Cyberthrasher

Looks like the piece of beeswax I cut off my block for the wife the other night. I rolled it up so the pieces would bind back together and that's exactly what it looked like.

The dark one or the light one? If it's the light one, something on your leather is resisting, really badly at that. If it's the darker one, it was put on too heavy. That's my analysis anyway. But, who knows how much pigment ended up in your bottle. Was this a test piece or the real thing?

Most of my stuff is tooled, but even the untooled stuff has the same price. I charge a flat $20 p/h. I know that I'm always paid for the time I put into it and it drives me to continuously improve my speed without sacrificing quality. But, by doing that I also have to know "about" how long it might take me in order to give people an estimate. If it's something you make all the time, you'll have a good idea. There are some wallets I make that I figured out how long it takes me to do without tooling and use that as a base price. My suggestion for you is to start keeping track of your time now. For starters, you'll have a good idea of what processes take you the longest and where you think you might be able to speed some things up. But, on top of that, you'll have a good baseline for when you do start selling things. I use an app on my phone for time-tracking called "FTS Timesheet". It's pretty cool and keeps track of individual projects as well as tasks within that project. So I can see how long it takes me to dye or tool on average and then go look it up later on the workload reports. You can also put in the hourly/daily rate for a project and it will track your exact revenue both project and task wide.

I would only use acrylics for stuff that doesn't have an available dye color. The acrylic paint just sits on top of the leather and can have the possibility of peeling and cracking. You're pretty much going to have to use it for the white, but use dye wherever possible since it is absorbed into the leather.

I highly encourage you to check your local countertop company first. Most of them have pallets full of sink cutouts that they just throw away and actually have to pay by weight to have it removed. You're saving them money by taking it off their hands. Once you get that, find a solid desk to work on and if it's still not good enough, then put a poundo board underneath. You'll be amazed at how much a solid piece of granite will help though.

VERY COOL!!! I love the way he did the signature on front!

The links to download them are on the very first post.

Are you going to stamp/tool it? You'll probably want to stick to Veg-Tan for tooling and then make sure you use a good water resistant finish topped off with a good conditioner. You can get some good Herman Oak and you'll be happy with the leather. Springfield Leather will cut out just what you need if you give them a call. Since you're learning (I'm assuming), I would get a couple and maybe a bag of scraps to practice on while you're at it. The girls there will get you setup right. Just tell them what you're trying to do and they'll make sure you have what you need to get it going. If you don't want to tool it, some latigo might be the way to go. I'm not real experienced with it, but I'm pretty sure I read that it resists water.

You're just wanting to use your maker's stamp, right? Just get a shop press (pretty cheap at Harbor Freight), or even use a bench vise since the work you're doing should be small enough to fit.

I think as far as hand tools, Barry's would be about what I would expect to pay for quality vs. price. I think the main thing you're going to run into is manufacturers KNOW that the way an item looks reflects on the quality. People automatically assume that a good looking item must perform good and a poor looking item with basic materials HAS to be cheaply made and poor performing. Look at the stohlman damascus round knives (why do we keep coming back to that one tool as an example??). Those things look really pretty and I can tell that they've sold thousands of them by the number of people who are trying to resell them after they've realized they don't do the job they're meant to do. So, from a manufacturer's point of view, it's just good business to make your tools look pretty, regardless of how they perform, because the majority of customers will pay more for it. This goes across every industry. Look at how many people buy "pretty" choppers at a premium that can't even make it down the road, or flashy guitars for over a grand that have to be taken to the shop and setup right the second you leave the store.

I think he means the saddle soap. The solid soap will actually fill in any uneven spots in the leather.

