BAD HIDE

I use Dreamweaver too, but I would never recommend it to a novice. I know about 2% of what it can do, and I somehow get OK results with that 2%. Website design has blossomed into a complex world. If you don't have the time to completely relearn software, there are sites out there that build sites for you, and there's nothin wrong with hiring a designer.

Good post Peter, and it touches on a key part of teaching the craft - how open should we be to teach the secrets we've learned? Yeah, it's taken years of struggle to figure a few things out, but do we hold back what we've learned so the newbies take just as long to figure it out? Do we open up and give tips and pointers, so they don't waste their time like we did? Or do they not have the skills to utilize our secrets properly? All the help in the world isn't gonna teach a thing if you don't know what to do with them, and experience is the best teacher. I've had to come up with a lot on my own, and even though there's a lot of info out there, there's very few places where you can find exactly the answer you need easily. The Stohlman books are excellent, but those are decades old and pretty much stand alone when it comes to quality info and patterns. There's excellent work and tutorials posted on this site, so I know the knowledge is out there, it's just not all written down nice and neat.

Dying art - I can see how one could argue that, especially given the last 100 years or so. The biggest blow is the loss of the horse as a mode of transportation. The turn of the century, almost every family had at least one horse that needed saddles and tack, and every town had a leather worker to fix them. Then came plastics, vinyls, and more durable fabrics which replaced all the leather bags and cases that people used to carry around, and today's shoemaker is massively out gunned by cheap labor elsewhere. The old timers that did this before us didn't leave us very much for documentation, so that which we have is valuable and worth sharing. So where does that leave leathercraft? There's still plenty of saddle makers still around, 'cuz people still have horses. There's plenty of pros that still make bags, wallets and everything else, and there's even more hobbyists and enthusiasts putting their time in. It's not dead so much as it's been spread a little thin. It might be harder to find someone else locally who wields a head knife, but they're out there, which is what this site is all about. Instead of mourning the death of leathercraft, I mourn the death of having a hobby. I honestly don't know what other people do when they go home at night, other than plopping in front of the TV, getting stoned or drunk, or playing video games.

If all you're doing is practicing tooling, get a veg-tan remnants pack. It'll give you different sizes, thicknesses and quality to work with so you'll have some variation to play with, and it'll be really cheap. Yes, it's lower quality leather, but you don't need grade A if all you're doing is doodling practice. Most of your carving experience will be trial and error, learning as you go, so don't use up your cash all at once. People have said on here that you can't tool remnant packs and bellies, which is just false; they're not ideal and the results won't be stellar, but it's economical to learn on and you CAN tool it. The first few things you make will be less than perfect, but hopefully you learned something, which you can take to your next piece. After you use up your remnants, get a shoulder and start making small items with slightly better leather and tool the hell out of them, then keep going till you're brave enough to start some really good pieces. Then a $100 Herman Oak side won't be that expensive, and you'll really appreciate how much better it is, and hopefully you'll have your miss-stamps out of your system. Where to get it? Springfield, Zack White, Siegels, Brutten's Village - take your pick.

How can it dish? it's about a 1/16" of material bonded to a steel plate, and unlike other kinds of stones, the diamonds don't wear down. Yeah, it's gonna take longer to chew on a very hard blade, but rockwell hardness doesn't mean squat when you're using it against the very same material used to determine rockwell hardness. I've had one for about 8 years now, and it's still as aggressive and flat as the day I bought it.

Learning how to put a razor sharp edge on a knife is one of those things that everyone should learn - it makes everything easier. I can't even cook a meal at someone's house without taking their knives and sharpening them. You can use sandpaper, but I'd just get a set of bench stones, 2x6 or 3x8 or so, the most common are wetstones and oilstones - and you probably can pick up a cheap combination oilstone at the hardware store. I've still got one of these that I pull out from time to time. There's also ceramic stones, which cut just as good, but don't wear and dish nearly as much as natural stones. If you're looking for the last sharpening stones you'll ever buy, nothing beats diamond stones - industrial diamond grit bonded to a steel plate. It'll never warp, dish or dull. You're going to want at least a coarse grit and fine grit, and then a leather strop charged with some white jewelers rouge.

Any info about shipping from the supply side is welcome here, Steve. And if Weaver was smart, they'd at least be looking here too. When it comes to the bottom line, we're all looking to reduce costs and increase profit. It almost sounds like they don't want to be in the leather supply business anymore, because they sure aren't competitive to what I want or need. $86 for 4 hides? Were they wrapped in Kevlar and delivered by beautiful women?

Yeah, there's not much there to reshape - that's not antique, that's just plain worn out. The steel will still hold a great edge if you sharpen it up, but you can't magically put an inch back onto the radius, and if you did cut it round, it'd be really small.

