Spincycle

Thanks for the info. You should find the above pictured rivets if you perform a search for "crystal rivet gold" on Etsy.

Does anyone know where I can get some. Seems like gold bezel is not very common with colored stones. Like the picture but must be pink with a gold bezel. Somewhere around 8mm diameter. Length doesn't matter. I'm open to prong style as well. Thanks.

Resoline is very strong smelling. Especially when first opened from new. I'm about half way through a small bottle and it only has a faint odor now. The Tandy Eco Flow Professional matte finish also has an offensive odor. Different from Resoline though. Good luck.

Daemonworks, I agree with electrathon. Except maybe cut the fur lining a little narrower than the width of the cuff to hide the edge. Let the fur come out and around the edge of the cuff. Gabriel, I'm diggin the bondage cuffs. Especially the large holes with stitching. It resembles chain. I'm probably going to steal that detail. Thanks for posting. ;-)

Hey, you got it done. Right on. I'm gonna go ahead and say that you applied your dye by hand. If so you did a good job as its not easy to get any color other than black to spread evenly. The edges on the cuff look good . Did you skip glueing the watch straps? It looks like theres a bit of seperation on them. Personally I'd like to not see any gaps and feel the edges should be finished as well as the cuff edges. Maybe round the ends of the watch straps to match the ends of the cuff. You put your top snap on what I consider to be the correct side. Looks good all around. Lets see what it looks like on your wrist.

Nice work. I like the simple tooled border by the lacing. I haven't seen that and it adds a nice extra touch. Lacing is tight also. It shows that you have experience. Professional job!

Mijo, thanks for the tips. I like the phone number idea. Here in Alberta we are required to have our cats licensed. So the tag must be on her collar. Now the "base model" has been proven. I have already modified my collar template to accommodate the dee ring in the same fashion you described. I have another collar for my other cat that I started at the same time as this one. So any collars after that will have the integrated dee ring. I just noticed that I forgot to dye the strap holes on this collar. Back to the bench.....

Thanks Mijo. Your right, I let the dee ring float between the buckle and the taper in the leather. The dee ring is not wide enough to go over the wider part of the collar. I got this dee ring at Tandy and it is really thick for its size. I would have preferred to capture it in the collar. I have other collars to make and I think I may file off half the thickness on the flat side, allowing it to sit flatter in between the leathers. That or I need to find a finer guage dee ring. I'm not to worried as its just there to hold her tags. This is my first collar and I would like to make others. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks.

Thank you very much. My other cat Trixy is jelous. I told her that she will be sporting a new collar soon. She said "meow"!!!

This is my first attempt at a collar. It's black with matte finish. Royal purple hand stitching and painted metallic purple letters. Four purple stones on each side. The hardest part was dealing with the glue from between the leathers while edging.

Not sure about droids but I haven't viewed this forum on anything but my iPhone. Here's what I do to post pics. I use the Photobucket app. The Photobucket account is free. 1)Take pic with phone. 2)Upload pic to Photobucket app. 3)Select photo in app and copy image code. 4)Paste code directly into post. That's it. I do that for the other forums I'm on as we'll.

Nice work, but you already know that. You picked my two favorite colors. I love black and bright green together. So much in fact I have made a wallet, cuff (avatar) and bicycle in this color scheme. I made a bright green tooled leather head badge for the bike. Anyway thanks again for posting.

Besides how rediculously amazing your work is I'd like to say thanks. Thanks for posting your very professional projects and commenting on them. I have been admiring your work since I signed up on this forum. It seems sometimes when people reach a very high level of design and quality they drift off and we never see them here again. Or they post their work and don't follow up with their post. Congrats on another fine piece and thanks for sharing it. As always I look forward to the next.

Nice work! That's quite the handle. Now you need to go show the lady at the fabric store what ya did. Then ask her to reach in the purse and snap it shut! Well I thought it was funny.

Most of the glazed and suede skins feel about equivalent to a economy grade vegtan of equivalent weight. The salmon is somewhat less plyable. Although he said it has been used for pens. I would say its more delicate but not by much. The sueded skins are just like thin suede leather. I had a quick look at the unstreched and stretched crusts. The unstreched crusts would be a lot of work in my opinion. They are bunched up and crusty like a dirty dry rag. He said that they would need some sort of wetting to be stretched. It's out of my knowledge range. The stretched skins were exactly the same as the suede skins less the color. I'm skeptical that the dyes found at Tandy would be the correct type for this skin. But again I'm not to knowledgeable about fish crusts. They would be hard to buff after dying. Again I wouldn't hesitate to order a sample of everything. He was easy to deal with. I'm sure if he'll spend an hour selling me $35 worth of skins it's because he wants to move his inventory.

