DoubleC

I'll have to get in touch with them and see if they work with a cobra. I haven't really had a problem yet, but I'd really like to try them. Thanks, Cheryl

Well I started this topic a long time ago and it's nice to see it brought up again because I just learned some more things Sharkey I have a show the first week of December and have known about it since the first week of November last year and haven't made a single new thing. Cradon I learned the uh metal, wet leather and dark spots a while ago I use bricks as weights, seriously. Nstar, that's a good thing to know. Where do you get no stick needles? CG, Have been there and done that. Hair dryer, leather, high heat and glue = uh, no no. Tramp, looking at Bobby Parks work makes most of us a tad suicidal, but oh how nice on the eyes I could talk about the things I've learned since I started this two years ago but it would probably depress me. I seem to learn a lot of things to not do!!!!! But I still love what I do and the folks here at LW.net.

That's just gorgeous Ed. Cheryl

lranger, this is a light weight project I'm doing on my cobra. I'll show you my first one, 10 oz doubled....You can see it was so hard for me to hold the bends that I had to wet the leather to roll it to sew.

Ray it's safe to say I'm afraid to answer because I'm afraid the show 'Hoarders' is after me . Just looking around the room I see antique furniture, a tin pot with a copper bottom, wooden jewelry hanging, elephant sculptures, antique wood boxes, Antique sewing machines. That's just glancing around And love them all.

If you look at the first pic lranger you'll see the material on the front is sewn pretty well, not perfect by any means. I held the lamb in place with double sided tape. However I sewed it before this picture and you can see in the second picture where I didn't have it taped and the pig stretched all over and the lamb didn't. This is just a prototype, first time I've made a pouch with fringe so I am learning as I go. The pouch will be rounded on the bottom. You can still see here that there's very little room for the thread to knot in the middle. Cheryl

You are most welcome. The problem is I was using (and still am) a 23 needle and 207 thread. Also to sew anything the needle thread and bobbin are supposed to form a knot in the middle. I'm going to show you a pouch I am sewing right now and explain some things I would do over if I was redoing it. The main pouch is going to be sewn 3 layers of around 1" pig. I put a different color of lamb on the front, also about 1 " , and it will have like a welt at the bottom that is holding the fringe. And I intend to make a dog collar type closure so I'm sewing belt loops on it. To make things worse the pig is stretchy and the lamb isn't. All in all a not very well thought out project but one I wanted to make. I will post the pictures and then explain what's wrong with it and why I wish I had used a smaller machine for it.

No I'm not trying to tell you that at all. For example my Cobra is supposed to be used on thick items. However through practice I have been able to to get it to do thinner things for me. However I should have a cobra 18 for thinner stuff. I have a Chevy 2500 pickup. It's a machine built for a purpose. I use all these machines within the purpose they were made for and they don't constantly jump timing or quit working for no reason. They last a long time. As do sewing machines used for the purpose they were built for. You wouldn't buy a 2500 would you to haul a stick around? These sewing machines are not delicate at all, and is one of the biggest things you have to get over. I was worried to death I was going to 'break' this solid steel machine. If I knew more of what you wanted to do I could advise you better because just as all trucks are not built to do the same job, neither are sewing machines. Cheryl

Hi lranger. I can only speak for myself. I would have loved to have one of the older machines at one time because of the money, i.e. them being cheaper for the most part than new machines. However, I got a real deal on a Cobra 4 and yes I've had problems and they were operator error, not the machines fault. I have two old singers, not walking foots, a hand crank and a treadle and no one would expect to sit down to one of these or newer domestic singers and sew everything without reading the manual several times and practicing. Yet a lot of leather workers want to do that, want a new machine to self oil, self adjust and perhaps play music too. My first job on my Cobra was 20 oz and it sewed it like a charm. When I dropped down to 2 oz, not so good. Well first of all that's not what it's designed to do and secondly it needed some tension adjustment etc. before I could coax it to do it anyway. I'm not putting down the old machines though. There are some great ones. But there's going to be a learning curve on whatever you buy. Cheryl

