Matt S

I use the standard Italian ones. Ultrasonicly welded, tough, work fine. £6, plus tax.

To order from Abbey, you need an account. I just put my trade as "student" because at the time I couldn't demonstrate my business. They are trade-focused but their minimum order is only £15, quantities are reasonable, and they ship orders very quickly.

Proper brass (rather than brass plated steel) press studs are available from Le Prevo or Abbey. LP are more hobby oriented.

Neat work. What's it for use with, a derringer?

Don't know about sharpening, but when I feel my rotary knife has lost its edge I loosen the friction screw and whack it on the polisher. If I get the right angle and pressure, it rotates the blade slowly as it polishes the edge.

Excellent tutorial -- often the smallest bits are the hardest. What is in your edging mixture?

Abbey England -- great range of products and a quick turnaround. Le Prevo or JT Bachelors if you can wait for their primarily Shop based staff to get around to processing your orders.

I don't think there's enough clearance around the feed dog to put heatshrink around it -- good idea though.

Just what I wanted to hear Glenn, not often the cheaper option is best! What do you guys reckon about dropping the feed dog? Even with light top pressure it still marks smooth leather, and I would love to use this machine for stitching all of wallets, not just the guts.

Renia 315, available from Algeos. Alternatively, Copydex latex works passably, though it has a bit of a smell until it dries.

Thanks, Constabulary. As a slight deviation, I have a choice between steel or aluminium bobbins. My winder does not rely on magnetism, so is there any advantage to aluminium to justify the higher price?

Looks like some variant on bar billiards

Attached is a quick sample of some stitch sizes. Please excuse their roughness as I was intending to demo the pricking wheel set rather than my stitching skills and I had worked through the night on a couple orders I'd got behind on. They are marked in stitches per inch (SPI) and all use size 18/3 linen, just as zuludog recommended. A small spool of 18/3 should cost about £5, last for a great deal of sheaths, and you have a wide range of colours from which to choose.

I would use a brad point drill, with the drill set for a slow speed.

I've split tooling shoulder down to 0.5mm and a bit less using one of those Cowboy 6" pull splitters. Stretches quite a bit though. A band knife splitter would work better.

If you are going to spend any amount of time working in leather or wood, a sharp edge is essential for quality of product and your own safety. A basic two-sided oilstone is available for just £1 or 2. Lubricate it with light oil, dish soap, spit or window cleaner. You don't need much to hone and sharpen non-fancy steel. I do pretty much everything with a crappy old 2-sided oilstone and a strop loaded with green compound.

I'm sorry but I don't quite understand the question. The leather is London tan (colour) bridle-finish. Pit veg tanned, brush-dyed and then hand curried with dubbin. I suspect it goes through some sort of roller press to slick it at some point.

The groove is not essential. Many claim it protects the stitches from wear but my experience and that of many other indicates that such measures are only needed in extremely harsh environments such as when stitching on shoe soles. What the groove does do though is to pull all your stitches into a straight line. This can be great for a beginner as it neatens everything up a bit. The disadvantage is that you can only do straight stitching like Al Stohlman taught, like this ---, as opposed to the "toppled domino" style, like this ////. Which is stronger? I don't know, though I suspect the second. However for your project (a wallet to hold a policeman's badge I think?) the stitching will not come under heavy stress do either style is fine. Those stitching chisels are fine, great things. Get a bar of glycerine soap (50p) from the drug store and store them stuck in the top. This will lubricate them to make them not stick in the leather and will discourage the tines from rusting. 4mm is the largest stitch I would use for such a project (7SPI) and would probably use 3mm (8SPI) instead, but that's an aesthetic decision more than anything. The knife looks fine but I've not used that one before. A Stanley 958 would probably do just as well at a third the cost. The blades are disposable but each will last for years if you strop it little and often (see below) Get yourself a pair of compass dividers (£5). They have a huge range of uses and cost very little. If you can buy in person find the pair with the least bend or flex. You don't need a huge set, anything from 3" to 6" should be fine. The single most common use I have for mine is to scribe a line a certain distance from the edge for marking the stitching. I prefer round points to square but either will work. Get some metal polishing compound (£4) and make yourself a strop from a scrap of leather, MDF or cereal box card (free). Keep this to hand and use it to clean, straighten and polish all of your edge tools How will you be finishing your edges? You may want an edge shave, some fine sandpaper and something smooth for burnishing. A piece of hardwood, bone, antler, hard plastic or even clean denim will get you started. Don't forget to cut a piece of soap off the bar you bought for storing your chisels. Use it sparingly when slicking the edges of veg tan leather. A framing square allows you to lay out cuts neatly, accurately and efficiently, and has scales for measuring. An 8" one (£10) is not too bulky. A clickers or bookbinders awl costs about £3 and rivals the dividers for the multitudity of uses. These have round shafts as opposed to the stitching awl's diamond cross-section and are great for marking leather without staining or leaking. You can sometimes find them in hardware stores for very little money but need sharpening for our uses.

The reversed buckle was rectified before it went to the recipient.

They do, or at least used to exist. I have a Dryad pricking iron which I got as part of a job lot. It's a bit fine for what you need at 11TPI but the teeth are cut square rather on the slant. I also have a Barnsley tool which the eBay seller described as a pegging chisel which makes square indentations at 1/4" intervals. Where are you in London?

Hot off the bench in the early hours this morning. Bakers london tan bridle shoulder for the front, back and straps. Belly for the gusset and internal pocket. Will fit an A4 binder (the original brief). All seams hand stitched @7SPI. I usually do the strap ends at a finger pitch but picked up the 7 iron out of habit and didn't notice until too late.

Perhaps you have seen Ian Atkinson's video where he hears the logo stamp with a heat gun then impresses his design with an arbor press. It is much more usual to heat the stamp/die than the leather.

Despite official claims that the UK converted to metric in the 70s we still have a mixed system. Beer is sold in pints. Road distances in miles, speeds are miles per hour, land for real estate purposes in acres. I'm under 30 and when I was at school Imperial hadn't been taught for a decade but I still picked it up, it's' just too handy to not be able to use both as the situation requires.

Or you could consider mokume gane. It's the nonferrous equivalent of pattern welded ("Damascus") steel.