WyomingSlick

I believe the point they are talking about here is that when you are cutting border lines for a meander patttern, you need to cut both your inside, and outside lines going in the same direction. If you cut them going in opposite directions, they will not be as parallel because .....you will not be holding your blade guide the same in respect to the curve of the leather. Human's are not perfect machines, and thus they will tend to either lead, or lag, a bit when cutting a border line. So.....if you cut them both going in the same direction, hopefully the lines will be closer to parallel because they will both be off slightly to the same degree. However, if you cut them going in opposite directions......it will be as if one is cut, slightly leading the curve............and the other cut as, lagging the curve.....or vice versa. Straight ? I think they simply misspoke there.

Stippler

Lee prretty much has it down. All this is........is an adaptation of the technique used by very high end bookbinders. Any good bookbinding guide will explain this in detail.

Now that you have heard from all the nice guys , here's my "honest" 2 cents woth. I can see several places where you got off-track with the stamp which is very easy to do with the tri-weaves. You did good with your recovery, and going with the black finish was a wise choice since it conceals a lot. Your moulding and assembly looks top notch. I suggest at your next go with the tri-weave that you: 1. Cement your leather with rubber cement to a non-stretchable backing, or use a heavy tape on the flesh side. Tools like the tri-weave will cause the leather to stretch if you don't and make it very difficult to keep on line with the design. 2. Use a muti-step process. As in pic one, I stamp a lighter pattern first to make sure all impressions are on track and lined up right. I then go over those..... stamping every other row to a uniform depth. I then finish up with the rest of the rows.

Sorry about that. Perhaps I should have mentioned also that the 115 in that auction was an unusual one in that it had 10 lobes instead of the usual 9, and thus was a very early (and super rare) 115 dating to around 1950 or before. LOL There wouldn't have been one there in any case. If there had been, I would have bought it already. As it is, you have several tools listed there that are a steal at $10, and many others that are a very good price. Should mention that there is a figure carving matting tool that you have misidentified as a F698....that is actually an F898, While I have your attention.......Have you ever encountered a patent stitching groover like the four Osbornes that you lead that section with....that does not have any markings on it at all ? I have one that is identical to those (sans markings), and was wondering if it has to be an Osborne since apparently these were patented......or if some other maker at some time pirated their design.

It makes perfect sense. According to the "Collectors Guide to Vintage Craftools" ...... it means that you bought Craftools that were made before Tandy acquired the company in the early 1960s and moved operations to Ft.Worth, Texas.. Before that happened, the tools were made in northern Mexico in the old city of Los Angeles, and are considered by all knowledgaable people to be superior tools to those Craftools made later. Generally speaking, Craftools that do not have USA on them are much better tools. ( Note- Some of the Craftools now being foreign made do not not say USA on them but they will have a prefix letter in front of the tool number - prefix letters were started in 1963 ) Yours look to be in excellent condition for 50+ year old tools. The beveler looks like the chrome plating has worn away some........but, that is a good sign that it must work well to have been used that much......and it still has plenty of walking miles in it. I looked up the auction on eBay, and I am wondering why you went with that particular auction. While scanning the completed auctions, it was kind of depressing to see all the ignorant people who have purchased the cheapo stamping tools made in China. Incidentally, I totally disagree with the old boy, above, who advised never to buy on eBay. I have every Craftool shown in the pre 1963 catalogs (500+ of them) and the majority of them were found on eBay. I have also been able to buy Hackbarths, RBS, McMillens, Russells, and plenty of other collectable tools there......tools I would never have encountered otherwise. When buying on eBay, the pictures, and the description are important. With good pictures, I can usually even differentiate Craftools made in the late 40's to early 50s from those made from 1955 to 1963. The term "vintage" means nothing on eBay. Sellers will add the word just to be included in the search parameters. Right now, on eBay, it is a buyers market because a lot of people who bought their Craftools in the 1950s and 1960s are retiring, or have passed away, and their tools are on the market because their heirs have no interest in them. The most commonly found ones are going dirt cheap, around 3 bucks for bigger sets, and a bit more for common individual tools. ( The more uncommon, rarer, ones, will of course bring much more.....( I believe the most I have ever seen an individual Cratool bring was at over a 100 bucks for a 115 ) At $4.50/tool, you did very well....... because yours are in much better condition than a lot of them. Sadm but true......"some folks take care of their tools....some don't! " If you are interested in a guide to more old Craftools, drop me a personal message with your email, and I will send you a copy.

one way

I have deleted all of my blog entries as of now. I no longer wish to contribute my experiance and knowledge to this blog/site. I will post on another blog as soon as I find time to do it. My thanks to those of you who I have enjoyed good relationships with. Have a good day.