Thanks Dwight, very good advice. Wish I'd thought of it. Cheryl

I guess I'm kinda the odd man out (uh woman) in this thread because I believe a business plan is very important. However we have a community service center here that helped me with my business plan. I was multitasking at the time. I'd meet once a week with her and give her the info she had asked for the week before, and the rest of the time I was working with leather. I was kinda stuck on one item I was producing because it meant something to me....to others? Not so much. That was horse eyes as jewelry. I expanded to guitar straps (yup kinda weird shift) because I had two friends that were guitar players in bands. So all along I was buying leather, tools and figuring things out. And I was here a lot reading things and asking questions. I sold a few things the first year just word of mouth, a couple belts, a couple guitar straps, a couple dog collars and one horse eye to a friend of mine. I was making little side projects too in order to learn new skills. By the time the business plan was done I had a year in basically just practicing things. I posted everything here proudly, LOL and would get disheartened when someone didn't think it was perfect. Boy have I outgrown that. OK second year and summer. I had a platform to sell, the local farmer's market, and a business plan. It took me two years to get into that market which turned out to be good because I was really just learning that whole first year. So I went to Voc Rehab to get a grant. They had been involved from the beginning and I had to have a business plan finished to get anything. Which was good because I found out they kinda liked for you to have a product too They gave me 1500.00 to help me get off disability and if the business did well was going to give me another 1000.00. It was like a million bucks to me since up until then I had been buying all my supplies. I worked that summer, and then had an opportunity to work that winter at a different place we set up for ourselves. Then I heard about the Pass Plan Voc Rehab had so I applied for it. And so I was meeting with Voc Rehab every week and asked the woman who helped me with the first business plan to help me do another. I had grown and changed so much in those two years my first one seemed immature to me. I worked all summer, met with those two people and had just started in a winter flea market when I was notified my sister had been diagnosed with cancer, including brain tumors. That was exactly 11 months ago yesterday. I went to her but she didn't last very long and I came back Jan. 7th and haven't hit my stride yet. I did work this summer some at the farmers market, although not every week and kept accepting custom orders I had no interest in doing but did some how get them finished. But I never picked back up on my business plan or the Voc Rehab opportunity. I just see this as an extended set back and haven't changed my plans but rather just put them on hold waiting for me to do what I need to do. I think I had the best of both worlds while I was practicing and doing a business plan at the same time. I'm sorry some people don't seem to value them but I guess we all do things we are comfortable with. I do take exception to the OP that said using a sewing machine meant it wasn't hand made and was poor quality. I'm posting a picture of a chair I reupholstered for a man. I used 10 oz leather which means it was doubled to 20 oz where it needed to be sewn. You can see in the picture that I had to wet the leather just to get it to bend enough to sew. I used Herman Oak for the chair. The Chinese use a thin veneer of leather on both sides of things with a felt like material in between to make it as thick as real leather. I think this particular project would have been extremely hard to impossible to do hand sewing. The reason the arms are cut but not attached is because the owner was thinking of using nicer hard ware.

Ed that's beautiful. Cheryl

Well I was so tired when I saw this list that I didn't see you wrote the items out, I'm sorry. OK I've been doing this for 3 years and I don't have a hammer. My mallet does everything I need to do from punching holes to setting snaps. I would get a just use a box cutter or a craft knife. I got an olfa when I first started and and cut my index finger almost to the bone (ok that's operator error, LOL) but more importantly it dulled very fast and the blades are almost as much as a new knife. Also I just got a slicker given to me a couple months ago and have always burnished my edges with saddle soap and denim. Some people just use spit. You'd be better off waiting until you can get a drill press and then getting one that fits it. Actually you can use your bone folder to burnish edges because what you need is something that will build up heat while the leather edges are damp to get a smooth burnished look. One thing I saw you left out was a swivel knife and a beveler. I just went and saw SLC has the basic 6 set with a swivel knife (and beveler) here http://springfieldleather.com/29330/Stamping-Tool-Set%2CSLC-Basic-7/ I think it's worth buying the basic six because you don't have to use them for Sheridan type tooling but the other five make nice edge designs, etc. I know you said you didn't want to do Sheridan but I still use these for other things. I'll post a couple of pictures. Other than that I think you have everything to get off to a good start except leather. If you tell me what you want to try to make first I can help you with that too. BTW I get almost all my things from SLC. Really nice folks. Oh wait I forgot I would get a modeling spoon with a rounded point on the other end. I use the spoon to smooth out the beveling and the rounded tip on the other end to draw my designs on the leather. Well they don't have one tool like I have so I'm going to show you two, which I have one each on mine. http://springfieldleather.com/29154/Modeler%2CMed%2CLrg-Round-Spoon/ http://springfieldleather.com/29155/Modeler%2CMed%2CLrg-Pointed-Spoon/ You might want to look at Hobby Lobby etc. for this instead of buying two tools. Oh and depending on what you want to make and what kind of leather you need I can help you with a few things to use to dye with.

