billsreef

That grey antique effect came out really nice

Nice buckles. What do you use to adhere the leather to the metal?

The trick to avoid that running of dye is rub down the dyed leather after it has dried overnight, and before you hit it with the conditioner. There is typically excess dye on the surface, rubbing down the piece with a clean cloth or sheep's wool till nothing comes off is what you need to be doing to avoid that "bleeding" problem.

Probably Neatsfoot oil to condition the leather. I usually do that after staining to replace the oils lost from the tooling process and the spirit based dyes I use.

Thanks for the feedback on those. I"ll have to give them a try, I need a new cell phone holster Figure a lining should cover the inside prongs and maybe a concho to hide the flap prongs and dress things up a bit.

Good work for the first time. You'll only get better with practice, so you've got a good excuse to tool more leather Not sure what caused those spots. Likely something that ended up on the leather from dust of some sort that reacted with the water. If you stain or antique your wallet, those spots should end up hidden.

Black did indeed do very nicely

Upholstery leather is usually chrome tanned, and isn't toolable. Skiving can be done to any leather, but at 3.5 oz's it is already pretty thin.

I was looking at the magnetic snaps that Sprinfield has. Has anyone used them, and if so, how secure are they? I was thinking they might be good for securing flaps of things like cell phone cases.

Just set up a business account with Springfields and got my first order on Monday. Fast and easy. The belt blanks I got are thicker than Tandy's and the one I tooled today tooled very nicely

Don't know if this is what Tandy is doing, but a small regional pet store chain I worked for did the manager shuffle on a routine basis. Their theory was that if a manager stayed in a store too long they would get too friendly with the customers and not sell as much

Silicone spray on leather? I think he's short changing himself. Sure it will soak in and provide some waterproofing, but it won't do more than that. Personally I'd stick with the neatsfoot oil and wax as it will condition the leather, waterproof it and harden it up to be more scratch resistant. Can't see silicone doing any of that.

Conditioners won't penetrate acrylic, so condition first Then stain, paint and seal. Neat Lac is a lacquer based finish coat.

There's also a nerve that runs under that part of your backside that can be damaged from sitting on a wallet. Quite a number of years ago my doctor told me to stop keeping my wallet in my back pocket for those very reasons. So I carry in a front pocket or cargo pocket. As for leather thickness and quality, I've been carrying one of the first wallets I ever made. It's the fairly commonplace 3/4 oz back with calfskin liner and credit card pockets. It's a good 30 years old and just recently has gotten to the point of wear that has me planning out my next wallet

Definitely a great learning tool when your first starting out. Once you've gotten a bit more knowledge about the different tools and their effects, you can use different choices, such as a textured beveler instead of the smooth one. After 30 years of this hobby I still can't draw, and therefore I still use craftaids or tracings from other patterns.

Thanks for the good ideas

Had a small splash of green dye get on an unfinished belt. Naturally this is the good spirit based stuff, and wasn't nice enough to land on a spot that I could simply work it into the design. Not sure if simply dying over it with something like a real dark brown or black would adequately hide it. So figured I'd ask for ideas before making it worse or cutting the belt down to midget size