SandSquid

No, no.. I have ZERO artistic ability I'll just hang out at a table w/ some projects and be there in case any kid want to do leatherworking I got some headstones (to be used upside down) from the local monument maker: Yeah I was out there this AM and it was really pretty dim, but it is what it is. I think for the basic punches it will be OK. I doubt anybody is going to tackle basketweave, etc.

Depends on each kid. Once at the Craft Hut, each child is free to explore whatever interest them at the time: braiding gimp tie dyeing beading friendship bracelets painting rocks leatherworking

Yesterday, was Day -1. my family and I drove the 2.5 hours from our home to Summer Camp, where we have been blessed with the ability to teach our passion, archery to 2,000+ youngsters across12 weeks of summer camp for the past few summers. We will continue to do this as long as we are able. This summer I'm branching out and going to try and revive the stagnant leather-working portion of the Arts&Crafts program... Today is Day 0, a rest and relaxation "get your head together" day, tomorrow the first group of kids arrive. When I'm not on the archery range, this will be my second home: It's not much but it's a roof.... -- John Gunterman @ Lakeshore UMA 1458 Pilot Knob Rd. Eva, TN 38333 http://lakeshoreuma.com/main/

We have arrived! I can already feel the stresses of the outside world slipping away.

I'll need to see how the wristbands do to get us started, if they go well I can afford to buy other projects. If they don't sell, well then I'm only "out" two hours of running the strap cutter and helping relieve Luke of some of his scrap pile ;-)

What, NOW?!?!?!

I have various expensive diversions as my wife calls them; woodworking, reloading, home brewing and vinting, now leather-working... Every one of these obsessions started out the same way; I wanted something and was appalled at the quality and price and decided I could make my own for less $ and better quality. Ask my wife about her $2,000 coffee table. My wife has the MBA and tracks every penny for me, I'm just the Military Intel Weenie looking to stay sane between and during deployments. I found that if I'm more worried about turning a profit it is no longer enjoyable for me. Woodworking, it took 8 years to recoup all the capital investment I made in equipment and material. Reloading, Forget it! While it cost me 1/4 per bullet versus buying commercial, and my rounds are much more accurate, I shoot 4x as much. Home Brewing and Vinting again, all my "profits" get consumed, but I can produce what would be a $100. bottle of Amarone for $10. and my back yard looks amazing covered in vines, so my wife stopped bean-counting. A BIG thing must craft-persons don;t take into account is their time. I had serious issues with this in woodworking. If I'm making something that a customer can go out and buy commercially for $90, and lets say that takes me 10 hours, and $60 in materials & supplies, how do I justify paying myself a meager $10/Hr. and charge them $160 for it? Well, I got over that real quick! After three years my wife showed me the numbers and I found out that if I were to pay myself $1 and hour we would LOOSE money! Good thing I had a full time job already to pay the mortgage. But prices went up! And guess what, customers still commissioned pieces, who'd a thunk it? Leatherworking, well I'm still getting started down this rat-hole. All because my wife needed a left-handed leather holster for her 1911. A hundred dollars and a pile of scrap later she has one. Now all my cop/mil/gun-nut buddies want me to make them holsters for them, and the summer camp I volunteer at wants me to try and teach leather-working, in addition to archery, to 200+/- kids per week.... Right now, I'm 100% dead set that this will remain a hobby, I do not want to loose my passion for it. My buddies who want holsters can make donations to my Church's Youth Group fund, and I can buy the stuff I need to teach the kids out of that. That is the plan, and it sounds nice and all... OK, so I just dropped a few hundred dollars at Springfield leather and I have only seen $80 come into the fund. Do I care? Not really. That $80 will produce 200+ wrist bands the kids will (hopefully) buy at $5.00 each. Of that $2 will go back into the fund to buy more stuff, and the other $3 will go into the camps' scholarship fund to help inner-city kids from the neighborhood centers to come to camp who would not otherwise have the opportunity to get to go to cam.. totally "worth it" IMO.

My "new" headstone is 12" x 24" x 4" and weighs in at a respectable 90# Light enough to move it if I have to, heavy enough that it's not going anywhere unless I move it there. Nice part is if I were to gauge the strenth of my mallet whacks, I'm say Im using 25% less whack to get the same impression.

I believe she was asking to see the Oberon Journal Cover...

I used "The Original Strap Cutter" for almost two hours straight yesterday and was duly impressed. My Mentor warned me that if I were to buy one, NOT to by the Tandy because thought it looks the same at first glance, it has been "cost optimized" down to a shadow of the original product. A visit to Tandy readily confirmed this, no comparison in construction fit & finish and hardware/fittings

No worries, I'll be there until the first week of August.

