JustKate

That was the first thing I tried. The liquid latex I use is quite a bit thicker and stays more on the surface. But block out is very thinned down so the first coat absorbs into the leather quite a bit.

Block Out actually is a liquid latex. I just went and tried your deglazer suggestion, and it does work. (The deglazer I use is acetone.)

Are you applying a top coat over the dye, such as a wax or acrylic or lacquer finish? That's what usually gets rid of it for me, and gives the color more richness and depth.

Hi Karen, One possibility that I see is that you may be spraying shene on a bit too heavily. I presume you're trying to get it to cover completely in one pass with the sprayer. In my experience with spraying on acrylic finishes, I found it works better to spray it on two or three very light coats, waiting about 10 minutes between coats.

That is very nice work for a first project. Please do continue!

You can get vinyl sheet in different thicknesses from just about any store that sells fabrics.

Love it, Beav!

I've played with wood stains on leather and just didn't care for how they appeared. In my experiments, they gathered heavily in the pores of the hide and produced a very grainy look.

Not Bill (Bluesman). But what I would suggest, instead of leaving the fit allowance area of the belt unfinished, then finishing the leather when the size is determined, just make and finish the belt the longest it will need to be, then all you have to do is trim it down, punch holes, and finish the edges.

I just happened to notice in one of your earlier posts you mentioned running on linux? If that's the case, Sketchup will not run on your OS. Anyway, back to the original subject. I realize now you were not referring to the banner advertising at the top of the forum pages when you were objecting to all advertising in general. I hate pop-ups and email spam, too, but as for the advertizing I see embedded in web pages, I realize that it's those sponsors with their targeted offers that help keep this and other sites we enjoy visiting up and running. I personally appreciate well-targeted advertising that is relevant to my interests. And I very much appreciate what that advertising does to keep the costs of all the content I enjoy so low.

A filter will get the spam out of your face, but part of the problem with email spam is, the bandwidth that gets wasted when the emails are sent, and filters do nothing about that. So I claim it's better to stop them from being sent in the first place. For reputable businesses, use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the page. For the unscrupulous ones (and you can usually tell), there are getting to be more and more spam cops on the internet where you can file spam complaints. If you forward your spam emails to one of them - I use spam@uce.gov - in many cases you can stop or severely limit the ability of that mail server to send email.

I tried Blender, and it doesn't really allow you to draw with much precision, which I feel is necessary for this kind of design work. I also spent some time playing with AutoDesk's 123D products. They're free, but they've been neutered to the point where they're useless. So far Sketchup is the most promising, but I'm still testing, and haven't gotten one to go all the way to fab yet. It's also free - you can download it here: http://www.sketchup.com/

Something tells me you haven't heard the whole story.

Very nice design and workmanship.

I presume you're mainly talking about stamps? I think most experience leatherworkers would consider Hackbarth "professional" tools. Also, you may want to pay a visit to Barry King's web site; his stamps have a high ratio of quality vs. cost - they're stainless steel rather than chrome-plated (whatever), produce very nice impressions, and are durable. Bob Beard makes the best stamps I've ever seen - to die for - they're beautiful, make extremely clean impressions, and are extremely durable - but they're not cheap and it takes a long time to get them.

I also use Illustrator for 2d work. The only drawback of that is, it's not cheap. I've also gotten very nice results from InkScape, which you can download for free. http://inkscape.org/screenshots/index.php?lang=en

The Hackbarth stamps they show there are considered better quality and more suitable for professional use. The Craftool stamps are okay as entry level tools. JMO, folks!

Here's a page from Jeff Mosby's site that shows them and what they do. http://www.greyghostgraphics.com/lifters.html