Bob Blea

I use the Tandy two prong needles for all my lacing, and have never had problems with them.

Even for very thick leather, you souldn't need something that thick. If the leather is well cased you don't need to hit it that hard to do carving. 2-3 inches should be enough. Bob

Clear Lac or Wyosheen (both the same thing as Neat Lac, which isn't sold under that name anymore) would seal the leather and provide some water resistance. People who make motorcycle gear which needs to withstand the elements usually use Resolene, which is an acrylic much like Eccho mentioned above. But with both of those finishes, they only provide water resistance, not water proofing, unless you put it on really thick. Even then, the finishes will wear and eventually allow moisture to penetrate. Bob

LED bulbs may be the way of the future, and they are getting to be quite good, but still too expensive for my tastes. I liked the Ott lite but ended up buying a cheap little desk lamp with an adjustable neck and a base that holds tools like my stylus and modeling spoon, etc. I chose a CFL where I had a display with examples of each, so I could see which one looked the most 'natural' and I could decide which one I wanted.

Hello Sarah, and welcome! The problem is that the tools that are part of the basic kits have a reputation for being very low end. I don't know this from experience but I have seen many comments on here that the tools that come in the basic kits are of cheaper quality than what Tandy sells in the stores, and should be replaced at your first opportunity. If you know that you really want to carve leather, it may be worth your while to look at better tools. If you are not sure leather work is something you want to spend a lot of time doing, the kit is probably a very good way to go. Just keep in mind that the bevelers and swivel knife may be frustrating at times because of their quality. However, they may serve you well as you experiment and learn new skills, and after that experimentation you may decide you are hooked and ready to spend $20.00 on a good beveler and $45.00 on a good Barry King swivel knife. Hope this helps! Bob

Just my opinion, but I like the second picture with the darker background around the flowers, but that's just a matter of taste. Bob

I think you are off to a good start. It does look like your leather may be too wet when you are carving. You aren't getting burnishing where you used your pear shader / thumprint on the flowers, and overall the carving looks a little off. Also, you've got some beveled lines that look kind of ragged. You can go over the flowers and leaves with a modeling spoon and smooth out the edges and eliminate any unwanted tool marks. Hope that helps! Bob

I like you new design much better. Your vines look a lot more uniform and it does help. The only place where it looks like the flow might be a problem is the leaf above the middle flower. It's pointing in the opposite direction of the flow of the vine beneath it. You could just turn that flower around and have it cover the cross over from one flower to another, which is a pretty common practice in some Sheridan designs. However, you could also leave it that way too. I think that is more a matter of personal preference, but more knowledgeable designers might disagree. One thing I will recommend is to reduce the amount of background you have in your drawing. Once a design in on leather the background will stand out more. You actually doing yourself a favor by shading in the background in your drawing becasue it gives you a good idea what the background will actually look like, but when you go to carve this you will find that the process of beveling actually causes your flowers and vines to shrink a little bit. It makes the final vines a little thinner than what you actually draw. Drawing those vines thicker will help counter this. You can also make the flowers a bit bigger to fill the background space. Bob

Acetone probably would work but it's pretty harsh. I would try denatured alcohol, I've had luck with that. You will probably want to add some neatsfoot oil to the leather afterward because either one will dry the leather out. Bob

Hello Karmindixie and welcome to the forum! I think I can provide a couple of pointers here. The thing that jumps out most to me is how you have draw the vinework. You've got the idea of the circular flow that is typical in Sheridan style but there is a problem with the flow. Of the three flowers within the circles, the top one is drawn as the starting point for the vines, with the flow going all around it. No problem with that, however, where the vine branches off under the leaf to the left of it, the implication is that all those vines come from something under that leaf, but they don't appear anywhere on the right side of the leaf. They are just left hanging out in space, and it breaks up the flow. Also, following the vine around to the lower flower it seems to meet the vine around the flower above, but in the opposite direction, again breaking up the flow. It would be better if you had some separation between the two vines so your eye had something to follow. Also, try to keep your vine work a uniform thickness. You have some places where the vines are very thick and some where they are very thin. Another tip is to draw the lines where the leaves or stems meet the vine longer. One of the tricks that really makes floral designs flow is to make all the lines in the vines long and flowing, and cut and bevel them so they fade out. Hope this makes sense, Bob

Thanks for posting your results, and nice work with that crazy legs stamp. I don't know why but that one has always been a 'challenge' for me to do decent with, and yours looks good! Bob

The texture and detail on everything is amazing! Bob

Very cool!

