Bob Blea

My thought are that your work is awesome considering the size. My hat is off to you.

Are there any bespoke boot makers in your area by chance? They might be willing to consult with you and give you a few pointers? Also, Lisa Sorrell is a boot maker here in the US and an advertiser here. She sells boot making supplies and might be able to provide you some guidance on this.

That's good to know, I hadn't heard of half tan before. So what is 'Re Tan' leather?

Barrel thickness really is a matter of personal preference but I think starting off with a bigger barrel is the better way to go. It probably depends on the size of your hands as much as anything, but a large barrel makes it easier to cut long straight lines or gently flowing curves. A narrow barrel makes it very easy to cut tight curves but harder to cut straight lines because it's more responsive. Regarding the blades, I'm not a big fan of angled blades because if you start with one of them you miss out on learning good technique with a straight blade and that might hold you back later, but there are many on the forum that would disagree with this statement and angle blades work well for them. I actually have a Leather Wranglers 3/8" barrel with a 1/4" straight blade that I use for my carving but I also have a 5/8" barrel Barry King with a 1/2" blade that I use for my decorative cuts and borders. The BK knife is making me wish I had a bigger LW SK-3 barrel, and I might buy one some day. If you are near a Tandy store (there are a couple in the Denver area and one in Colorado Springs) you could try the knives there and get a feel for what size and blade type feels better.

Welcome to the forum! It sounds like you've been doing some research here and you know at least a little about the direction you want to go. To get started tooling you probably don't need anything too expensive to start out. At the basic level all you will need to get started is a swivel knife, beveler(s), some kind of background tool and a shader and veiner, and maybe a camouflage tool or two. As you do more you will find other tools you want to get. Tandy does make a starter kit but everything I've heard about the qualify of the stamping tools is that they are pretty bad. The swivel knife can be made to work but you will need to sharpen it. If you know this is something you want to pursue and you want to start off with a little better knife, look at Barry King's swivel knife. It's good and it's not expensive. Same definitely goes for his stamps (bevelers, veiners, etc.) as they will do everything you will probably need for a lifetime in this hobby. As an alternative, if you watch eBay you can find vintage craftool stamps (ones without a prefix letter) that are good if you look long enough, and they might not cost much, though often they are being sold as part of large lots any maybe you don't want to purchase that many tools. I'm also going to recommend a couple of books. The Leathercraft Manual by Al Stohlman and Craft Tool Tech Tips also by Al Stohlman. Both are available electronically through Tandy's Leathercraft Library website. These are great references for basic skills in leather crafting and the tech tips book provides a wealth of information on using the basic tools. In fact, after looking at Craft Tool Tech Tips you might have a better idea for what kinds of tools you need. Good luck, hope this helps!

Thor, overburnishing is when you get too much friction on your leather and you scorch the leather surface. It's probably only a risk if you are using a mechanical method for burnishing an edge. It would probably be hard to do if you were burnishing by hand. The 'coco' wood is Cocobolo and I have a burnisher for my drill press made from it and it works really well. I've also made a very small burnisher for tight areas out of a small pine dowel. It works really well too. I think it is a matter of what you like best, but I find using a burnisher mounted in my drill press as much easier than trying to burnish by hand.

Ha! Surprisingly no. Neither the card or the pocket material is wearing that much. The card has rounded the edge that goes in a bit and it's kind of scratched up, but otherwise looks fine. It's been in the top pocket over 10000 times now and the bottom pocket 5000 and everything seems to hold up well.

I don't have any machines but I do skive edges for turning like you describe. I have a small skiving knife I use for this. Mine is made by LeatherWranglers but other companies make them. They are all versions of a rectangular blade where the cutting edge is across the front of the blade, kind of like a chisel. The cutting blade can be straight across the blade, diagonally across it or even rounded depending on the type of knife. It works will for me for skiving small areas of thin leather. For belts and other things, saddle makers will use their round knives but there are people on this forum that have taken a standard woodworkers block plane and sharpened the blade to turn it into a leather skiving tool. I think this would work well for skiving a belt if you can get the plane's blade to hold an edge. The way a block plane works is very similar to how most skiving tools work. With a good edge and a little practice you could probably even skive down thin leather edges for turning.

Thanks all!

Those are really nice!

So, its time for an update. So far I've cycled the lower pocket over 9500 times and it's not showing signs of wearing out. However, I realized there is a flaw in my testing. The lower pocket was attached so that the bottom fold is glued to either side of the leather pocket. This means that if the bottom of the ribbon was to break or tear, the leather is actually reinforcing it and would prevent the credit card from sliding down any further anyway. The way I was shown to do this you glue the ribbon in between the two pieces of leather, so it's normal for the ribbon to be reinforced this way. But, I realized the fold at the bottom of the ribbon is taking to most stress on any part of the pocket. I really don't see wear anywhere else and the fold at the bottom takes all the force of someone pushing a credit card into the pocket. So, by having it glued on both sides, I might be hiding the biggest risk for using this kind of pocket. Fortunately, my little test wallet has two card slots, and the upper one I left completely free of glue so I could examine everything for wear from the side. I have the view my (pretty poor) drawing above shows, and the upper pocket doesn't have any glue at the fold holding it in place. The upper pocket is only glued in where the ribbon meets the pocket mouth. So my second test it to forcefully push the card all the way to the bottom and make the ribbon stop it. If anything is going to fail its the fold in the ribbon as the card repeatedly pushes against it. I'm basically trying to use the credit card as a plastic knife to see how long it takes to cut through the ribbon. As of now, I'm up to 4000 insertions into the upper pocket and the fold appears to be holding up well. It obviously won't last for ever, but I'm impressed with how well it's done so far. I'm shoving the card in pretty hard each time as I really thought this might be an easy way to break it. It has already reached a lifetime of between 4 and 8 years (assuming the user is pretty rough with it) and maybe more. I'll keep abusing it and let you know what happens.

