Toddo

Well I got a little bottle of the Weldwood from Home Depot and I got my test piece glued up tonight. Right now the piece has got a little stiffness to it but it looks like I could bend it easily. It's not totally floppy like it was before I glued the felt to it. It's 6-7oz leather and I did apply two coats to both pieces letting the first coat dry like 25 minutes before I applied the second coat. The reason I wanna do the overkill on the test piece is that I want to intentionally try to make this glue make the piece stiff by applying the double coat and letting it dry for days and even up to a week. If I can make this glue make the test piece stiff by any means then this glue is not what I'm looking for. I'm hoping this bag will be around for 100 years so I really do want give the glue a thorough test. 100 years is a long time for that glue to get hardened up and stiff.

You're saying Weldwood Contact Cement dries flexible? I've heard some conflicting things. If I use this stuff and it dries to a rigid state the work I've done will be trashed. Are you absolutely sure about this? I guess there's only one thing I can do really. Buy the smallest amount of Weldwood Cement I can and test it first. I really wanted to use Weldwood as the things I've heard is that once it dries you can't rip the pieces apart that were glued together. And a quart of Barge is like $30 compared to a quart of Weldwood at $15 so I would rather use Weldwood if possible. I guess I can get a small tube of Barge also and test both of them to see which one works best. I will definitely post back with the results. I plan on appling two coats to both sides of my test pieces of both brands and them letting them dry for an entire week to be thorough.

Thanks for the tip

I have not thought of the tire patch cement. I guess I could experiment with that and see how it holds. I would need about six tubes of that stuff if it works. I'll be needing to cover an area about 9" wide by about 30" in length. There's gotta be something super strong but stays flexible out there. I can't be the first one ever to need something like this for leather work bonding.

I'm in the process of making a black powder kit bag and I plan on lining the inside of the bag with black felt. I'm looking for the strongest but most flexible contact cement. I heard mention here on another thread that Weldwood Contact Cement works great so I went and bought some at Home Depot. It says "Flexible Bond" on the outside of the can but that stuff is used to stick laminates down for countertops and so forth and I know from experience that kind of glue dries very hard like dried resin and is not flexible AT ALL. I called the 1-800 number on the can for info and they confirmed that Weldwood dries RIGID. That would have been a total disaster if I had used that stuff. I wonder why anyone was mentioning it here except that maybe they were using it to glue leather together for a rigid application. Since I will be lining the bag with felt the front flap is one area that will constantly be flexed. I do not intend to sew the border of the front flap to the felt lining underneath. The rest of the lining in the interior of the bag will be sewed through, but the front flap will not be sewed through and it's a huge area in relation to the rest of the piece. I seriously doubt Elmers Rubber Cement will hold like I need it to. I have seen the Tandy leather glue. Should I use that or is there something superior to that? It's gotta hold tough as nails for permanent and stay totally flexible.

Thank You

Thanks BM

Anyone know where to get one of those angled English "pricking" punches? All I can seem to find are the diamond head ones.

Thanks for the updated links! It's been a few years since I've been on this site and I'm fixing to make my son a black powder possibles bag for his birthday. There's no "Tandy Leather Kit" for this project so I'll be doing this one from scratch. I've never stiched leather before. At ALL. I'll be posting back with questions and/or progress.

I've been trying to find the best method for transferring images from my computer to the leather recently myself. I have some designs with some very thin lines that I want to be exact on the leather. I've decided that transfering the image by hand onto the tracing film and then again onto the leather is not accurate enough. You loose some accuracy each time you go over the design by hand. So I have been looking for a substrate to print on using my inkjet printer so that I can trace directly from the design onto the leather with the most accuracy. BTW. I have found that using an exacto knife works very well in place of a stylus for tracing, but you have to dull the blade and point some with a file to that it won't cut through. Here's what I've tried so far: Regular white 20lb paper. - Not good enough for me. The fibers in the paper hang up your stylus or exacto knife. Makes a decent visible lines in the leather though. Vellum paper. - It has a very smooth surface like the Tandy leather tracing film, and it's semi transparent, but the stylus will still bump around on paper fibers too. No good enought for me either. Also makes decent visible lines in leather. Tandy Leather tracing film - I tried printing directly onto the Tandy plastic tracing film with the inkjet printer. It worked. It printed very sharp lines but... there is a major smudge problem. Inkjet ink doesnt dry well on a smooth unpourous plastic surface. So I tried to fix this by spraying artist fixative on it and then used a hair dryer to dry it. Worked fairly well. Thought I had the solution. But I saw that the fixative had degraded the color lines somewhat, somehow. The black ink stayed intact and sharp. And weirdly, the black lines didn't smudge after the fixative dried, but the fixative did not setup on the color ink and it would still smudge. Next I'm going to try quick dry transparency film made for inkjet printers. I have this on order and is due to arrive in the mail soon: I'm thinking it may be to thick to transfer the line properly to the leather but it's worth a try. It says quick dry so I should not have any problem with the ink smudging when I do the tracing. All in all I think the Tandy Leather tracing film is the perfect material to trace over a design onto the leather. The smooth plastic allows the stylus to flow very smoothly when you trace the line and it's flexible so it indents into the leather well and makes a very visible line in the leather from the trace. If the transparency film doesn't work that good then I have one last idea. I'm going to spray either artist fixative or matt finish polyeurothane on Tandy tracing film and let it dry real good to see if that will give the film a good surface for the inkjet ink to dry on. It might give it a slightly rougher/more pourous surface similar to regular paper so that it can dry up. I can even spray a little fixative over top of that if need be.

