Cyberthrasher

Have you heard of the site called Leatherworker.net??? Seriously though, there are TONS of tutorials here, many of them stickied to the top of each sub-forum. If you don't find it here or on the Tandy videos list, then there are lots of people here to point you in the right direction. There's also kingsmerecrafts.com for a lot of pictorials. Since you're looking at collars, I would expand any search terms to belts, since they're essentially the same thing.

Finally got the dang picture to open on this laptop For the most part it looks good Bro, but I do have to agree with Bob on the matting. The green would help the coloring, but I think it should be more of a light green leaning toward yellow since there's so much red/brown going on already. I think I should go look at some fall leaf pictures to make sure I'm thinking of the common color scheme right though. Do you have a pedal lifter? I think I may have gotten an extra one. I'll have to look.

I think you may have inspired me to quit with this one. I love customers like that, but with this kind of work........

Natalie, once you figure out what you want to use as a logo, there are lots of makers here who can get you a nice maker's mark stamp. Many of them are available in either delrin or steel so you can just stamp it with your mallet and call it good. The first one that pops into mind is Grey Ghost Graphics. A couple of the other ones that come to mind are LWLeathers and EmbossingDieCompany - both of which are members here. They all make a different style of stamp, so you'll want to see what fits your needs best and work with them on sizing. Here's a discussion that has a lot of the options mentioned. I should note that I don't have first hand experience with any of them since for now my logo is easily cut in with a swivel knife, but as sales increase I'll be looking hard at something a little more professional. http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=40630 As for the burnishing. I think what the guys are talking about is that little bit of natural leather showing at the thumb hole. When I do those (provided it's not lining leather) I bevel the edge, sand it so it's nice and smooth, then burnish it real quick with my bone folder since it's such a small area. Once it looks good just rub a little dye on it. I've also been known to use a sharpie too. Once it's the color I like and it looks nice and smooth, I put some finish over it such as Resolene or Clear-Lac.

Oh yeah, i saw that one a few days ago and forgot all about it. That would actually be more my style since I try to do all my work at my bench and prefer my bar stool.

Yep, I bought some scrap after my very first item in the kit and thought "Oh, so that's what it's supposed to feel like." Turned out the kit leather was about 80% of my problem. Pretty sad when you consider the scrap bags are stuff that "someone" has deemed not fit for production.

WORK!! WORK!! WORK!! MUST KEEP GOING!!!!

It's something to work on for next time. You see it so you can fix it I saw what you meant originally, but it came out looking good. There are a few fonts out there with that kind of style, so you basically just ended up with a different style that still works - happy accident!!

BEAUTIFUL!!!!!! You got your edges straight and the color came out great! Perseverence pays off every time. Is that dye, or did you get the antique to take finally?

I don't see anything "jacked up" about it. Some of the lettering looks a little off, but it ended up in such a way that it looked intentional The whole thing is nice and crisp. Very cool!

It sounds like you may be referring to block dying. If you put a little dye on a cloth and wrap it around a block of wood, you can wipe it over your piece and it will only apply dye to the high spots, leaving the tool impressions the natural color. You'll want to experiment with how much dye to put on the cloth. If you get too much you can accidentaly push some into the tool impressions. Now, if you want to go the opposite direction and color a background that you've hammered into relief (where the artwork/design is the high spot), then you'll need to be very careful with your brush work as Bob said, or find a good resist to leave your design uncolored. Here's a picture of the block dying I'm referring to, just to see if we're on the same page for what you're asking. I was lazy in this one and just wrapped the cloth on my hand, so a little bit of black got pushed into some of the lines due to the give in my fingers.

JJ, is there anyway you can take a screenshot. From what I could tell, all of the pages we were being redirected to were to something hosted with url4shortinfo in the address bar. Joanna, since the problem was in the forum software, wouldn't his scenario still be plausible? From what he was saying, he was going to the leatherworker.net homepage and then clicking on the link to get into the forum. I don't know if the homepage is part of the forum software or not, but if it isn't that seems like it might be similar - as in a link external to the forum linking into it.

For lacing I usually glue up my edges, punch the holes, then just hold whatever project it is in my hands and lace it up in front of the TV. But, for a stitching pony, I just made some leather caps to fit over the jaws of my bench vice. When I finally make one, it will probably end up like this one. http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=43206&hl=%2Bstitching+%2Bpony

About halfway down the post here, Kevin shows how he does a wallet binding. Starts right where he says "30 inch piece of lambskin". This tutorial is also stickied down in the wallet section, so if you ever lose it you can find it again pretty quick. http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=9940

Hey, I have a rack full of better vintage tools now. I'm doing a job right now where somehow the best choices out of everything I had happened to be those dang cheap z series craftools that came in my kit. So yeah, they'll get you there and get you started. Once you figure out what you need, start building it up. Then you'll still have those cheap ones to get family or friends involved too. Personally, I bought a nice Barry King knife and used my old swivel barrel for a beveling blade. They'll still have uses once you upgrade. So, I'm agreeing with Chief. Get yourself the basic tool kit and a BUNCH of scrap pieces. PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE - cuts, beveling, pear shadiing, and any free sheridan style design you can come across. Sheridan is a style that I think one should really master as is and then start finding ways to tweak it once the skills are there (which is why I don't do it )

Let us know what you find.

Anytime Bro!!! That tan really does pull in the color of the striping too

That sounds about right. I usually just wing it and do "whatever works" for the sizing, but 2x the thickness sounds about right. Basically I center my insert, fold it up like it would normally be carried then mark whatever is hanging out the sides for trimming.

Some more updates. Looks FANTASTIC on that ride

I'm thinking one of the moderators here, Bruce Johnson, might have a good idea. He deals with a lot of vintage tools. I found one reference to them here that mentioned they were based in Santa Monica CA, so that may help with some more searching.

Bracelets are fun to tool and learn how to get sizing right. Gives you lots of practice in fitting/measuring, tooling smaller areas, and the best part is you can use scrap for most of it

Yeah, that was in the one I linked to yesterday. It seemed like it was doing it more frequently than that yesterday though.