in a groove and is more protected from wear. Another note - if you are making a wallet for a guy who drives a field tractor, you may want to consider a wallet with a chain and belt loop attached (truckers wallet), since many a wallet has been lost and plowed under in the back forty.

Thanks for pointing this out - I went and downloaded it out of curiousity. I am surprised to see TLF put something out like this that demonstrates how badly they have dropped the ball in the leather stamp department. Plus there are many, many other older tools that they don't show in this chart. Then there is the fact that many of the new tool impressions do look very inferior to the old impressions. Tis no wonder that many forum members are referring to the new Craftools as "craptools"!! Looking at the comparison between the old stamp impressions and the newer letter-prefix ones like in the flower and acorn stamps above is so revealing that I am finding it hard to understand how TLF would even post this chart which is so damning to the stamps they are producing now. Are they so blind?????...............or..............are they ??????......{ excuse me but this may be somewhat paranoid thinking } .........getting ready to come out with a new improved line of stamps (perhaps the SS ones mentioned above) that will get them back to the quality of their stamps made in the fifties???? Well, we will see what happens. Meanwhile, my recomendation has been and remains: Buy your Craftools on eBay; every summer bring a new crop of tools that people pick up at estate sales, yard sales, and auctions. Some of these tools were owned by people who originally bought them in the fifties and sixties and have been held onto for fifty years. There are great bargains out there on eBay, and there are perhaps even greater bargains at your local sales and auctions. I recently communicated with a seller who sold a set on eBay for over six hundred dollars - a set that he picked up locally for forty five bucks! Please visit my blog here on this forum for more information on stamping tools.

Mostly I stay away from laced edges for men's wallets unless it is a wallet to be carried in a breast pocket. Lacing is fine for those since a wallet in the breast pocket doesn't get sat on and subject to all the wear and stresses that wallets in a rear hip pocket go through. Lacing is also fine for ladies wallets that are carried in purses. I go for saddle stiching on more than 90 % of my men's wallets. If you haven't developed that skill yet, then wallets are a good place to start. Buckstitching is another option, and a combination of buckstitching and saddle stitching can be quite attractive.

Good example of why to avoid those kits with the pre-punched holes. The usual practice when lacing the corners is to go through the corner hole three times and possibly the next one twice if needed. That doubling in the other holes along the side looks "funny"! Very nice tooling job.

If you are a beginner, then the first book to get is the "Leatherwork Maunual" by Al Stohlman, A.D.Patten, and J.A.Wilson. This is the book (or excerpts from) used by Boy Scouts and 4-H programs across the country. After you have learned what is in those 160 pages, you won't need anyone to tell you what book to buy next.

Hi, I have bought and sold thousands of leather tools on eBay and other venues. My final answer on what I see in the pictures is around $350.00 . perhaps up to $400 depending on how many, and what books he is adding.

I will give you a honest answer and point you in the right direction. The right direction is to get back to the workbench and learn to use the tools you have. If you can't use a swivel knife no better than what that belt shows, or for that matter - bevel any smoother than that, than throwing a bunch of money at it isn't the answer. The right direction for you is to get back to the practice bench and get those two basic skills down right before going any further. There are plenty of good instruction books around that show step by step how to do it right. When you can produce a practice piece that looks like the one in the book, then you are ready to move on. If you are going to get better at that you need to be your own worst (best) critic. Every good leathercarver I know sees every thing he did wrong, or wishes was better in his work. Usually work that others will ooh and ahh over.

The wallet bag was featured in Doodle page 7 of series 5 . As you can see from the scan section, it was made of 4 wallet backs, plus a wallet sized base, and 2 soft leather gussets. You should be able to figure out how to build it by looking at the pic. Looks to to involve quite a bit of lacing.