I fooled around with this a bit in Adobe Photoshop

LOL ! Ah well, survival of the fittest and all that ya know.

Looks like a thoroughbred to me

LOL Its not out to get ME. I'll be dead and buried before then. And I know damn well what CNC is. I was taking computer classes in 1974, long before most of you were even a gleam in your daddy's eye. As for programing such a machine, it would be much simpler than you might think with laser scanning. Unlike tatooing which is done on a three dimension surface, most leather tooling is done on a flat piece of leather. The carving would be the easiest part. A line drawing with lines of varying width would be entered into the database. The width of the line would regulate the depth of the angle blade. Simple data entries would designate where each line starts and stops. Stepper motors would control the flow of the cut easily. Beveling could be done very precisely because the narrow beveler operating at a thousand strokes a minute could follow every line precisely and to the depth required as determined by the scanning of the master carving. Some of the other tools, such as cams and veiners, would need to be mounted in a gimbel type head which would control the angle at which the tool strikes the leather. Other tools such as backgrounders and bargrounders could produce a perfect background. Instead of using bargrounders of varing sizes, a CNC controlled tool would consist of one single bead which the machine would use to fill in and produce a perfect pattern for the background. The machine would finish by doing the dress cuts following a master pattern just like the original swivel knife work. The only thing left to do, might be to have a human smooth out anything that needed modeling. One thing about such an operation. The leather used would have to be of very uniform thickness and consistancy to produce good results. But then again, it would be possible to have a machine that would deepscan the leather and adjust the machine parameters to allow for slight differances. As for your tattooing, that is not out of the range of possibilities either. If you know anything about nanotechnology, you should be able to see how in the future...... tattoos may not only be done easily by nanobots, but removed just as easily......with the result that you can have a tat job done for an event in the evening, and have it removed later that night, while you sleep, so you can go to work the next day with a clear skin.

Screw you guys ! Once there were million of shoe makers who made shoes and boots by hand. Now there are just a few and the rest of our footwear is made by low paid, untalented people in sweatshops. Once there were millions of tailors, now most clothes are made in factories by semi-sklilled workers just like our shoes. Yup.....progress ! Now we have CNC routers that can duplicate a carved wood panel in a fraction of the time it would take a skilled woodcarver. Can you see a time coming when there is a CNC machine that can carve and stamp a piece of leather that is entirely faithful to the master carving that was scanned into the programming? It could be built right now with the existing technology we have ! As it stands now, it is hard enough to convince buyers to purchase handmade and handtooled items rather than that import thing at Wally World. How much harder......, if even possible.......will it be, if the other mass produced item is not only indistinguishable from yours, but better looking? Now look a little farther down the road to nanotechnology. Those little machines wil definately put you out of a job and you can join the cobblers, harness makers, book binders, calligraphers, bufalo hunters, trappers, blacksmiths, and the rest of the long line of professions mostly found only in the history books.

Nobody said your marble has to be that thick, but if you are convinced of that............then consider setting whatever marble you do have into concrete to get the thickness you do want.

It is real simple. You are not paying attention to what you are doing! You do not have a built in angle guide in your hand......or your eyes. Therefore you need to watch and see where the very tip of the point of the awl is coming out. If it is not in the groove where you want it.....then retreat, and adjust the angle of your awl so that it comes out where you want it to. As you are stabbing the holes, concentrate on stabbing them perfectly in line with where you want the hole to be. Do not lift up on the awl, or press down.....maintain a straight push in line with your intended path of the awl.

Something to think about. In the last 50 years, there have been a gazillion kids who took leathercraft in 4-H, Scouts, or other youth clubs and did not continue the pastime. Some of those mallets turn up at yard sales, pawn shops, etc. I have a fairly complete range of Garland mallets not counting the heavy weighted ones. I am sure that my total out of pocket expense for all of those shown in the picture was much less than $50,00 ! Even the Garland split face mallet was cheap. My cousin got 3 of them in a box of tools at an auction for a buck, and gave me one. The rawhide faces were shot so I simply replaced them with faces I sawed off another rawhide mallet I got somewhere for a buck or two. A little bronze paint and it was ready to go.