Well I got some fish leather on Saturday. The showroom was just that; a room full of fish skins. Although the lighting wasn't great I was able to decide on the variety you see below. Some carp and salmon skins. The carp has large scale pockets and the salmon small. He also gave me the three sueded skins you see below for free. I wouldn't hesitate to order anything from this company. Mr. Major was very kind and easy to deal with. As long as you make an appointment (Beaverslayer!). That is if your in the Calgary area. He even ensured that a parking spot was available for me! Once his inventory is gone that's it! Unless someone buys the tanning "technology" for fish skins and starts churning more out. Some skins are thin and some are fairly thick. I'd say in the 2oz-8oz range. He said that if he puts your finished fish skin project on his website that he would give a fish skin credit for more skins.

Very professionally executed. From the tooling and coloring to the lacing. Is it safe to assume this was all done with acrylic paint? If so, what is your sealer of choice (if any) and your application method? Thanks for sharing.

Just had a simpler thought. How many different diameter handles and such are going to be used? Drill a small hole off center in the ram and a larger hole off center in the same end? The same thing could be done on the other end of the ram. You could then have 4 different diameter holes, 2 on each end. Just flip the ram when needed. Obviously you would have to drill the holes based on the diameter of the tool handles to be used. This would be very cheap to do. You would have to hold the tools but you wouldn't be out of pocket much. And the end of the ram would still be a flat square. The trade off is accuracy and versatility vs. cost.

Biggundoctor, I like your idea. I'm not sure if there's room on the ram for the side slots for the shaft clamp. Having a shaft clamp sticking out would hinder the visuals a bit also. Building furthur on your input. I think the ultimate modification would be a hole in the ram. The front half would be round and the back half would be vee shaped. So if you look at the end of the ram you would have a half round on one side and the corner of a square joining it on the other. Then all you need is a couple set screws on the face of the ram going into the hole to secure the handle of the selected tool. The down side is that this would be more expensive to do. Basically broach or EDM. Of course the ram could be made of multiple parts but thats gonna cost more. Anyway I looked at the 1 ton press from Harbor Freight, Princess Auto and Busy Bee Tools. They all look the same. I bet if someone is motivated enough they could obtain just the ram from the manufacturer and offer them for sale once modified. Perhaps an attachment with this vee groove idea could be made and offered. Just some thoughts.

I heard back from Mr. Stanley Major from SeaLeatherWear yesterday. Quite promptly actually. I'm hoping to visit his "showroom" on Saturday. With any luck I will have something to report this weekend. No guarantees though. My feeling about the strong fish leather that is mentioned on his website is that it's probably limited to shark skin.

Man, that is sick carving! I can't wait to see it all together. I could only dream of being able to draw and carve like that. Nice!

Check out the video on You Tube called Antiquing Leather by CowboySaddlery.

Welcome from Calgary

I've been machining for about ten years now. Unfortunately I'm north of the border from you two. I'm curious as to what tools you would like to use in this press. I've been thinking about modifying one of these cheap presses. I just haven't taken the plunge yet. My thoughts are tools for rivets and snaps and such. Ive been using my drill press for some embossing but its a bit small for what I need. The chuck allows you to hold different diameter tools. Let me know if you have any questions regarding your project.

I to didnt know of this local company. I sent Fish Leather Wear an email requesting some skins and to pick them up or meet as I am in Calgary. I'll let you know how it goes. I read through their website. It seems that they have finished a bunch of fish skins then for whatever reason their tannery was shut down. They claim it was because of the Kyoto accord, which I don't know much about. I suspect that this person(s) have a large quantity of fish leather and have rented a cheap apartment to store it all. That's just my guess. Their processing technology is for sale. I also read that you can get a box of crust for the cost of shipping if you mension that you are affiliated with a tannery. Anyway I buy bicycle parts from a local business who also does strictly web orders. He will only ship as well even in the same city. That's just how some of these small business operate and for good reason. I wouldn't want anyone to know that my house is filled with new merchandise. I'd surely get robbed. I wouldn't hesitate to request some fish crust samples and see what happens. You don't know unless you try.