Whew!!! I am probably more in the dark than many of you on this subject. I have been primarily interested in collecting Craftools (CT) over the last fifteen years. If you have a question about older CTs then I am likely as good a source as any. Along the way I have collected some 30+ Cal-Carved and over 160 RBS stamps also. And some real jewels - vintage Ray Hackbarths stamps! And then there are the other stamps. Some 150+ of them with no identifying name. In this group there are some that will look like they were probably made by the same maker. If you place them next to one another, the tool shafts will match - same length, knurling, shaft taper, etc. There is one group that seems to be made of 2 differant metals in that the head is not magnetic while the shaft are. These are suppposebly made with a brass head swedged to a steel shaft, and then the whole thing plated with chromium. These have been identified as tools sold by Apache Leather Company in Phoenix,AZ. Then there is a group that are much like Craftools, except the striking end is very rounded, the finish is more of a satin chrome, and few of them are necked down below the head. And so on......... The fact of the matter is that there were many toolmakers around who did not mark their tool with their name. Quite a few of the saddlemakers made some of their own tools since it doesn't take to much in the way of special tools or talent to turn a large nail or bolt into a beveler or a shader. Some of the more talented made tools for others. I very much doubt that Frank Eberle was the only one of these who used large nails or spikes to make stamps with; so identifying his tools by that factor alone is really not conclusive. When it comes to knurled shaft stamps, this also applies. During World War II, there were many, many thousands of men who were trained as machinists. After the war ended and as the demand for them lessened, I am sure that many of them were looking around for a way to make a buck. The late forties was when Craftool and Cal-Carved were established. In the early days of Craftool, Dick McGahen used differant machinists to make his tools; this is why you will see differances in the very early CTs. Later on, it would seem than Oliver Sturdy, who had his brother, "Bill" and other men working for him, would be responsible for the majority of Craftool production. After McGahen's death, Tandy bought out the Craftool operation; including the Sturdy shop. Oliver and Bill moved to Fort Worth with Tandy in the early Sixties where Oliver was head of the tool division for many years. Getting back to the Los Angeles area in the late 40s and 50s, there was a swelling of popularity in leathercrafting. This was fueled primarily by the entertainment business as this was the Golden Age of Westerns. The other factor was that leathercrafting was being taught on hundreds of military bases around the world. In fact, that is how I came to it; my dad was introduced to it when he was stationed in California in the early fifties. Among his tools were several that were not Craftools; rather they were made by an Army buddy who worked in the base machine shop. So how many machinists were producing tools in those years??? How about today?? Who made these stainless steel stamps? I believe that unless you can trace the history of an unmarked stamp, or it a rather unique type that is known to have only been made by one maker ---you are going to have a hard time proving who made what. For example, I have heard several folks relate that Ellis Barnes made tools that were shorter than Craftools. I have two stamps that he made back in the fifties that were definately made by him as he used the Cal-Carved numbers, but they have "Barnes" on them instead of Cal-Carved. They measure 4 3/16" long. I can show you hundreds of Craftools from that same era that are also 4 3/16' long. I have seen groups of tools that are supposed to be all McMillens; yet there are differances in the knurling; length of knurling, some are stepped down at the end of the knurling while some are not, some finer, some coarser, and so on. Example below - McMillens on the left , unknown on the right. See the differance???? So if someone says to me that a tool is a McMillen "because once you've seen a few, you can tell........" , I am going to take it with a grain of salt unless I can see that it is one of the unique stamps that only they made. I would be super interested, as would many others, in seeing good pictures of any of the old timers that you all have, hopefully good pics showing the faces and the shafts in detail. The Ray Pohja made tools would be a treat for sure. Perhaps with enough pics of positively identified tools, we might be able to reach some solid conclusions about the makers work.

I found this in an article called "Mervin Ringlero: The Homecoming" which you can find with Google. A quote from the article said "William Salter was considered to be the father of the Arizona style of stamping. He is credited with inventing the modern swivel knife which McMillen Tool Co marketed under the W.S. Swivelknife label." The article is well worth finding and reading.

Thank you very much! I really enjoyed looking at all the pictures and even spent some more time studying some of them - I saw some interesting application of stamping tools that I hadn't seen before.

A friend passed along the following link to a F.K. Russel Catalog that has been scanned into a pdf. file. http://toolemera.com/catpdf/fullchiselleathertoolscatSec.pdf F.K. Russell was a leathertool maker in Dallas, Texas back in the early part of the last century For those of you who are just interested in the stamping tools and would like to download those pages for referance - I have posted those pages in jpeg. format at my blog page. http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?app=blog&module=display&section=blog&blogid=31 Take a look...............find out what a "sinker" is (something new I learned from the catalog)

Update - Still looking for Craftool 107 (bargrounder) - have found the rest

I got a reply from one of the people I asked about the SS tool name. He said he had a couple of embossing rolls made by them. and he believes they were mainly involved in making tools for the book leather embossing profession. Were the other Sonnen Shinez tools you saw all of this type,ie, flowers, geometrics, etc??