If you want to reduce any sound, the key is to isolate the source of the sound. A piece of high density foam under a marble tooling slab will reduce the sound there by isolating it from the table/bench which can carry the sound to the floor and to your neighbors. Vibration/sound absorbing machine mount pads under the legs will also help. If the sound is carrying through the air to the walls and thus to your neighbor's ears, you can pick up some sound absorbing material and build yourself a 3 sided surrounding wall to contain the sound. You could even put some hooks in the ceiling and hang some sleeping bags from them to catch the sound.

There's no doubt that this is a high quality tool.......but it is also a pricey one since it is imported from a German firm known for their tools worldwide. Their metalworking hammer are excellent, and yes........ they are pricey also. All this actually is.....is a soft faced mallet and there are plenty of less expensive alternatives at your local hardware store that will do your tasks very well. One of the models that has a selection of different screw on tips might be very handy for a great range of tasks in your leather work.

Move over Gucci and Prada !

I think the operative words there are "finished leathers". If the leather is sealed and the gel/ink is unable to penetrate, then I can see how it would be easy to wipe off since it is merely sitting on the finished surface,

The very first thing to keep in mind is that when you do layout lines of any kind on leather, DO THEM LIGHTLY ! This is particularly important if your carving or stamping is not going to cover/conceal the lines. For some geometiccs and basketweave stamps, your layout lines will be completely hid by the stamping, For others, and most 3D stamps, this is not the case....amd you will need to smooth out your layout lines after stamping or carving. The lighter you make them.......the easier it will be to smooth them out. NOTE - The above aplies to all layout work whether you are tracing a pattern or using a craftaid. If you make a tracing line deep, and then don't exactly follow it with your swivel knife, then you have an ugly line running along the edge of your flower, stem, or whatever, if you erred on the bevel side. If you erred on the other side, then the beveling will conceal it nicely. You might also wish to consider if you need a full grid marked on the leather. Will a set of Xs, or even a simple dot at the corners be sufficient to align your stamps? Is it possible that some other registation marks would work? Without seeng some photos of your layout and the stamps you used, it is hard to say what else might work for you.

Wonderful story. Thanks for sharing it.

LOL This topic is an example of one of the reasons that I find the range and scope of human behavior as the most interesting subject matter I know of. The ways that people's viewpoints/ideas/thoughts are shaped by their culture, their education, their religion, their family, friends, and the multitudes of other inputs that go into making them a distinct individual is sometimes incomprehensible to those who don't share the same data set of influences and/or the same tendancies to accept, or......... reject beliefs and facts. The "pricing game" is just an example of how merchandisers picked up on a bit of human psychology to increase their sales, and it has been around for a very long time. Even though the value of a penny is so trivial these days, the psychology still works.....so is still being used. The range of strategies that sellers use is a very broad spectrum and there are many tried-and-true techniques that are effective. And then there are the behaviors that we do ourselves. I have observed people who buy alcohol/beer/cigarettes.......who will buy only a pack, or sixpack. or small bottle.......and then buy another the next day, (or sometimes the same day) when the most cost effective way would be to be buying a case, a large bottle, or a carton. LOL I guess they are just in denial, or they have a faint hope that they are moderating their intake that way. On the other hand, I know a fellow who buys his Canadian whiskey by the box because he gets a dozen 750ml bottes for the price of 10. He's a realist alcoholic ! By the way, I am an addict myself. But, I am also a realist. So I buy my Mountain Dew in bulk, and on sale whenever possible. And my pickle relish. LOL .

Thanks Julia, I am glad to see at least one other professional appreciates my sense of humor. LOL I also find it amusing that none of the previously oh-so-vocal "maul fans" have seen fit to challenge my assertions yet. Aw well.....maybe this weekend !

I say maybe your last statement is the answer. Usually the reason an edge is finished is to keep it looking nice, and able to stand up to daily abuse and wear. I don't see that need for your inside flap. I would just make sure that I made the cut for it very nice and clean with a sharp knife. I would also probably start the cut at both ends from a small punched hole. I would suggest that you have a small radius on your outside corners to reduce that "ole dog eared" look that comes in time to square corners.