Well, Robert Beard and Barry King are some of the best you can get. If you can get a Tandy kit on sale, it might be worth it just to get your foot in the door. Basically, have in mind what you want to start doing, get a good grasp on the processes involved, and expand out from there. For bracelets and belts, you'd need a strap cutter, rotary punch, snaps and setters, possibly chicago screws, buckles, neatsfoot oil, finishing dyes and clear coat, edging dye and slicker. Any metal straightedge and box cutter will suffice till you get something better, and a small scratch awl to mark things out. Start with a 10oz double shoulder and you'd have about a dozen or so belts and plenty of shorter strips for thick bracelets, dog collars, and whatnot. Bellies are also good for practice on small items, but don't have the strength for belts. If you want to stamp and decorate it, start collecting swivel knives and stamps - you'll never have enough. Research and books are your best friends at this point, but don't be afraid to dive right in.

The first one's edge laced, and it's done by punching slots with a chisel and then lacing by hand. The second doesn't even look like leather to me, but vinyl stitched on a regular sewing machine. When we talk about machines on this site, we usually are talking about leather sewing machines, which are much bigger, have the power and capacity to punch through thick leather, and are much more expensive than fabric machines which probably can't do much more than a few layers of the thinnest lining leather without problems. If all you're buying a machine for is to sew interiors, then I'd do it by hand. You'd be doing yourself a favor learning how to sew with an awl and two needles (get the Al Stohlman Art of Handsewing Leather) 'cuz not everything can be machine sewn. I also use a 4 prong diamond chisel on flimsy interior leathers. It's not that labor intensive, just grab a beer and go to town. As far as other tools, just read through this site, ask questions, and experiment.

Oh, I definitely agree. I've been using a lot of lower grade hides because I'm trying to go from a hobbyist that sometimes makes things for friends to a hobbyist that makes lots of things, has a website, and turns a profit. Actually I don't mind the cosmetic defects nearly that much, and it kinda fits the name, so I think I'm done with Grade A hides for a while. And if you can't do something right, at least make it look like it was on purpose.

Yep, just glue it together with contact cement before you put the guts on. For block dying, I just dip a rag in dye, blot off the excess, then carefully rub the dye onto the project. When your rag is almost dry is when you get the best results and you can rub harder and almost burnish the dye into the high spots.

Carved a particularly nasty section of leather - full of fat lines and insect bites - just to see what what would happen. Block dyed it with dark brown and laced with Roo, upholstery fabric on the inside.

Didn't make it, but I just did this is a modification of a spare craftool C454 to do fish scales. Didn't know where else to put this, but it doesn't deserve it's own thread. Left is unmodified, right is the same stamp, with the ends ground off to a concave profile coming to a point in the middle. This is how it looks on 4 oz leather, left is made by rocking the tool a bit to get both sides to press into the thin scrap leather, the right being just the point used to hint at scales. If I had thicker leather, I bet the whole thing would press in just fine. It's a little unwieldy because it's off balance, the face thats left is only on the top side of the shaft, so it's gonna take some getting used to, but I can't wait to try this one out.

I've been using Masters glue since I started, and so far haven't had much of a problem with a mess on the can, and it's thin enough that it spreads pretty easily. There's also thinners available for both Masters and Barge. But if you're doin a lot of gluin' I'd get a cement container, seals without threads and the top is teflon so glue doesn't stick to it.

Yeah, I know it's old, but I haven't been here that long and gun control laws are a very hot topic depending on where you live. I have no idea what laws there are in Austraila, but in the past two decades here, and especially after 9-11, have seen 31 states flip from no carry to permitting carry either completely unrestricted or with a license. Only two state governments left that do not allow citizens to carry at all - Wisconsin and Illinois, and a bunch of cities have extra restrictions and bans in effect. We're not really answering the OP anymore, but more or less just getting up on our soapboxes and speaking out to anyone who is listening. As leatherworkers, holsters and belts are part of our business, so like it or not, it effects us. It's one of those topics that will always resurface so we can beat the dead horse a few more times just for the hell of it.

I use ipage.com. It's like 3.50 a month, unlimited everything, $10 domains. They have online tools, but I just use Dreamweaver to build my websites. I'm not a web pro, but a few hours a week and being able to do basic stuff myself is worth it. I'm still building up inventory and content before the whole thing goes 100% and I start promoting it. Cool thing is I piggybacked my tattoo and art site right on the same bandwidth with another domain.