PM sent w/ mailing address

. You folks think I should be pretty well set to teach the young-ones if I'm armed with: The LeatherCraft Handbook Art Hand Sewing Leather Lucky 7 Book Lucky 8 Belt Book Craftool Tech-Tips

That would be great, a few days is just fine by me...

A very good friend (& Navy Chief) of mine is retiring and a bunch of folks chipped in to buy him a 3" Magnum Judge. (3" chamber, 3" barrel) I took a tracing of it to work up a holster but having an alread debugged pattern would be über-awesome, since I/we won't have the weapon to for me to model off of until it is back from being engraved. I would like to get as much done as possible while I'm off at camp so when I get home I can just do the wet-molding and turn it over for the gift-wrapping and later presetation Or if someone might have a bluegun they could rent me for a few dollars that would be even better!

After pricing out what 100 snaps, the setter & anvil would cost, I have decided to just punch two holes in each end and let them tie them together with a string, as was first suggested by Luke. It's just a better plan over-all and is more in keeping with the whole "camp" theme.

I spent a few hours over my Mentors shop this afternoon, what Luke is would be too modest to mention but I will, is that he totally hooked us up with material for wrist-bands-a-go-go! After showing me how to use the vintage leather strap cutter he set me to work on a pile of offcuts. After about an hour and a half I had a decent pile of 1" wide straps, of varying lengths, but none less that 12". Now, I just need a strap end punch, a hole punch, a pile of heavy duty line 24 snaps, an anvil &setter. That should keep the kiddies happily pounding away for a while!

The same dumb pilgrim that you been hearin' for twenty days, and smellin' for three! No, thank YOU for the goodies!

Stopped by the monument maker on the way to Tandy. At first they were like; "Sorry, we don't have anything good to give away." I said: "I'm sorry I think you misunderstood me, I have CASH, and my 501c3 and TN Tax Exempt Cert." and showed them all three. "And I want to BUY YOUR SCRAP. And you can write it off on your taxes for _full_retail_value." He disappeared into the office and the Business Manager came out and said: "You want to my scrap, for cash and I can write it off?" "Yes Ma'am!" and I handed her my $65.00 and 501c3 and TN Tax Exempt Cert. She said "come with me out back." We did some digging to find pieces that were good and flat on the back side Came up with 6 pieces all together. Three of them look like: I have three more waiting for me to go back and pick up that are just like the bottom pink slab. I think she called the "pedestal bases" I think I'll like the pre-drilled holes because I can run a power cord up it. or use it to put a gooseneck lamp into, or a dowel in the bottom of my wooden stamp rack to keep it from walking away while pounding.

I KNOW the youth camp I'll be teaching at does not have any sort of proper pounding slab, because I saw kids pounding on picnic table tops in years past... Tandy currently has both 12"x12" quartz slabs and 12"x12" granite slabs on sale for $27.99 Last night, while in that funny state between wake and sleep, I dreamed up a box-frame for it that could be filled with a few inches of sand or stone dust and then the slab set down into the frame. I still can't get the idea of filling the box with sakrete, flaot the creme up for a nice surface, and then glue down a commercial grade 12" square Vinyl Composition Tile to it.... It's CHEAP, heavy, solid, and with the VCT tile for work surface, I don't need to worry about damaging the stone top, tools, or have chips flying into little eyes. Either way I fill the frame, sakrete or sand and slab, it has side handles let into the frame for carrying, and holes along the back side to hold the stamps and mallet. It's pretty cool looking in my minds-eye. Once I get to the maintenance shop I can start working on making a prototype and see if it really works. On my way to Tandy I'm going to hit up the memorial place on Broad Ave... the place you can see on the right, near the end of Sam Cooper Blvd. It's in one of the worst sections of town, an area called Binghampton (frequently misspelled "Binghamton"), made Nationally infamous between August and October of 2004 by 13 shootings of cars driving traveling on Sam Cooper Boulevard. I don't even drive through the area without my 1911 .45ACP cocked and locked. I'm really looking for _small_ pieces, 12"x12" x2" would be about perfect, but if they have a tombstone or two for a decent price .... OK back from the excursion. Stopped by the monument maker on the way to Tandy. At first they were like; "Sorry, we don't have anything good to give away." I said: "I'm sorry I think you misunderstood me, I have CASH, and my 501c3 and TN Tax Exempt Cert." and showed them all three. "And I want to BUY YOUR SCRAP. And you can write it off on your taxes for _full_retail_value." He disappeared into the office and the Business Manager came out and said: "You want to my scrap, for cash and I can write it off?" "Yes Ma'am!" and I handed her my $65.00 and 501c3 and TN Tax Exempt Cert. She said "come with me out back." We did some digging to find pieces that were good and flat on the back side Came up with 6 pieces all together. Three of them look like: I have three more waiting for me to go back and pick up that are just like the bottom pink slab. I think she called the "pedestal bases" I think I'll like the pre-drilled holes because I can run a power cord up it. or use it to put a gooseneck lamp into, or a dowel in the bottom of my wooden stamp rack to keep it from walking away while pounding. I stopped by my friemd and Leather-Working Mentors house and gave him his pick of the litter and he chose one of the two nice rectangular squares and was very happy. I was very happy to be able provide him with something in return for his kindness, patience, and generosity and taking me under his wing and showing me the secrets of the Masters.

