bruce johnson

Great idea! thanks a lot. Much safer than anything I have tried or thought about.

Pinked scalloping or a smooth half round scalloping?

Go for it! I paid off 90K in medical debt just short of two years expanding way more into wholesale custom work and awards as a side deal. Learn from ,my mistakes. Be reasonable to yourself with lead times. It is no fun to watch the sun come up and pack off to work. Price to be fair to yourself. You have to figure wholesale pricing is less than retail, but bigger numbers of pieces.You still have to do them one at a time. Know your costs - down cold. Don't let the tail wag the dog. If they can get it cheaper, let them. Sellers can always find a cheaper source. Figure out how you are going to handle the situation when his retail customer contact you directly and wants to buy from you - circumnavigating the retailer and trying to buy from you cheaper. Quick thoughts off the top of my head.

I have had both through here. Both are easy to sharpen. The cutting edge is right there and top and bottom edges are accessible. Both cut a rounded profile. The longer stock on the grooved edger means you may have an inch of blade to work through. There is less "life" to the common edger because once you get past the curve, it is worn out. Either one should last a lifetime unless you really grind one out to sharpen each time. The grooved edger may last 2 lifetimes. The stock on the grooved edger is narrower so you can have thinner leather laying in the middle of the bench and not hanging on an edge to hit the angle you need. The grooved edger is usually held at a lower angle than the common edger. These are both based somewhat on the tried and true patterns of the old Gomph edgers. Personally I usually use the round bottom edgers that are similar to the grooved edger. I have a few good makers I sell to who prefer the Concord edgers similar to the common edger. Either will do the job, it pretty much comes down to a preference.

Bret, That looks great, and should do well. Then again, I am pretty biased. and my wife sure is.

Aaron, We pretty much agree on most of it. Like I wrote, I m playing the devil's advocate a bit. I see what you are saying, but I am coming at it from the point of view of the mail order/internet small business that it appears he is setting up. The time and materials involved are a fixed cost of business of a business that ships. I time this out for myself. The most basic order takes me abut 15 minutes once I have got the order firmed up. That is the time to run the card or email a PayPal invoice, pull and pack, do a receipt, print a shipping label, and get it on. I am not adding more than rounding my flat rates up to the next dollar. I am packing a splitter, 3-in-1 or something big, I may have 45 minutes and a lot of packing material involved. I still just round my shipping up, and hope to hell my packing hasn't added more weight than I allowed. When I ship leather orders those two or three shipments a week time isn't a big time factor. When I ship 6 or 8 boxes of tools a day, it can be. My deal is that I have this factored in to a small degree. Is there enough margin for him to offer discount shipping, be price competitive, pay himself and maybe employees and still be profitable on the same things that the established sellers already have in place? I think that some can be beat with service, but it may be pretty hard to consistently beat them on price and keep the boat floating. When he planned to have choices to compare - I think Osborne punch vs. a Tandy punch side by side, is there enough there to warrant and afford stocking full lines of both? European tools? Is there enough demand and knowledge of them here to make it profitable to stock and sell in the US? My limited experience is that about 80% of the Dixon and Blanchard older tools I sell go to Europe or to Australia. Another 10% go to European trained leather craftsmen in the US/Canada and the rest go to US workers wanting to try them.

Do a little time study - Have your wife call you and make a fake order order. Have her call five more times and order different stuff each time. Sometimes a one item order and sometimes a 6 item or 8 item order. Sometimes she needs advice on what tool is most appropriate to buy. Discuss that with her on half the orders. Make one of those orders something bulky that won't fit a Priority box. Add the cost of that box. Write the orders down or enter them. Pull the orders and sort them by customer. Run the credit cards. Pack the boxes and add whatever padding you need. Tape the boxes securely. Print the labels and put them on the boxes. Stop the clock and divide the total time spent by the number of orders. add any materials. Decide if you can give that time away yourself or give away the wages of the employee who does. I am being the devil's advocate here. As evidenced from the posts above, customers don't like handing charges. They are a real cost of doing business though. I can' bring myself to charge what it is worth either, but should.

Mail it to yourself from wherever you are now if you have doubts.