Ah, the gun debate. Guns are fine and dandy, but if you don't have a badge, you do not need to be carrying one. I'm in Chicago, where the murder rate per capita is 3 times higher than NYC or LA. Our super corrupt city government, led by Mayor Daley, is scrambling to instigate more gun control after their 25 year old handgun ban was shot down in court. How well did that ban work? Violent crime rates for 18-25 in the southside are higher than casualty rates of soldiers from the southside currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's safer for those kids to go to war than stay home. It's not all bad, it's very neighborhood based, and some are great places to live. I live in Humboldt Park, it had an entire show on A&E's Gangland. It's changed a lot since then, but it's still not a super great safe place to live. I've lived here 5 years, and have heard "my friend just got mugged" stories and seen cop cars fly past with the disco lights on, but I've never actually even seen a violent crime since moving here. If you're afraid of crime, stop watching the news - if it bleeds it leads, and they never say anything about the millions of other people who made it home safe and sound. I carry a legal knife almost all the time, because knives are useful. Guns when not in use are just big chunks of metal strapped to your hip. Violent crime isn't like the movies, a mugger isn't gonna stand 5 ft in front of you and tell you to give them your money. He's gonna come at you from behind with 2 other guys, and before you know he's there, he's gonna hit you upside the head with a bat. If you're lucky, you'll wake up in a few minutes with empty pockets, if not, you'll wake up in the hospital or morgue - people every year are killed in just this fashion. For women, they'll most likely just grab your bag, shove you hard and run - and now your gun is running away from you. The chance that you'll be able to draw your weapon and use it are slimmer than getting it taken from you by force or stolen out of your home - and now it's in the hands of a criminal to use it against you or someone else. If you've got a loaded firearm in your home, you're statistically vastly more likely to put a bullet in yourself, your kids or loved ones than a legitimate intruder. The real problems aren't guns - that's why gun control or bans don't work - it's what drives people to use them. Criminals aren't just born, they're looking for drug money or things to sell, or their gang leaders put them up to it. There's plenty of cities that have lots of guns, but low crime rates. Maybe, and I'm going out on a limb here, figure out better employment and standard of living and people won't be killing each other over gang feuds, cars or wallets. If you carry a gun out of fear something's gonna happen to you, then you're probably not ever going to be in that situation or have time or be able to use it. Common sense on how you dress, where you're going, and even the attitude of your walk is a better weapon then a gun. If you're carrying to be the hero and save me from being hurt or robbed, please keep it holstered because I don't want to get shot. Regular people don't need to carry, I've met enough crazy, drunk and angry "regular" people. If regular people get into an honest fight, I don't want to worry about getting killed in the crossfire because some schmuck can't hold his own in a bar fight. Guns are great fun, I've grown up using BB guns and 22's. Trap shoots every Sunday, deer hunting every fall. I own several. But in my opinion, keep it home, unloaded and locked up when not headed to the range. I'll gladly make holsters for range day, and for all the days in between, I'll gladly make you a wallet with a revolvers on the front.

Make sure you're asking price covers what you think your worth, then ask for a little more. I underprice myself all the time, and every time I go look at my competition's items, I know they're asking more for less work. Which eventually leads me to raise prices a bit. That taken into consideration, you can't look over your shoulder all the time. Even laymen can tell vastly higher quality work when they hold it in their hands. Whatever you're doing is working, so keep doing it and get better. I don't think anyone here is scheming to retire on a private island. Yeah working is hard, but if you do what you love, it's really not work. And if you can pay the bills on top of that, that's all that really matters. I'd rather underprice my stuff and actually sell it, than high prices without selling anything.

I actually scrounged a piece of smooth faced 2" thick concrete out of an alley. Worked great till I started hitting it really hard with bigger stamps one day and it cracked into 4 pieces. Still works since each piece is about 8" or so across, but I need something else for larger work.

I'd rather have a 1" capacity machine to sew 3/8" stuff all day, as opposed to a 3/8" machine running at maximum capacity.

Does anyone use them? I don't have the need or even desire to look into getting a clicker press, and generally don't have a problem cutting parts. But after going through my pile of scrap tonight and cutting out 40 or so key fobs, I'm wondering if I should get one made for this purpose. It'd probably be faster, but I probably couldn't do it at 1AM. How much does one cost and where can you get them made?

Well, you simply dye the whole thing darker and promptly get started on another belt. Dark brown or black carved items still will sell eventually, so it's not completely the end of the world. Alcohol or other solvents might lighten the dye a bit, but not much if at all. Dye by it's nature penetrates pretty far in, and you'll most likely ruin the surface if you try anything too drastic to get it out. I've spilled dye on several non-porous surfaces and it was a hell of a mess getting them somewhat back to normal (and it's still pretty stained). The 3oz Angelus Dye bottles are very tippy.

Expansion to an external site is a tough decision. One thing to consider other than the extra expenses is just relative location to home. You can't just roll out of bed, make a cup of coffee and get to work, you have to get your stuff together and actually drive there. No raiding the fridge or takin a siesta either. And once you're home, there's no goin back to putz and do a little work after supper. I kind of like the idea of a retail front that's mostly production floor, but there's upsides and downsides to that too. Mostly, gawkers love to talk and waste your time. If you're doing it by yourself, you'd have to set aside time where the front door is locked, but you're there and working so you don't fall behind on your production. I guess it'd depend where most of your money comes from and what you make that would determine if a retail store is worth it. Saddle and Motorcycle guys probably wouldn't see much from a brick and mortar presence, but I make mostly wallets, bags and small items so I take my goods for other people to sell in their stores. Cutting out the middleman who pays wholesale and making more money per item would be worth loosing a little production time. Anyway, I'm sure you'll come up with some solutions to keep going in your home. Whatever you're doing sounds like it's working. For a cutting table, I have a 2'x5' table with a long basket screwed in between the table and the wall. I just throw the rolled up hide in the basket and just cut parts away as I roll it toward me. But I make small stuff, so that may not work for you.

^^ Beautiful house! ^^ 31 and countin. I got one tattoo on my shin, a big candle with "nothin lasts forever" and I'm thinking of another one that says "live lazy, die old," but I don't know where that one's gonna go yet.