I've been looking for that CSA font for a long time. I don't necesarily need a stamp. I can just enlarge it or reduce it on my computer and transfer it to tracing film. I wonder where I can find the "A" as I want to make the square confederate belt buckle style that has "CSA" on it, not just CS. My brother does relic hunting here in VA and he has loads of relics. I wanted to make a square CSA belt buckle for him out of one of those square Tandy leather buckles with the leather insert. I saved the PDF of the CS and US oval pattern. That is awesome. Anyone know where I can get the A that matches the font? Thanks, Toddo

Thanks a lot for the tip. I noticed the same thing when I tried to wipe super sheen (or resolene was it?) over a dyed piece that I had let dry for like two weeks. It STILL picked up dye. What make of air brush do you have? That sounds like the solution.

This stuff here works very good to protect the painted area: I put two or three thin coats on the painted area, letting it dry between coats and it works like a shell over the paint, but still flexible. And it doesn't yellow with age. On the dolphins wallet I decided to just use it over the entire wallet, paintjob, background leather and all. Big mistake. After it dried there were streaks all over the unpainted area. I used a brush and where some stokes were thicker than others they showed up as dark streaks. Yikes. Yeah, I was mad. You can't see any streaking on the painted area though and it works very well for that. I had to go back and use rough sand paper on the unpainted area to take off all the dried varnish and then go back with a very fine sandpaper so smooth it out. And some of the paint got taken off when I did the sanding so I had to do some repainting as well. I then put one more coat of varnish on the painted area, let dry for a day and then went back over top of the whole thing with super sheen. I guess I'm learning the hard way. The VERY hard way. I have another wallet with an elaborate paint job (Atlanta Braves) that I used the varnish on and the paint has not come off at all. I don't carry it in my pockets much though. I do shove it up under my dash board in my truch to hide it when I'm at work though and it gets scraped past some sharp edged sheet metal and all and I tell you, that thing, paint job and all, has held up very well. I've been using for like uhh, 7-9 months now. I wonder if I cut that liquitex varnish with water to make it thinner( even though the instructions on the bottle says not to) and use a sponge if it would still streak the non painted area? Looks like more trial and error ahead. When I finaly get the best method down for the finishing I'll be set to make some stuff to sell.

Thanks yall. I know some serious leather crafters here probably cringe at the sight of all that paint slathered on the leather. It looks really cool though and the nephews will love it. I plan to do some sheridan design clutch purses and journal covers or something for the female relatives. I really need to work on tooling more. After I make something for each and every relative, I'm gonna start doing my own thing. And maybe even try to sell some stuff on E Bay or something (not trademarked stuff though!). I got a lot to learn. Especially on dying and finishing. Some of the pieces I've seen in the Gallery blow my mind.

I made this for my nephew Michael. I started this like last May or something. I got a little burned out on the paint job and left it alone for several months. Finally finished it up the other day. Can anyone tell me how to show images to the Gallery instead of on the "Show Off" thread?

Wow, that is really beautiful. Did you do the painting on top of the dye? Or do you do the painting and then mask it with something and then dye over top?

Ha ha! Good one / Thanks! Thanks guys.

Hers' my attempt at a faux weathered/used sports collectible item. Tooling underneath. This is like my third project. I'm getting much better at making my curved cut lines look more fluid. I've learned that you need to keep 110% focued on the FRONT of where the blade is cutting. Sounds like a no brainer.. but, I'm learning.