Nope, not so unique, or new! I can't recall exactly where, but I have seen a design very much like this years ago in a crafts magazine. And the asking price is ridiculous.

Basically you are going to have to have the boots and the spurs to get a measurement since the size of either can vary quite a lot in child sizes.

Interesting and some funny!

Me too. So where did you come up with the name? Is it marked on the stamp?

"Sonnen Schinez" ?????? New name to me. When I first looked at the large flower I thought it was a F.K. Russel stamp but when I checked, the Sonnen has a much larger center pod. So what can you tell us about this maker?

Are you ever going to get this site working right?? This keeps happening to me. Tonigh,t I opened up "New content" . According to the first page, there are 6 pages of new content. It says; "There are 144 new entries since 01-July 11" I start at the top, and go down. I read the ones that are of interest to me, and add replies to several. I finish the first page and go to the next page. Everything is fine, and I work my way down that page also. So I click on page three, and.......crash!!!!!!! Now I get a page that says; There are 4 new entries since Today, 02:09 AM So what happened to the rest of the new entries? Name: John Herold UserName: WyomingSlick IP Address: 72.36.8.252 Email Address: slick@dteworld.com

I think Bob is referring to the meander border tool which I saw sell for 78 and change, the next week someone paid 48 for one and the next week - one brought a price still up in the thirties. I think it was a case of over enthusiastic newbies who didn't know the market. It is also true that I have seen Barry King stamps go for more on eBay then they cost direct from him. You can get some great buys on eBay, BUT, like the man says: you have to know what you are buying. Until you do know, you need to take what the seller says with a grain of salt. For instance, there is a seller on Ebay who infers,(((( notice that I said "infers" and not "states" ))))), that many of the older steel non-plated and unmarked stamps that he sells are McMillen stamps. It really isn't dishonest of him since they might be McMillens, but it is also possible that they were made by someone else. Ray is right - google a bit before you go to eBay and see what the prices are from today's makers and get some current catalogs from TLF and Hidecrafter.

Hi Holly, My hat off to you for teaching kids leathercraft. I will be sending you a care package with some knives and other stuff in the morning. I live in Wyoming so it may take a few days even with priority mail. John Herold

Hi Chris, Looks like a good one there. Craftool never used a letter designation on this tool number as far as I know. The only sure way to date it is by the company name. If it is stamped only CRAFTOOL CO, with no USA on it, then it was made prior to 1968. The knurling and the style of the number stamping suggest it is an earlier tool. There are some other Craftools out there with only numbers and no letter prefix that will fall in this same category. These would be utility type tools such as grommet and snap setters (#s such as 52 through 58), and some numbers in the upper 400 range which are lacing punches. By the way - I like your picture. I am a big fan of "squeezebox" music.

LOL King's X beat me to the pumch by a minute or so. Yes, you need to use the search function of this site. I just input "swivel knife" and there are over a hundred posts dealing with the subject. After you have read all of the relevant ones, then perhaps you may have further specific questions. You will find that many times the same questions have been raised several times. People do get weary of answering the same question over and over when the asker has not even bothered to review the information already here on the site. It is also very important to remember that: SKILL = Knowledge + experience Experience is a matter of not only doing something, but also a matter of observation of your efforts, and striving to do better. It will take some time to get the knack of it - how much depends on you and the degree of your commitment to mastering the skill.

I would like to hear from anyone who has Craftool #306 and/or #712. I recently discovered that there are certain anomolies in the older Craftool catalogs (You can read all about that in my blog - http://leatherworker...31&showentry=88 ) but what I would like to hear from now is anyone who has the original version of either or both of the two tools as shown in the 1947 Craftool Catalog. They should be very close to the steel unplated tools shown, but of course they will be chromium plated and have CRAFTOOL CO stamped on the shaft, and perhaps the respective number.