Mine all do that after a while and it didn't matter here they came from. That is one of the problems with LDPE. If you are punching in the area the punch cuts will spread the board and eventually warp. Because LDPE is softer the edges go in deeper than HDPE. On the plus side, that saves your punch edges and at least for me, gives me a cleaner punch with one hit. Flipping the board over every so often helps. So does using the whole area, most punches tend to be on the center of the board and that make them warp faster. I haven't tried heating them to flatten, but it might work.

I have added quite a few fresh tools to my website this weekend. There are a couple splitters, knives, hammers, and several stamps. I have also added a few edgers including a turnback. I am having trouble here with getting a Iink to work, but hopefully this link will take - http://brucejohnsonleather.com/content/index.php/leather_tools_for_sale/ Thank you, Bruce

They are a good skiver for doing laps on straps. Put the leather in, push the handle with one hand as you pull the leather with the other and they will taper right down. As a splitter- not so bueno. There is a stop screw you adjust for thickness. Put the leather in, hold the handle forward with one hand against the stop while you pull with the other. Narrow straps work OK because you can one hand them easy enough. Wider stuff is harder.

RDL, If you want to give me a call, I should be around most of tomorrow as of current plans. If you happen to miss me, leave a message and I'll call you back. Thanks, Bruce

Ditto on what Aaron has told you. I took apart a repair saddle in my old shop, green dust flew when I opened it up, and had a problem after that. I was using ProCarve after a while and it really stopped it. I have switched now to a different casing mix that has thymol in it (Listerine) which is an antifungal. It works for me.

They are good people to talk to on the phone. I thin they close down until after the first of the year right now, so don't be worried if you can't catch someone until end of next week or maybe even the week after.

Walter, That looks great!!! The base is perfect and I would not have expected less from your work. On a side note, I finally got the last of what you are looking for and will get pictures to you tomorrow. - Bruce

Other than the swivel knife blades, the rest of the tips look like they fit into a handle system. I am not sure that I think maybe X-Acto made that. Hope this helps, – Bruce

Great job Wayne! Really like this one.

The quick and dirty way to check a side is the fold it up from the belly. Slightly above where it breaks over is gong to be the better leather for straps. Some sides are going to be deeper than others.

Ideally I'd have both within reach. One only and it depends on what you're making. Mostly cutting straight lines and I'd pick a round knife. Lots of tight patterning and I'd get a head knife.

This is one of those things that has a few variations in definitions. The most accepted is that a "round knife" will make a near half circle on the same radius from a focal point. A head knife is more elliptical and a shorter radius forward that gets longer as it reaches the points from a focal point. A round knife will have more blade in the leather and tend to stay on a straighter line. A head knife has more pointed tips, less blade in the leather and easier to do a tighter inside curve.

I edge bevel and dye the cut edge first. after it is dry I use an acrylic finish (Fiebings LeatherSheen). When it is mostly dry, I rub it to slick some. Once dry, I slick it with a wheel. I apply another coat of sheen, and maybe takes 2-3 applications to stiffen than edge and take a slicking. My final application is paraffin wax and slick it hard. It will not be the same effect as burnishing, but will be slick and the two layers should appear as one.

Devilbiss. Spelling might be off there, but that is the maker. Made a line of tools for the craft back in the 60s?

Looks great, Wayne. Gotta like those kind of customers too.

I have put a few more tools and bench machines for sale on my website today. There are four CS Osborne #86 splitters in 6. 7, and 9 inch blade widths, I got the waiting lists for the Rose knives cleaned up and added Rose round knife and Gomph round knife. There are some handtools added as well. Here is the link for the index page of tools - http://brucejohnsonleather.com/content/index.php/leather_tools_for_sale/ . Have a great week! - Bruce

This is all assuming we are talking about a round bottom edger. Not exactly what I am talking about but similar. On the round bottom edgers you need to strop off the bur on top. the top side is convex and the Weaver board is convex,. You need something to get down into the corners of the edges next to the rails. A skived edge of hard leather with some compound on it will do that. You can also use a soft buffing wheel with your compound of choice on it.