electrathon

Look up gold star snap press.

My recommendation is to place a piece of rope inside the handle to keep the handle round instead of flat.

Absolute bare bone beginner you can get by with as little as a fork (for stitch spacing) a diamond awl, harness needles, thread. There are a lot of other tools you will want later, but you ban start with that. A foam rubber ball, cut in balf, works well to push your awl into also.

Spray glue, 3M 90 is one of the best. If you want less stick, use 3M 77 or a different brand.

Instead of using tracing paper use regular paper just as you did, but also use a piece of plastic wrap between the leather and the paper. Also your leather was too wet.

Denim or canvas is my favorite.

Overhead transparency plastic

home depot has them cheap

They are used on needle and awl sewing machines. The only direct answer I have is Oregon leather in Portland has them. The pic shows one mounted in an awl.

Lasts are very complicated as a beginner shoe project. If you look closely at them you will notice they are not the same as a foot shape. The shape is both for foot support and the ability to pull it out of the shoe after lasting. I recommend you start by buying a set of lasts and modify them to your specific foot measurements.

If I was doing it I would use a jerk needle (looks like a small crochet hook) and pull the thread to the outside to make my loop instead of using the auto awl and making the loop on the inside. I am not fond of the auto awl at all.

I think is was about 5 oz on that one. A normal ball cover is pretty thin. I punched the holes with a squeeze pliers style punch. Tandy #3229-00

Aside from "nibble" what does this machine do? Used to cut slots, trim edges? I am too far away, but looks like an interesting machine.

3780-00. Tandy

The simplest answer to this is figure out how much too small it is and scale it up (say 15%) on the printer. If you need it longer but not wider it gets a little trickier.

Clamp it in a vise with a piece of leather on each side for protection. Leave as much sticking out of the jaws as you want it shorter. Bent the excess piece over and it will snap off.

Put a medium layer of contact cement on the back of the outside layer. Do not let it dry, carefully place it on the back layer. Weight it down and let dry.

My suggestion on the rivets would be to not use them. They serve no functional purpose on a knife sheath, but can harm the edge on the blade. It is a case of form over function. Otherwise they both came out fine. I would have cringed when I saw the grinder marks on the blade. It is likely the blade was softened along the leading edge when that was done. Very easy to sharpen, very hard to keep sharp after that. The leather handles cleaned up well.

The leather will tear far sooner than the thread will break.

When using a buffer to sharpen the trick is to not try to work below the wheel, but on top, WITH THE ROTATION REVERSED so the top of the wheel is moving away from you while working. This will generally stop the the tool from winging into your gut and disembowling you. The easy way to deal with rotation is to simply work from the rear of the buffer (turn it backwards on the bench).

I use this method on the cardboard wheel I have. A dermal will bounce as you are truing, so it can make your wheel worse. The weight and flatness if the belt sander aids you in keeping it consistent.

Start the buffer hold a belt sander ( running) up to the wheel. Use a course belt. The direction of the belt sander needs to run opposite the direction to the buffer. You will get a lot of dust thrown at you so be ready for it. Use a soft touch and take it slow.

I pull the needles with pliers all the time. Get tiny, smooth jw needle nose at the craft store. I can hold them in the palm of my hand while I am working.

I do very similar to you. Submerge in a pan for a short time. The dye is always diluted, sometimes more or less, depending on the color. Pull it out and pat it with a soft towel to remove excess, lay flat to dry.

Yes to all Bob said. If you like to sharpen a lot and like knife drag, any chunk of low carbon steel will cut leather. A great blade will take a very sharp edge, will keep a sharp edge for a long time, will not corrode when expose to the stuff in leather that causes corrosion. The SK3 blade does all this. Knife conversations tend to fall along the quality verses the cheap all the time. Some people are content using their beginner kit Tandy knife forever. Other people like the feel of precision as they cut. It is a lot of personal feeling. Have a top chef try using a gensu knife and he will have trouble preparing dinner. Have a beginner use the chefs knifes and he will likely end up with Band-Aids all over. I do tend to agree to a point that beginners are usually content with beginners knives, they have not yet learned to feel the difference. Paul tells the story often about the perfectly dull knife. He has had people buy a knife from him and complain that it cuts right through the leather. They are so used to using a dull knife they have never learned proper pressure and end up slicing right through. So for those people he strops the blade, taking off the very tip. They now have a knife that is only sort of sharp, will stay exactly like that for years an everyone is happy. Here is a good sharpness test. Go to the edge of your leather and try to skive off the edge to a slight bevel. If your blade is sharp it will do this effortlessly. If it is not sharp it will be hard to control and hard to be consistent on your skive.