I will check these links as soon as I can and see if I'd add anything to them. Cheryl

William, I get mine at walmart, in the school section. It's fairly thin and is already glued on the back, just cut and remove the paper. I'm sure lots of people can tell you where to get more expensive stuff, but this works good. Cheryl

You're most welcome. If I can help more please PM me. Cheryl

J it depends on what kind of leather work you want to do. You can make wallets, belts and purses plain and that would change the tools you need. I seldom do any 'tooling' especially Sheridan flowery stuff and so what I use day in and out is a lot different than someone who does Sheridan tooling on wallets, belts etc. However a basic "7" will always come in handy whether you do Sheridan or not. That's a swivel knife, veiner, camo, beverler, etc. And you can get those anywhere, even Tandy to start out with. I would recommend you get a smaller beveler some where though because I never could bevel with the bulky one that came in the tandy 7. However if I was starting over I would go to Bruce Johnson, a member on here and ask him some questions and let him sell you what you need after you have a clearer idea of what you want. He sells mostly vintage tools and they are so much better than most of the new ones. His website is: http://brucejohnsonleather.com/ Cheryl

Monica, I moved across the hall into a different apt. Before I moved my landlord put new linoleum down in the entrance hallway and my shop room. I was using black dye for the first time and spilled the whole bottle on the new floor. Like you it dried before I could get it up. I just decided to never move, LOL.

Really nice. Cheryl

Very nice. Cheryl

Back from the FM, last one. And I have an order for a custom 140.00 belt, yehaw

There is a lot of good info here and I'd like to add some more. I work at the same farmer's market all summer, today is my last one of the year. Our motto is 'if you don't make it, bake it or grow it, don't bring it.' So having been an ongoing market for years most people know that and don't think it's fake crap from China. I know a vendor who was going to be the only LW at a big show (not around here) and was told he'd better cram his booth since he was the only LW vendor. He did with Chinese purses and sold them as his own. When he told me that I was actually sick. That's one of the reasons we have to fight and claw for every dime we make. I have a Christmas show next month and this year I'll take my inventory I already have built up and I will make several key chains and this year I'd like to have some magnets with little Christmas objects on the magnetic tape like stockings and doves and santa etc. Last year at this show I sold nothing but key chains and an art piece. I charge 5 bucks for my key chains because I wet the conchos I have for them, and stamp VT on them, then grab some dyes and do them in several colors. My other stuff I take will just be to fill up the booth nice but it didn't sell last year. I have a lot of 10.00 bracelets and will make some more easy ones so to keep the price down. That will be the three things I expect to sell mostly. The other suggestions given here about folding furniture etc. really comes in handy. Oh and the little simple CC holders with designs stamped on them. I didn't get any custom orders last year but I usually do one a week or two at the farmer's market. I agree, especially this time of year go for the small impulse buys that are still nice that people can give for gifts. You folks forgot one important thing. No matter what, have fun

If it wasn't for the scales it wouldn't be a snake skin. You don't want to remove them. That's what adds the beauty to the skin. Cheryl

Pzarkov that's a beautiful wallet. Cheryl

Mikey, that is gorgeous. Cheryl