lightingale

Hi Harang, Multi colour dying like the image you described is actually quite intuitive. Pick up some quality spirit dyes (like Fiebings or Angelus) and pick up your paint brush. I have wider brushes or daubers for big areas and teeny tiny brushes for fine details. There are some tricks people have used. For example, you could mask areas with liquid latex, dye the whole area, and peel off the latex. This doesn't always yield a neat result, so I prefer to just paint the dye with small brushes. You can still antique as normal. For coloured projects, I thin my antique (Fiebings paste) with tan kote to lessen the intensity. You'll want to test whether your finish is compatible with your choice of dyes on a piece of scrap.

Your lasered tool holder is nice. I also picked up the press this month while it was on special. I bought a plastic organizer from the dollar store and keep the dies in there. I've labelled the compartments so I can find the right ones easily. The snap die pieces still confuse me! lol

I too lost my home in a fire just over a month ago. Fortunately a lot of my tools were saved by my husband on his mad dash out of the building, but I can give you an idea on the stamps I use the most. The sheridan bevelers are a MUST have, along with a few backgrounders of various sizes. Modelling tools are also a biggie. If you do a lot of trees and scenes, there are a variety of tools to help you with grass, branches, etc. Remember you need a lot more tools than just stamps, though. Edgers, strap end cutters, hole punches, dyes, finishes, neatsfoot oil, rivets and setters, sewing apparatus, etc.

That looks incredible, especially for your first braiding project! I've also been wanting to try braiding for a while... what resources did you use to learn?

Unless the person actually pays a lawyer to file a case of copyright infringement against you, all he can do is use his big mouth (or fingers to type) and harass you. If he keeps doing so, you might want to even file a police report for harassment ;-)

Hello from Quebec (originally from near Toronto!) Always happy to see another Canadian. We have plenty of unique challenges (in terms of getting quality tools and supplies) and I'm happy to share what I've picked up thus far! This forum is incredible for advice and support, even on obscure topics. Stitching horse: whatever you do, don't buy any of the Tandy ones. I bought the cheap one, and it was awful. I traded it with a leatherworker friend who had a 60+ year old one that she got in an auction. It was fantastic. My house burned down about a month ago, and I bought the "pro" Tandy version, thinking it would come close to the old handmade one I've been using. Nope. The screw won't even fit on the bolt on the Tandy one, so don't waste your money! My husband just replaced most of his non-power tools from the fire, and tells me the stitching horse is trivial to make with basic woodworking skills. Here are the links to the plans I sent him: http://thecraftycoup...stitching-pony/ http://www.wrtcleath...stitchpony.html http://sharpasatacks...ching-pony.html My husband intends to make me one this week and if you'd like, I can let you know how our experience goes and if I'd recommend doing so. Looking forward to hearing more from you!

Thanks for the reference! I made an order with them this morning. They shipped with USPS.

Hi Josee, Welcome to the forum! I too, live in Quebec Canada, in the Montreal area. Most of my work is dog collars and belts, though I'm interested in learning how to braid dog show leads... a technique you might want to look into for your whips.

After hearing so many folks on this forum praise the Angelus brand of leather dyes, I tried to find a source that ships to Canada. I can't find a Canadian source, and the next best thing is Dharma trading co., but they only ship with UPS, and the duties effectively double the cost of anything I order on top of shipping, which isn't really worth it. Any Canadians who have found a source of Angelus dyes, or found an international one that doesn't ship through UPS? Thanks

George Hurst has a video on how to sharpen bevelers. The problem is the tool quality itself. I bought a beveler from Tandy and liked it, so I bought another in a different size. The burr was so big that I wasn't able to sharpen it properly no matter how hard I tried. I upgraded to a goodsjapan edge beveler (http://www.goodsjapan.jp/item/other-tools-needles/craft-sha-deluxe-leathercraft-/lid=29748324), and you would not believe the difference. Cuts through like butter, and it comes with sharpening apparatus to boot. I realize I sound like a salesperson for them (I'm not), but you get what you pay for.

I wouldn't try to bring them in your carry on. TSA rules are ridiculous, but rules are rules, and you don't want to lose your stuff. Heck, they confiscated from me a small bottle of cream I had hoped to bring home as a cat treat from Switzerland. Pasteurized milk cream made for cats... Can you get any more harmless than that? I've since found the same brand sold here in Canada! Just put it in your check-out luggage. Don't risk it.

Hi Shawn! I'm Canadian as well, born in Ontario but living in Quebec with my husband. Feel free to ask me questions about suppliers and selling online from Canada. I've been at this about 1.5 years and really love the craft! We Canadians have a challenge in that it's harder to get some of the higher quality tools and supplies, because shipping from the USA can get stupid expensive, especially when you factor in the duty fees. Sometimes it's worth it, other times, not so much. I too will look up the Tundra guild, although it's a little too far for me to participate in person. Looking forward to hearing more from you!

Brilliant! I've been struggling to figure out how to store my hides. This is a wonderful solution! What exactly is a dog tug? Like a tug-of-war toy?

Stunning! Even the shells look to be perfectly aligned. I'm sure your mother was thrilled!

Thanks so much for sharing this! My husband has been asking for an archery guard for a while. It's great to have such a detailed pattern and instructions! Saved it to my desktop.