Background; For the past 3 years my family has been volunteering at a "faith based youth summer camp"Lakeshore UMA . We provide all the equipment, and run the archery range. (We are all NFAA / USA Archery coaches, and current or former State & Regional Champions. etc...) My wife was a school teacher and had summers off, my parent command allowed me to bank all my leave and use it to take every other week off during the summer. Now she has a better paying job but has to work summers, and I'm an unemployed, returning combat Vet, so guess who gets to spend all 12 weeks at summer camp!!!!! Should be great for helping me "reattach to polite society" as well and stop being so hyper-vigilant. ~ So, someone heard I've been pounding on leather and suggested that, when I had time, I could help out in the Craft Hut and teach some kids how to pound leather as well. Sounds great in theory, but I barely know what the heck I'm doing!!!! Now, many years ago I has a Sensei who used to always say "teaching is learning twice", but really I want the kids to have an enjoyable experience and be able to give mom or dad a nice looking key fob or wrist band instead of a mangle hunk of leather or show them a smashed thumb, know what I mean? If I'm going to do it, I insist that I do it RIGHT. On top of that I have no idea what the Craft Hut actually has for tools, in years past it has not a point of interest for me. I'll find out this weekend when we get there, but we are about 130 miles from the nearest Tandy store, and being unemployed well... Luckily I have been blessed by WinterBear, Bruce Johnson, Elliot, etc. and I have at least one complete set of the basics so as long as I don't have more than one or two kids at a time we should be good for now. I also just got a barely used arbor press which could be useful for setting snaps, etc. And we cannot possibly forget the generosity and tutelage of my mentor, Mr. Luke Hattley!!! I'm thinking of getting a pile of the ubiquitous pre-cut wrist bands and key fobs. Maybe a pre-cut & punched coin purse, or some buckskin or suede trinket bags, But I really want to stay away from having kids use an awl.

Other than sitting on the ground, that is all they have and the craft hut has no room for anything else it's basically a pole barn filled with tables, and one locking storage room. I was thinking I could double or even triple up some 3/4" plywood to set on top of one of the tables. Last night, while in that funny state between wake and sleep, I dreamed up a box-frame for it that could be filled with a few inches of sand or stone dust and then the slab set down into the frame. I still cant get the idea of filling the box with sakrete, flaot the creme up for a nice surface, and then glue down a commercial grade 12" square Vinyl Composition Tile to it.... It's CHEAP, heavy, solid, and with the VCT tile for work surface, I don't need to worry about damaging the stone top, tools, or have chips flying into little eyes. Either way I fill the frame, it has side handles let into the frame for carrying, and holes along the back side to hold the stamps and mallet. It's pretty cool looking in my minds-eye. Once I get to the maintenance shop I can start working on making a prototype and see if it really works. Cool thanks! I'm going to hit up the memorial place on Broad Ave... the place you can see on the right, near the end of Sam Cooper Blvd. I'm really looking for _small_ pieces, like the one you let me borrow, for the kiddies to pound on, but if they have a tombstone or two for a decent price are you interested in one?

I already have some old conveyor belt material... They have our 501c3 on file and give us "gold club" pricing and we don't pay sales tax. I googled up a headstone/memorial place right on the way to tandy, and I raided my secret stash (I had been saving to buy more leather) for so I'm armed with $65 and a positive outlook.

I keep meaning to, as well as the monument maker in town... But we are leaving for camp Friday, and time is short. Funds are even shorter. I'll try visiting one or two on the way to Tandy. Since I'll have cash and know what a 12x2x1.5" piece costs there, I'll know when to walk away or go dumspter diving. I'm half tempted to make a few wooden boxes and fill with sakrete and float the creme up well, then glue down industrial floor tiles...

I KNOW the youth camp I'll be teaching at does not have any sort of proper pounding slab, because I saw kids pounding on picnic table tops in years past... I see Tandy has both 12"x12" quartz slabs and 12"x12" granite slabs on sale for $27.99 Since they are both equal size, and price, which would be my best buy/investment?