Thanks for the link. I had never heard of this company before. Bob

Turns out there is a thread going on in the How Do You Do This forum about getting these off of existing notebooks and mounting them in a leather binder: http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=53376 Just stumbled across it. Bob

This may not be the best solution, but can you buy the binders cheap at an office supply store and remove the mechanisms? I think that is often how people do it here on this side of the Pacific. We can often get binders very cheap around the time kids go back to school.

Stunning! I can't imagine the amount of work that must go into these works of art! I am humbled. Bob

No problem, and remember there are lots of different ways to do things so it's perfectly OK to find what you like and do it that way. There really isn't an absolute right or wrong way when it comes to using carving tools, as long as you are satisfied with the result! Bob

Hi Bob, I don't have that copy of the LC&SJ handy, but I think I can explain the leaves. I'm just going by how that kind of leaf is typically tooled, and normally those marks would be made with a veiner, not by a swivel knife. Not that you couldn't do it that way, and I do see it done that way, but normally it would be a thin veiner running up the center of the stem with the deepest part of the impression right at the stem center line and the impression fading out towards the edge of the leaf. Then often the same veiner is used along the edge of the leaf creating short impressions along the edge to give the leaf a serrated look. The leaf 'F' is your best example, just imagine using the veiner at the same points you did the cuts at, with the same kind of curvature. Hope that makes sense. Decorative cuts on the flower petal, that's an art to itself. They can be very personalized and it seems to me that everyone does theirs a little differently. I basically look at what other people do and try to find things I like and practice those. There was a Tandy Doodle Page that was done by Rob Barr where he showed how he does them, and he claimed there were really only seven (I think it was) basic cuts and everything was derived from those. You can find it in Tandy's Leather Craft library and it might be a good place to start. Or you can look through the galleries and show off section here and find different examples of how people do them and pick something you like and practice it. I find I need to warm up with the swivel knife and carve them into scrap before doing the actual project in order for mine to turn out good. There are some tips I can give you. Start by pushing your swivel knife in deep and then fade the cut out towards the end so it fades away into a very light cut. Also, I've been shown to start the cut off at almost a right angle to the direction you are going to cut and while making that initial cut into the leather, you twist the knife to open up the beginning of the cut more. I've never quite got the hang of doing this part of it, but I've seen it done well and it does make that initial part of the cut open up well. On the flower pods, I often use a veiner along the edges like I described with the leaves, but I also learned to make cuts in the pods to look like the green petals that surround a rose bud and open up to release the flower. That's just the way I learned. In Sheridan style you often see a special veiner called a wriggler (because it just looks like a wavy line) used on the pod to give it texture. That might be what they did here. Wish I had the article in front of me. I could say more clearly what tools they used. But hope this helps. Bob

Mine was a Tandy checkbook kit. I had tried a few small floral carvings from the Stohlman books my wife had, and then adapted one to fit the front of the checkbook. I still use it to this day, though I could do a LOT better now. Bob

Welcome from an almost as cold Colorado, hope you thaw out soon!

Were the two pieces the same type of leather? Also, was the bigger of the two stamped or carved at all?

How long after oiling did you take that picture? It takes a while for oil to even out in the leather, though I don't think that is your problem here. It looks more like something was splattered on the leather. Bob

I second Van Amburg Leathers. I've bought from Jerry and he is super great to work with. Bob

Try a few of the Barry King tools and you will never want to go back. The impressions are very crisp and you will never need to worry about quality. They will last a lifetime. Bob