JustKate

I really love looking at your work, Chuck. It's always beautiful work, but the historical detail makes it really special. Kate

I have some lead-filled leather weights I made to hold the leather flat while I'm cutting it. I just took some leather rounders, filled them with lead shot, and laced them around the edges. Each one weighs about 1lb. Kate

I have a 5-ton Lucris clicker press that would easily handle that type of work. That is, that size of part, and that thickness of leather. Kate

That would definitely be part of your problem, then. Most swivel knife blades are not ready to use out of the package. They usually need to be sharpened before the first use, then stropped before and during every use. The tip should be very shiny and smooth, polished to a mirror finish. Kate

This does work, except: put it on DRY leather. If you put it on damp leather the ink will bleed and smear all over the place. Putting it on dry leather will give you a nice, crisp, clean line. Also, I use the acetate overhead transparency sheets to make the transfers. Being able to see through them makes it very easy to get very precise placement of the design on your leather. Then you can just wipe the remaining ink off and reuse it multiple times. If its a clean line, its very easy to bury the ink in a swivel knife cut, and I use a pretty thin blade for any intricate carving I do. Beveling, backgrounding, etc. buries it further, and it also tends to fade as you work along, so by the time you're done you really can't see it at all. Kate

"Army tan", "English tan", or "saddle tan" is my guess. Kate

Instead of moving the lights farther away - you need all the light you can get - try changing the angle of the seat so the hot spots are reflected away from the camera. Kate

Kate

I second Ken's remarks about how poor lighting can affect the clarity of the image. For controlling the light conditions and background, nothing beats a light box. The one linked to is a good solution. Here also is another thread on this forum with some photos to show how to build one of just about any size with PVC and a translucent shower curtain: http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=2260 If you want to take closeups, as azrider mentions, you need a macro focus feature which allows the camera to focus on a subject less than a foot away. On the different types of lighting: I try to use bulbs that cast as white a light as possible, and sometimes the so-called "daylight" bulbs are in fact very blue. A typical "soft white" bulb is usually somewhat reddish or yellowish. I did find a florescent bulb at Home Depot, called a "bright white" bulb, which is almost perfectly white. But as Ferg pointed out, regardless of what bulb you use, you will still want to be able to adjust the white balance on your camera for any lighting situation to get the colors right. If you know how to use that feature, you can still get the color right even if your lighting is not perfectly white. Kate