Almost anything is going to pull your dye up when you wipe it on. I've found that if I buff like crazy to get as much dye off first then VERY GENTLY wipe a light coat of my finish over with a rag (I use blue shop towels) then it doesn't go so bad. But, whenever possibly I spray the first coat with an airbrush. I haven't used SaddleLac at all, but I know ClearLac/NeatLac really needs to be thinned and put on in light coats, which will keep it from looking like plastic and possibly cracking in the future. I primarily use Resolene, which is "water resistant" (I don't believe anybody who says their product is water PROOF). When I apply it, it's always thinned 50/50 with water in a few lighter coats. You can thin it a little bit more to adjust how much gloss you get, but I find 50/50 is a good mix.

Thanks!! I try

Also, Springfield's wholesale club is only $30 for the first year, $25 after that. For that price they meet or beat any of Tandy's gold club/elite prices. I don't have a Tax ID, but I made up the cost of membership with the savings on my very first order. http://springfieldleather.com/content/14/Wholesale/

Oooooohhhhh. 40" is a really good score!!! I was only able to get a 25" sink cut-out off the pallet locally, which works, but since I do a lot of guitar straps some extra length would be really cool

maybe a mahogany lightened up with some tan?? I have a lot of troubles with that middle spectrum of the browns. You could also try testing by starting with some lighter brown and gradually adding red in.

I agree with that too. looks like we're all just kind of all over the place

I look at it like this. I've seen several tool makers who make a good quality blade/tool and they have a standard base price. These things are beautiful and perform beautifully. Guess what, that starting price is pretty high - regardless of the wood. If you want a cool custom exotic wood - that will be an upcharge. My point being that you're not really paying for the wood a lot of times, you're paying for the years of knowledge and craftsmanship that went into the tools development, such as the shape and steel contents of the blade or the weight, balance, and material in a maul. Don't get me wrong, I would be more than happy to pay LESS money , but I'm also willing to save up to get something that's been expertly created and will last a lifetime. Think about it like this - what would we do if our customers just said "slap a buckle on that piece of veg-tan and give it to me for $5. Hell, it's just gotta hold my pants up. I don't need nothing fancy!!" tied in to my point. A leatherwranglers round knife is $275 with his stock wood. Add exotic woods and it's $35 more. What do you think you're paying for here, the blade or the wood?

Well, I would honestly suggest starting lower and then working your way up to the really good stuff. You can get ahold of the folks at Springfield Leather for a lot of this stuff. As far as hand tools you, you'll get "decent" stuff from them. Meaning, they do the job and they do it well, but there's always room for an upgrade once you start making some cash For edge slicking, I'd say head over to leatherburnishers.com. That's a shop owned by one of our members here and they make TOP QUALITY edge burnishers at a GREAT price!! They also make custom mauls too, but I'm going to stick with start cheap and treat yourself later on that one too. You can get a "decent" poly mallet from any of the retailers for a really inexpensive price. For a draw guage, just get the trusty wooden "Original Strap Cutter" - it will server you well and it is A LOT cheaper then a draw guage. If you want inexpensive stamps, there are a lot of vintage ones available at usedleathertools.com and they offer really good prices. Or, you can spend some money on Barry King. Springfield has a line of "sheridan" tools now that are actually from Craft Japan and they're really nice tools, prices are comparable to Barry's.

That actually looks like cheap split leather (not important since you're making one, but just as an FYI). But, if you were to make one, it would be 2 pieces cemented and sewn together with the grain side out. You can buy the leather pre-dyed or use veg-tan and dye it yourself.

I do all of this with microsoft picture manager. Just choose edit and there's a compress feature on the right. its another option.

Not sure mine would. She'd probably just shake her head in disgust and repeat "I don't want to know" over and over and over.

I try to specialize in stuff for the Kustom Kulture crowd, and I dabble in other parts of that scene as well so I wanted to leave myself open to start offering those services.

Mine are still at the printers, but here's the submitted images - front and back. I might adjust the logo positioning in the end, so I just ordered 100 for now to "test" them. Especially with a name like Buttskinz. Not trashing the name at all, but imagine the wife who finds that and wonders "WTH is my husband into!!!"

Just a column??? I have a whole separate bank account for it