electrathon

http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com/en-usd/home/department/Tools/6300-00.aspx Don't know when.

Tandy guaranties their tools for life, it does not matter where you got them. The person you got them from just walked into Tandy and bought them, then mailed them to you.

Yes, I drill the holes by spinning a sewing machine needle in a drill press or dremel, depending on the application. I pull the needles through the holes by hand or with pliars depending on the threas and the leather thickness.

The basic tools that come in the starter set are an embarasment. My advise is to take a hammer and pound them into a rock. They have a lifetime guaranty, so return them and they will be replaced with a non-Z marked tool,

I pull my needles with pliars too. This is the needle I drill with: http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com/en-usd/search/searchresults/3789-23.aspx I do not push it through, I spin it and use the needle as a drill.

Hard to believe I am saying this. The newer Tandy tools are better. If you find one of the old ones (a year ago) and one of the new ones there is a huge differance in crispness to the lines. The shape of them is differant too, so you can tell which ones have been retooled. Most of the regulars at Tandy do not pay full price, so the $8 is a more common price. They are still a far cry from the quality of some of the custom tool makers, but at least the new ones can be recomended as starter tools.

I don't think you would want to wax harden it, could be messy when it gets hot. Hot water and heated drying will firm it up well. I would sew it all togeather and then harden it. Aaron

Very good for just starting! My suggestions are two: First, do your first pattern 4 times. You will get better at it each time. Second, on your background drive it all doen to the bottom of the cuts and make it all leval. Not deeper around th eedges and higher in the middle. Aaron

You did well. Both inovative and craftsman like. The only comment I would have is I like to drill with a sewing machine needle instead of a drill bit. It does not remove the leather but pushes the fibers back and sort of locks them togeather. Aaron

Sanding: Leave all of the layers a little too long. After they are glued and sewn even them out with a belt sander, 36 grit, brand new very sharp belt. Fast and easy. Dremels are good for small inside corners and not much else. Burnishing: Get a bar of glicerin saddle soap, about $7 for a lifetine supply. Dampen your edge with water, rub soap on it, briskly rub with canvas or denum cloth. Amazing edges fast and easy. The little round plastic thing Tandy sells is good to leave in your tool box to remind you not to buy another one.

OMG! How tall are you? 35" tall, I don't thing I could even reach that high to sew. Other than that it looks good. Aaron

Have the kids sit on the floor to work.

Best advise yet. Keep it simple. REAL simple. Many of the kids will have big trouble simply wetting the leather with a sponge. I would keep dyes in another building. If you want to color them toss them in a batch of dip dye now, let them dry. When you are there have the kid whack it with a mallet and rub it with with wax, no more. If you do that you will be hard pressed to go through 50 kids in an hour. Do more and you will be there for hours, and have half the room covered with dye. I used to also have the older kids who were responsible help. They often want to be "leaders" and it helps them stay focused. Aaron

You speek better English than I speak Ukrainian. Your work is awsome.

http://www.goodsjapan.jp/category/leathercraft-knives-sharpeners/catId=4053909 They have them here and it is easier to read.

Main differances: You use a thumbprint instead of a pear shader (long and narrow instead of short and fat). Use bevelers that have a lot more taper to them. Leaf liner, radiating lines out from the center of a leaf vein. Center shader, lines out from the center of a flower. As for tools, it has been very difficult to do decent tooling with current Tandy Craftools. But, soon to arrive in the stores they are bringing in a line of Sheridan tools. Should arrive any day. I have no idea on quality and I am not holding my breath. They look like they bought a set of Barry King tools and copied them from the pictures. Aaron

One issue I see with how these are set up is the two arms need to be spaced slightly wider at the bottom than at the top. The way they are set up when you spread them and slide the leather in, the bottom of the clamp will hold but the top of the clamp will be loose. This causes the piece you are trying to secure to be loose along the stitching area but tight two inches lower. Change the angle of the arms (or angle the jaws wider at the bottom) and you will find you can securely hold the stitch line. I speak from experience. The first pony I made clamped so nice and straight out in the shop, then I went in and clamped a wallet in it... Aaron

Punch your holes after you dye the leather. That way you are not picking up dye out of the holes as the thread passes through. Aaron

Great design on the bag.

I have a couple stitching ponies and rarely use them. I usually work off the table or my lap. If you want to use an awl then you will need a pony, otherwise you can work without one.

Get a dead blow plastic mallet from harbor Freight, about $5 on sale and they work well, do not bounce. As for your hand, when you are hitting stamps so hard make a fist around the stamp. When you miss, it is a lot less painfull to hit your srist than your fingers and your stamp is less likely to bounce.

It does load faster than it used to 3 weeks ago. It is slower than it was when the update was first done. It is a lot slower than every other forum I try. Computer is less than a year old that I am on (and have tried from 2 other computers. Fastest cable internet I can get. Running explorer. As I have stated before, I am not a tech, but this board was before and continues to be the slowest forum to navigate that I go to. I do understand that possibly I can reconfigure my computer to be able to run this one forum faster (don't know how, just acepting that it is a posibility). It does seem that when the rest of the internet runs perfectly it is likely not on this end. The fact that people are commenting on the speed differance screams that something was/is really wrong. Modern internet should load so fast that a doubling of the speed should be almost undetectable. A slow site that takes 3 seconds to load going to 2 seconds makes small differance. A dirt slow site that takes 15 second to load going to 10 seconds is a huge noticable improvement, but still horibly slow. I just went through my favorites file and clicked into many random sites. 3 seconds was the slowest, many in less than one second to load. I then clicked into the main forum page and it took 8 seconds.

Of course it is a posability. But when almost every other site on the net loads faster than this site, the fingers point at this one. As I said, this site, 10 seconds, craigs list, less than one. Before the big crash this site always loaded well. After the crash the software was changed and things hit the brakes. When this update happened the other day things were faster. As more and more was altered and added, things slowed again. It is still faster than a couple weeks ago, but dead slow compared to the modern internet. I am not a tech person. I have no real data except a second hand on a watch. My guess is that the software is clumsly written so things talk longer than it needs to. Also there is so much fluff loaded that layer after layer needs to load, it all takes time. I generally try to stay off the main page, I go to "view new content" and if I do not see it there I figure it is lost. The pages load faster that way. I am not complaining. I know that this site is ran by volunteers. Just a statement, the question was asked.

There are a lot of ways of doing the same thing, it can get very confusing. TO START, and be cheap, but some thread, needles and a LARGE sewing maching needle. Tandy has all three, you will spend less then $15 dollars. Put the needle in your dremil and use it as a drill bit. You can push it through a half inch of leather fairly easily. You will be off and running.

Sharpening them will help. I have a set and they are not overly sharp when you get them. But also remember that the metal flares out rather quickly, they are shaped more like a maul than an axe. You are having to push a lot of leather out to drive them in. Also consider using a bigger hammer so you do not need to swing so hard or often. Aaron