I also struggle with this tool. I've ruined a lot of good strips because I accidentally skived to a feather edge. I've found that it's easier to skive wet leather. The best time is just after soaking it for casing, before you put it in the fridge to case overnight. Not all the replacement blades come sharp. I struggled with a dull one for months, thinking that this was normal as it had always been that hard to use. There was a huge improvement when I replaced the blade again. I've been eyeing some of the skiving knives on goodsjapan. Sounds like there's a bit of a learning curve there, but you'll get better and more consistent results with less frustration.

Definitely get some good sheridan bevellers. You won't BELIEVE how the quality of your work goes up with just this one tool upgrade. If you have some extra cash around, Barry King also sells some "concave" and "convex" bevellers, which I found useful at certain points of teeny tiny celtic knots. I've attached the concave and round beveller pictures from Barry King's website.

Dog collar sizing has been a challenge for me. I sell dog collars online, and used to simply ask for a "collar size" in inches. People measure their dogs in many different ways, some tighten the tape on the dog's neck, which essentially is the "neck size". They don't all measure the on the same part of the dog's neck; if they measure too high, you get a "throat size"! The problem in measuring from the fold of the buckle of an existing collar, is that not all buckles are of the same length. After having two collars come back due to sizing issues, I started attaching the following image to my listings. It only took me 10 minutes to draw up in photoshop. I have not had any sizing problems since.

Deleted post (was asking about light, med, heavy definitions), found my answer in http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=25239

Nice work! Edges look perfect and the stitching is even. What machine did you use?

I've used metallic pigment powders in tan kote to antique black leather. The contrast came out very well, and has a unique effect. The "antique" part is lighter than the black background, so I suppose you could call it a reverse-antique.

You can dilute them with water for lighter shades. Some skins absorb more dye than others, so it's always a good idea to test it on a piece of scrap that came from the same hide to see how the colour will turn out. Personally, I found the blue and green pro waterstains (Eco flo) to be dull and ugly. The browns and reds are fine. Fiebings spirit dyes are much brighter, and I've heard great things about angelus dyes as well.

Hello everyone, I greatly appreciate the sentiment of you wanting to pitch in, but we can definitely afford the $300 + shipping for everything. My husband just called and left a message for Grady, and we're hoping he gets back to us soon! Now we just have to find some granite slabs locally until I can get my desk rebuilt (see http://salukifeathers.com/271/a-look-into-the-workshop/) Thanks! Julia

Thank you guys for your kind words! I'm surprised how many of you have come forth with similar stories. I thought house fires were rare, but it seems to have affected a lot of people. It's still early, but I think our insurance will cover all or most of my lost leather stuff. I have most of the essentials, and when insurance money comes in I'm going to beg Tandy to sell me the same items I bought from them previously for the same prices I collected them at over the last year. Another heartening thing, is that all the folks who had open orders on etsy opted to wait an extra couple of weeks for their dog collars/leashes instead of accepting full refunds. I can't wait to get started on their projects. I'm telling everyone I know that you should take a video camera around your house once a year and get clear images of everything you own. Store it somewhere else. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, and you need to be able to prove your possessions to your insurance. You always think bad things only happen to OTHER people, but no one is immune! I was lucky that I blogged about my workroom not long before the fire, so I can prove I owned most of the things I claim for my hobby, at least. Not so for most of the rest of the house. We're limited to photos I took in the house of the puppies growing up, for the most part, and those were only taken in the main living areas. We realize that we're lucky. If we'd lost each other or one of our fur kids... I can't even think about it.

I can't believe I'm posting this a few scant weeks since I posted a photo blog about my beloved workroom. On, April 5 2013, our house was consumed by flames. Everything was destroyed. I'm cross-posting this from my blog because I think you guys can appreciate my grief over losing my leathercraft workroom. I'm not even sure why I'm posting, I think I'm still in a state of shock over this whole thing. In this photo, my husband steps over the rubble where my workbench used to be. You can still see the granite that used to top my workbench around the level of my husband's left knee. Right now, we're both still a little in shock, and I can't help but feel that all we have to do is drive home and everything will be as it was. The fire started very quickly. I was out grocery shopping when my husband heard a BANG and a "whoooosh" type of noise from where he was working to repair a computer upstairs. He herded the cats and the dogs down to the main floor and then the basement, and managed to get them to safety by placing the cats in a backpack, wrapping a leash through both dog's collars to better control them simultaneously, and escaped out the basement patio doors. After depositing the animals in the shed he ran back to collect our turtles (also in the basement), and on his way out dashed into my workroom (beside the turtle room) and swept everything from the top of my work bench into a bag, grabbed my laptop and fled the building to safety. In this photo, everything my husband swept off the table into the bag was dumped into a blue bin (the bag had a hole and we didn't want to lose anything). In this photo, we've arranged everything on the wood coffee table in my in-laws' basement. He managed to save a lot of the custom-made and hard to get cross-border items (we're Canadian, and most of the best handmade Western Leathercraft tools are made in the USA). My Barry King tools, Bearman maul, makers stamps, and custom swivel knives would have been difficult to replace in a reasonable amount of time. While this may sound like a bad Fed-Ex commercial, he also managed to save the last new collar I had almost completed (also on the bench). All it needs is for its hardware to be sewn on. With an order to CraftJapan for new sewing tools and thread, I should still be able to send this one out, even if it won't quite arrive on time. I didn't cry until last night when I went through what he managed to save from the fire. I was so HAPPY that he saved these, as silly as it sounds. I had so many more tools, collections of dyes, and other supplies that were lost, but with the pieces he saved I have a great base with which to rebuild my workroom. It will be a long journey but I'm trying to stay positive. We are safe, our pets are safe, and that's all that really matters, isn't it? Thanks for listening.