Beginer here, but I have a suggestion. There are products called liquid mask that you can get at art stores and hobby centers. You would paint the areas you want to block with liquid mask, then dye over the entire thing, then peel off the mask and paint your area that you protected from the dye. I have not as yet tried it but I'm working on a project that I plan on painting with acrylic paint but that I also want to dye the surrounding areas a light tan color. Some of the liquid mask products are water soluable. And some I've seen are like liquid rubber latex. I'm going to try the kind that you get at an art store. These mask products are made to apply to different substrates including porus water color paper. I figure if this stuff peels completely off of water color paper, which it would have to in order to paint back in that area, then it should work on leather that has deep groves, cuts and pits in it. I plan on putting on two or three layers to get it good and thick so to that it peels up completely. One way to check it afterwards is to take the peeled off piece and put it up to a light to see if there are any holes in it. If you google liquid mask you will see a ton of stuff on it. I saw one video of the art store liquid mask being used on a painting and then a tutorial of some hobby center liquid mask being used to paint graphics on a plastic model. Both of them look like they would work fine on a leather projects to me. It seems like liquid mask is the only solution for us people who like to paint on leather. I would deffinitely try it out on a scrap piece of leather first before you go with it. I plan on posting back a pic of my finished project when I'm done with it.

It's settled then. No dying the backround. Thanks a lot for the advice (and compliments) every one! The more information I get, the better. I actually did make a "splotchy" mess on my fist little project I did. A bookmark that I did a sheridan pattern on. I actually painted the dye on with a tiny brush in order not to get it on the tooled area. Totaly did not come out the way I wanted it to. I'm skittish on dying anything for right now.

Thanks dirtclod! I assume Tandy has got the resolene. I'll give em a call tommorrow and ask them. I guess I'm leaning more towards not dying the background because of the dark lettering. I got plenty o' time to decide.

I have this wallet I'm making for my sons birthday. I'm pretty much done with the tooling and painting. I need some advice on the finishing. Here's the wallet: Should I die the background? Obviously it would have to be a light tint of whatever color so that the dark red lettering would not get lost. The paint is just ordinary cheap acrylic paint I got at the art store. I put it on in layers. First layers watered down a lot and built from there. Then I flexed the leather while it was drying so that it would not crack after drying. It seems to have worked. I can bend it all around with no cracks. If I were to dye the background, then I would need some kind of mask product to block the dye from getting on the painted areas. What should I use if I decide to dye it? And... when dying, do you use a wide sponge brush so that it comes out even? Or just use a cloth. And do you dye it like wood? Meaning, do you make a pass with the dye, then go back and make a pass with a dry cloth to sort of even it out? Then after dying, what product should I use to seal it? I have this Eco Flo stuff that came with my sons beginner kit that's called super shene. Is that stuff compatible with the acrylic paint? I mean, what's the best thing to use so that it will be completely protected and the paint will never rub off through a lot of use? By the way, I have a beginners tip for anyone who accidently gets a dark water spot on their project. When I was painting the lettering, I got a tiny bit of paint out of the paint area (look directly under the letter K). I tried to get it up with a wet q-tip. It seemed to smear and then I tried a wet cloth. Well, let me tell you, it got out of hand big time. I then went and got a little bleach and water mixture and tried that. I finally got it to where it looked like there was no red tint on the leather anymore. But the area got soaked through with a big spot. The next day after it dryed there was a big dark spot. I was mortified. I tried to put straight bleach on it to get it out. No good. I even tried to put this product called "oops" on it to try to get the dark spot out. No go. So I called the Tandy shop near me and asked how to get rid of a dark water spot. The guy there says there's nothing you can do, once it's in there, it's in there. A lot of help that guy was. I tried to google up some answeres and the best thing I could find is that I should re-wet all the leather and then it dry. So I took the thing and just soaked it. Held it under water for like 5 minutes, the entire piece, front and back until it was completely saturated. After that, I let it sit a while and then I could still see a bit of a dark spot there. Eeek! Well then I thought I could just take off a little top leather with a piece of sand paper. Like maybe kind of errase it. It worked! I used to rough of sand paper though. I only had #100 grit paper handy. It did take the spot out though. Now it looks as though it's actually a little lighter in that area than the rest. Better than a dark spot though. I must have took off the tanage or something. I only used the sand paper when it was soaking wet. I don't know if this method would work while it is dry. So check: water spot - remove by wetting leather, then rub with find grain sandpaper until gone.

Thanks Doc! Nice to meet you.