I think it looks stunning! That is an amazing work of art!

Thor, the pocket has a folded polyester ribbon inside it. The ribbon is a little wider than the credit card slots and it's glued in place so no stitching is required. This method was described in a recent issue of the Leather Crafters and Saddler's Journal in an article by Chan Geer, though I've also seen videos on Youtube showing how to make it. There was also a discussion about a month ago in the 'How do I do it' section about this technique. Several people questioned the strength of the ribbon without it being sewn in but I've been doing an experiment on a test pocket trying to wear it out or break it, and so far I haven't been able to.

This is a wallet I made for my wife. She was pretty happy with how this turned out. All hand carved and laced. I made the interior too. Under the credit card slots are pockets for holding bills.

That turned out very nice.

Going back to your question about permits, one that no one has mentioned is your environmental requirements. You will be dealing with some chemicals and at least here in the US, if you operate as a business with these types of chemicals you are probably going to need to go through an EPA permitting process as well as something similar from your local government. Your biggest problem will be the waste water. Once you are done tanning you will need to get rid of that solution and just dumping it down the drain could get you in serious trouble. You could probably get away with it in a residential or incorporated area if you only did it once or twice, but all it would take is one neighbor complaining about the smell to draw attention to what you are doing. Most municipalities in North America will have codes that prevent a chemical based manufacturing business from operating within a residential area (or maybe even in a zoned agricultural area), so if you are considering this in any volume you will need to consider a separate manufacturing facility and a permitting process. Just a few thoughts, and good luck. If this is truly a passion for you, you will find a way.

Hey that turned out great! I really like the contrast you have now and the evenness of the background.

Well it's almost the middle of the month and I haven't even cut the leather out yet! I need to get this started the weekend.

Thanks Nige, looking forward to watching these this weekend! Thank you for doing all this research!

Take a look at the web sites or books terms and conditions. Often they will say 'royalty free' or 'copyright free' artwork if they are distributing it expecting you to use it in your own product. In that case you are fine. Other sites (and I think this is common with photo distributing sites) will require you to pay a use royalty or maintain their copyright when you use it. Dover makes a lot of clip are type books where they explicitly say the material is free for use. In those cases you should be fine.

I like the way it looks except for the darker areas in the background around the letters and a bit of the floral carving. I think the coloring of the tooling and untooled areas looks good. I would probably just selectively add antique to the background areas to try to get them more uniform and darker. If you can do that I think you'll have an excellent piece.

Tom, so here's what I've learned from talking to Paul Zalesak at Leather Wranglers, who has done a lot of research into what is actually happening when our blades get dull. He found that what really creates the drag we feel in a dull knife is the corrosion and pitting that the acids in the leather cause on the sides of the blades. When we strop the blade, we are microscopically polishing those pits back out and that works well until they get to the point where too big for the stop to polish out or you fold the edge over and need to put on a new edge. So what Paul did was hunt down a steel that is very resistant to corrosion and he found a special alloy that resists corrosion extremely well. It's also very hard, so it will maintain its edge for a long time. The problem with the Tandy knife is its a low carbon steel so it corrodes easier and has a softer edge, hence you need to work harder to maintain it. It can still work well for you, but you will need to maintain it a lot.

When I have dyed the background on a piece I usually go with a dark brown Fiebings spirit based for a lot of contrast. Since you were looking for a lighter look overall, maybe look at what Fiebings or Tandy makes in a lighter brown? If the antique has reached the leather though you can only cover it with a darker dye. You can modify the shade of orange/red with a light wash or overwhelm it with a darker color, but with dyes the colors always add to each other. Another thought (if you can get the Leather Balm off well enough) is that Acrylic colors would actually be able to cover the orange/red tint and hide it. With acrylic you could mix a base color that matches the leather color and completely block out the coloring in the background. Then you could paint over with other colors and make it whatever you want. The problem is that over time the leather will naturally darken with exposure to light, but the acrylic covered areas would not. You could end up with something very different than what you intended with just a little exposure to sunlight.

Excellent description, thank you for sharing. I think it's a very unique idea how you mounted the clock.

I have an SK 3 and it is my go to knife for everything. Rarely have to do more than strop it to keep it in good working order. I also have Barry King's knife and it is good and I use it for certain things (I have several beader blades for it and I like it for decorative cuts), but my Leather Wranglers knife is my #1 tool.