Tucson Rick

Not only did you incorporate everything the lady wanted, but your crafting work is EXCELLENT!

I started working with leather in 1970. Besides crafting all these years, I retired from the Air Force in 1985. I worked for Tandy Leather in Fort Worth, Texas for a couple of years. They were a great company with pretty good quality in all of their tools and supplies back then. I stopped crafting about three years ago and just recently began crafting again for fun. I live in Tucson AZ and I just recently began purchasing items from the two local Tandy Leather Factory stores. I am totally dismayed at the lack of quality in their tools, their kits, and many of their other items. Almost everything they sell is labled as being made in China, India, or other asian countries. Their kit items contain very inferior leather, bad sewing needles, inferior leather lace, etc. Their rolls of leather lace are extremely poor, with the lace containing thin spots and a lack of uniformity in the width and weight of the lace. I hate to say it, but Tandy Leather Factory is basically a good source only for the very beginners or kids learning leather crafting! About the only thing I buy from them now is actual sides of leather if they have any top quality sides available at any time I go in. I do occasionally buy new items that come out, but very few. They need to bring their business back to the USA and build the quality of their merchandise back up to old "made in the USA" standards.

I don't use any modern technology in my crafting for one simple reason. When I craft leather, I am primarily creating my own one-of-a-kind piece of art. I am NOT trying to create a cheap piece of assembly-line junk. The best example I can give you of what modern technology does to defeat artistic design would be our own American money designs. Once upon a time, our currency and coins were both created using artistic designs created by true artists. Our old coins and currency are still collected as much for their artistry as for their collector driven monetary value. Our modern currency and coins are all computer produced designs meant to foil counterfeiters and aid in rapid reproduction for the billions of issues of each series. All of them are cheap in appearance as well as value. There is absolutely no artistic value of any kind. I for one, will not allow my individual, highly desired pieces of leather crafted items to be cheapened in a similar manner.

Drafting tables are pretty weak in design and construction for leather crafting. You must have a firm, solid, immoveable bench/table to properly craft leather. If your table is too lightly contructed, it will vibrate and bounce when you are stamping and carving your leather. Go with a solid flat bench table and place your granite on top of it for a working surface.

I just tried to open them and received a red warning stating the files contain dangerous files to download to my computer due to possible virus or other issues.