Jax

Thats a really nice piece of work, lovely design.

Amazing

We had a power splitter at college & was taught to thin the leather gradually in stages unless you were only taking a small amout off but I would agree with shtoink & check the blade.

yes I can get it from Amazon thanks folks

Thanks will take a look, never thought of Amazon for supplies

Thanks Winter Bear but our feed merchants etc dont sell stuff like that Im in the UK so Im restricted mainly to Tandy or a couple of saddlery makers suppliers but they dont normally do stuff for tooling

Thanks again folks for the input, I have checked my Tandy catalogue & guess what they dont do Lexol, another supplier I use has a large range of Fiebings do they do something I could substitute?

Thank you for the advice, Mike the only ready made carving solution I can get here is the 1 Tandy do, but if water is adequate I ll probably just stick with that only do it properly from now on or maybe as David suggests put a little dish wash soap in it

Ok, I bet this has been asked many times before but those who know me in chat know I can be a little dense at times.. When chatting last night we were talking about sharpening swivel knives & I commented that I struggle which lead to the question of casing. Basically I was only taught to use plain water, put it on the leather with a sponge, leave it for a while then off you go. So I was advised to use a "casing solution" containing baby shampoo, Listerene & something else I can't remember, off I went seaching the forums & found Bob Parks tutorial about wetting the leather & putting it away in a bag overnight, excellent reading, but he only uses plain water, couldn't find a recipe for a solution. So more questions, here in the UK we have hard or soft water (dont know if the same applies in the US) depending on where we live, hard water leaves limescale in kettles etc, would the quaility of the water affect the casing? Is there a recipe anywhere for a casing solution, I might give that a try too? Im sure there are a few different ideas out there on this. Many thanks Jax

Hi Cole the tool would have been a pricking iron, the 1s I use come in different sizes depending how many stitches per inch you want to do & come in 2 tooth (ideal for wavy lines & getting round tight corners etc) 1/2", 1" 11/2" & maybe 2" but not sure on that 1 & I got mine from Dixons here in the UK, although I did have the teeth on mine made smaller, they tend to make them too big for my liking now. Good luck

I found it!!! I have been looking for this to show you Cole its shows how I was taught to stitch. Hope you find it helpful http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=44257&hl=+stitching%20+belt#entry277077

Mike I totally agree with you, I came into chat shortly after the incident you are speaking of & witnessed the distress of the person the involved, I,ve only been chatting for about a week or so & have been made sooo welcome, even with the teasing, which is all part of the fun to me, I have learnt loads & met folk I now consider friends & greatly respect their ideas & opinions, so please lets keep it how it should be friendly & fun so we can all enjoy each others company & share our knowledge however advanced or limited

Hi Cole from your pictures it looks to me as if you have used some kind of punch to make your holes? Try a pricking iron to mark the surface with //////// instead of making holes, then use a "sharp" diamond awl to make your holes ensuring that the diamond shape of the awl follows the slant of the stitch mark, Another point is if you are stitching "double hand" ie with 2 needles make sure the stitch marks go ///// if they go \\\\\ the stitches wont lie correctly. \\\\\ are for single hand stitching but to confuse things even more you can stitch single hand in double hand markings.

Love it Mike

Thats just brilliant..thanks for sharing

Thanks for that Beaverslayer will give it a go & let you know what happens.

Hi Tom, yes it still works on my moms pc which is running vista, haven't tryed it on another with win 7 on yet, already tried other cables & usb ports too. Thanks for the help

Thanks Tom but those didn't work either, wish Id stuck with vista now

Thanks Shtoink, I just think its a pain having to find a reader, get the card out of the camera etc when all I had to do before was plug the camera straight into a usb port, just my opinion. Sylvia yes my laptop does have a card reader but the card from the camera is a different size, thanks for your help though

Hi Ive just had windows 7 put on my laptop & now I cant get pictures from my camera onto the laptop, my friend has tried allsorts but all we get is a device not ready message, we have reinstalled the software, uninstalled it & installed again. the camera is an Olympus X-760, only a little point & shoot affair but plenty good enough for what I do, we cant find any mention of it on the Olympus website by the way. Is there anyway to get it working again just linking it to the laptop or will I have to get a card reader? Thanks in advance Jax

looks to me from the pics that there could be some rawhide in the centre of the leather, it looks darker through the centre to me

Hi Chancey, I'm sorry I cant help in any way but I felt I must say what a lovely thing for you to be doing, such a shame about the circumstances though, your friend sounds like a wonderful person. Good luck with your project I hope someone will soon help you out. Jax

Hi, what method of stitching do you use? We were taught to stitch keepers "single hand" ie only using 1 needle & making a back stitch or I know it won't look as nice but could you put a rivet in your keepers? Stitching keepers can be a pain I've stitched a number of bridles for a saddler in the past.

I know just what you mean, I made a set of driving harness for my dad some years ago & hand stitched it all 10 stitches per inch, some straps are 6' long with 4 rows of stitching....it wasn't just my arms that were aching, me bum was too from sitting for so long

Hi NYIS, if my memory serves me correctly when you hand stitch into machine made holes the stitches lie the opposite way to normal, we tryed all ways of making our stitching quicker neater etc when at college but I think many went back to the old way of making the holes with an awl as they go along, if you ever saw any of the factory stitchers in Walsall they stitch at a phenomenal speed, but they have to they are paid by how many items they stitch.