cjdevito

Funny enough, the package arrived tonight. Haven't had a chance to do much more than glance at it yet, but the kit parts are probably the nicest leather I've seen from tandy. Which still doesn't make them anything to write home about, but nothing like some of the really awful pieces I've gotten in some of their other kits. Of course it could just be my luck... next person to get one might end up with the typical lower quality they're known for.

Last fall I did my first entirely from scratch project using the Dispatch Rider briefcase pattern Tandy has up in leathercraftlibrary.com and it came out okay, but lots of things about it I wasn't happy with. Thought it was a good learning experience though and was planning to do another in a few weeks to see if I could improve upon it now that I'd made it once. But I ordered this kit when it came on sale the other night. It's basically the dispatch rider bag updated and modernized, and I really want to see where and how exactly they've changed the design. I mostly want to use it to make templates off the pieces and use it as another learning experience. I do have Stohlman's case books and had considered trying to use what I've learned from them to lay out a briefcase design of my own, but I'd be lying if I said I'd rather do that than just try making adjustments to an existing pattern. I'm sure this kit will have all the usual shortfalls of Tandy's kits - crap leather, large holes, etc - but for me looking at it as a physical lesson in design & pattern making instead of as just a briefcase, the price they want for it is acceptable.

When I'm dyeing with eco-flo stuff, the usual way I do it is to first lightly dampen the leather then apply a small amount of the dye to a damp-but-not-soggy sponge. You get a light coat this way, but it's the best way I've found to get the dye on evenly. If you need it darker after the first pass, apply a bit more dye and make another pass at the leather. Sheepswool as suggested definitely works better than a dauber. I still prefer the damp sponge, personally, but try both routes and see which one you prefer.

You could get this effect with the tandy gel antique, if you really wanted to use that. Resist the floral carving and the basketweave, apply the gel. The gel dark brown is about that color when applied heavily to unresisted areas. Both the gel and the paste aren't really coloring the unresisted leather so much as accumulating/pooling in the cuts and tool marks. But also, with the gel especially you'll usually get some bleed through of the antique dye color into the resisted areas if you don't apply multiple coats of your resist.

While I'm only a novice at tooling, I do love my SK3 swivel knife from leather wranglers. I consider it worth every penny I paid.

Thanks. I'd honestly prefer to be doing my own interiors, I'm just not there yet. Not a knock on the CF inserts which are very well made and high quality, but I'd rather be able to say I made something entirely from scratch. I've managed to pull it off on my last few larger projects but really need to try harder with wallet interiors.

Thanks. Stitching is something I know I still need to work on; it's better than when I started but clearly not where it should be. That's not edge paint, though. Black sharpie then burnishing with saddle soap and canvas.

No problems staying closed, and I did sew all the way around. You'd need to with this one, since that zipper in the middle open up directly onto the backside of the leather - so if you left a middle gap in your sewing anything you put in the zippered pocket would just fall out. I left the leather a little oversized and glued it around the interior while it was folded closed, then after I sewed it together I went back and trimmed off the excess leather at the side. I think the final width of the leather ended up being 9 3/8" if that helps you at all.

Absolutely gorgeous. Really, really nice work.

Thanks you two. Very kind words Bill. As far as the lacing, I just followed the instructions from the old 'How to Lace and Stitch' book. Glad I had that to fall back on... started off by watching a video tutorial of it by George Hurst where I swear he's leaving out steps as I could not even get the thing started by following his instructions even after a dozen tries. Once I started working from the book it came together right away though. Renee, from your comments I'm guessing you're using gel antique and not the paste? I do as well, but as someone else here once wrote in another thread the gel antique can best be summed up as unpredictable. I've had a couple of projects veer off from where I intended because of it, so I feel your pain. For what it's worth, on this one I used Bee Natural's RTC finish/resist that Springfield Leather is now carrying and found it worked very well for resisting the gel. Much better than either tandy's super shene or block out products.

8-9 oz leather, resisted and antiqued. Black suede lining. Laced with alternating natural and black calfskin lace. My first time working with lace, but it seemed like the way to go on this one.

I actually wrote Kevin at Springfield Leather a couple weeks back to see if he'd be interested in contacting the tannery to carry the wolf fish leather. I heard back to him that he was going to contact them and see if they could arrange something, but have not yet had any news on it.

I'll second that. I used the tandy pro black for the first time a week or two ago and got really great results with that. I find the trick to getting the best results with the tandy pro dyes to be just applying them to damp leather with a damp sponge.

Wanted to try one of Chaylor-Fennelli's interiors so I picked up their passport wallet interior. Constructive criticism welcome.

Assassin's Creed, huh? It'll be interesting to see your finished result.

Go to images.google.com and type in whatever sort of image you're looking for. When the results come up, click the search tools button and then change the type to line drawing. Clip Art will often yield good results as well You won't really find patterns specifically for leathercraft this way, but you'll often find things that will work well as a design on leather. Other good resources include embroidery design sites (check out hand embroidery patterns on a site like www.urbanthreads.com to see what I mean) and, yes, tattoo designs.

Thanks guys, but as I posted above they have already responded. Quoted from the above, here's what they said.... Use a slightly dampened sponge to apply 2 coats of Eco-Flo Super Shene over the blue Eco-Flo Professional Waterstain as a resist. Then apply smoke black Eco-Flo Hi-Lite Color Stain, also with a slightly dampened sponge, removing the excess with a soft cloth to keep as much Hi-Lite in the impressions as possible.

I work in compliance in the medical field. The above would be true if there was any identifiable patient info on the films themselves... patient name, medical record number, social security number or similar. If there's nothing on the film to connect it up to an individual patient it wouldn't be considered protected health information (PHI) and HIPAA wouldn't apply. That said many medical practices prefer to err on the side of caution where the law is concerned.

Just to be sure we're talking about the same thing and I didn't screw up the link, here's the photo I was referring to....

I'd given up on hearing from Tandy on this (I'd emailed them a few days ago now) so posted this, and no sooner had I done so than I got an email from them with the answer. Just in case anyone else might be wondering what the answer is, here's what they said....

Blue dye on one of the new handbag kits Tandy is selling, seen here... http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com/en-usd/home/department/New-Items/44314-00.aspx It doesn't look quite like any of the eco-flo blue dyes, at least not straight from the bottle. I wrote tandy to ask but haven't gotten a reply. Anyone care to hazard a guess what was used?

I'm actually almost positive that's tandy's eco-flo smoke black hi-lite stain. It goes on darker than that, but if you use a finish that peels a lot of it off that's exactly what you get.

Thanks Cogs, Ramrod. Initially I planned to do just that - stitch line on the flap, stitch the strap tabs and the handle rather than use the rivets, plus replace the buckles with snaps and make the gusset wider to give the bag a bit more depth - but in the end I decided to stick with the pattern as published. I figured with it being my first real construction project I probably shouldn't make it more difficult for myself by deviating from the pattern. If I make another, though, these are all definitely changes I would like to make.

Heh. I didn't say I let it stop me. But if I'm being honest, I dread all of that. Was an interesting exercise to make the list and figure out what I do dread and what I don't; if nothing else it highlighted to me that swivel knife practice is really what I need to be working on.