Toddo

I got a project going and I decided to use Fiebings Pro Dye/oil dye according to the Weaver Leathercraft dude on YouTube. When I saw that you could make multiple passes with the oil dye without the leather darkening with each pass I says to myself that's the stuff for me. So I used 50/50 light brown and mahogany on the first four pieces of my project and then antiqued with Fiebings antique gel and the pieces turned out beautiful. Another part of my project includes a wet molded knife sheath that is two parts sewn together. The parts are small so I decided to dip-die them. The Weaver Leathercraft dude said oil dye stays a consistent color no matter what right? So there should be no problem with the dip dye even though I used a sponge just on the top surface of the other four pieces. Mistake. The two knife sheath pieces are significantly darker than the pieces that I sponge wiped with the dye. Is there any way to lighten dye after it's been applied? The only thing I've tried so far is that I soaked the front piece with hot water hoping it would wash some of the dye out. It is now drying out. I'll see in a day or two if that helped. What about soaking the pieces in a 50/50 solution of bleach and water? I bought a single shoulder for the project and it's coming down to the wire on having just enough leather to complete the project. I really don't have enough leather to remake the knife sheath parts. I really hope there is way to salvage the parts. My wet molded front piece came out so awesome it looks like it was molded in a factory. I hate to loose that piece!

Awesome looking key fob. The Chief Head button is a great touch.

Yeah. Here's a video from Weaver Leathercraft explaining that.

Well after a 24 hour wait I tested my Weldwood test piece for adhesion and flexibility. Adhesion factor is A++. You can't rip the felt off without also pulling some of the leather off. 100% happy with that. I can't see that felt ever coming of that thing unless someone intentionally tries to pull it off with a pair of pliers. As for flexibility, I'm like about 90% happy with it. It' no where near as rigid as it seemed that Weldwood 1-800 info line guy inferred. I was imagining the thing drying stiff as a piece of glass after talking to him. It's actually fairly flexible. It won't ever be as floppy and flexible as a well worn piece of naked leather. Like I said, I'm about 90% happy with. I think it's gonna make it look (and feel) awesome. It'll definitely be unique. I guess if the Weldwood doesn't hold up for an entire 100 years someone can do a repair sew along the border of the flap.

It's gonna be a hybrid between this... and this.... Here are the patterns I made for it... And I'm gonna tool this design on the front flap... And use this for the front flap closure button that will have a rawhide string coming from the bottom of the bag that will wrap around it to secure the front flap... and.... it's gonna have black felt lining the inside. The side panels are gonna be a sandwich of 3 pieces. The interior board is 1/16" thick acrylic board and the side panel back will having sewing tabs that bend forward to sew to the body of the bag. Which will set the side panels in just about a 1/4" so the top flap completely covers the sides.

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.