shtoink

I'd say that making your own might be the most fun and rewarding. It can be done a drill press, a lathe, or even the one end of the motor you're using if you can plan it out. The main point is that you don't need to have a specific tool to get the grooves cut. Something to spin the wood you chose, a way to secure it, and something to make the grooves. ( a chisel, sharpened screwdriver, a file with a handle, sandpaper ) The sky is the limit. Another thing you can possibly do is locate someone that might be able to turn one for you and barter for it like eglideride did above. This a nice alternative if you don't have any tools or just not comfortable with making one. I know that other users have made and sold some very impressive burnishers on this forum. I don't have any current data about who is still doing them, but that might be worth looking in to also. These are just my opinions, though.

It's been pretty good. Finished school, started work, got no free time anymore... I'd have given you a call, but I didn't know if you still had your cell or what kind of painful billing it would result in. Glad to see you back on the forums, though.

Awe... It's like a little fairy tale... I jest, but only out of love. I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying yourself over there.

If I were to guess, I'd say that the shank is a 7/32" like that standard Tandy size. It says that it's a 1/4" filigree and the shank is a smaller diameter than that. The Barry King specific one show the shank as the same as the blade width. If you don't mind, could you elaborate on how you sharpened your blade? You say that it still drags and gets stuck, but those aren't things that should happen if it gets a sharp cutting edge and cleanly polished bevels. Also, if your focus is on working with delicate cuts and floral stuff, the filigree style blade sounds like what you need.

I think that it's worth asking if you have gotten your leather prepared for being carved, too. I didn't see it mentioned if you had cased your leather or if you were using veg-tan leather. Going only on what was originally said, if the swivel knife blade was sharpened, it should still cut reasonably well as long as the leather was cased. I saw some good advice, but I also wanted to rule out any simple mistakes that happen as a beginner. You did say that you just got started with leather, so that gives way to the possibility of not knowing how to prepare the leather for carving, which would be a very good reason for the leather to be difficult to cut. Getting a sharp cutting edge on your blade is a good start. Those basic kits have blades with worst condition and all sorts of rough machining/grinding marks on the bevels. The leather still needs to be gotten wet and then let normalize, which is referred to as casing. Getting the leather wet allows the leather to behave in an easier and more predictable way, but it to sit until the water content is at just the right amount for carving. Too wet and it gives a mushy look to your tooling, to dry and it fights you at every step. Quoted from another post on here. A more detailed guide can be found here. I apologize if you had already gone through these steps, I just wanted to make sure that all the easy stuff was eliminated before trying to troubleshoot something specific.

This one doesn't have a single answer, unfortunately. There are lots of blade types and purposes. For the most part, the hacksaw blades get a differential heat treatment. This lets the teeth be hardened while leaving the rest of the blade flexible enough to hold up to cutting without breaking under normal usage. Older blades may have had different methods to harden them or may even have a uniform heat treatment. With the possibility of worn off paint and rust, it may never be known. There are even some that are stainless steel. Unless it says anything about being Bi-Metal or stainless on the packaging, the blade should be uniform carbon steel throughout. The difference in hardness is in only due to the heat treatment. There are a couple things you can do to check to see if it'll be a sufficient steel for a blade. The easiest being to take a section, heat it to a bright red, quench it, then see if it snaps with a clean, brittle fracture. If it does, it should make a reasonable cutting edge after tempering. A butane torch and some experimentation could get you the hardened cutting edge you want. That's a separate topic, however. This makes sense. As long as your straight edge doesn't move, you should be set. It might make things... interesting when working though lines that aren't straight.

I might not be necessary to apply anything to it. Just using it to burnish edges will deposit the various waxes and such you use to burnish the edges right on to the burnisher. This just means a break-in period, I suppose. As long as you can get the working surfaces very shiny and smooth, it should get the job done. The primary reasons to be using any of the exotic woods that these other burnishers are made from has to do with the level of oils/resin existing in the wood and the very tight grain. This allows for a very smooth surface and little to no need to break it in. Bottom line, get your working surfaces smoothed out and then start running some test burnishing on scrap without any additional stuff than you would be using to burnish the edges of the leather. You should feel proud, your burnisher looks great and all it needs is to be put to work.

The only thing I can possibly add to a great video is to put a drop or two of dish soap with your water to help it wet out on the sandpaper. Just drop it directly on the paper and then dribble your water on after, nothing fancy. I've heard other people using of all sorts of different stuff to wet the paper with, but dish soap and water is cheap, easily accessible, works great, and even aids in the final clean up. I will certainly be giving the rounded tip a try, thanks for the video.

I'm a bit surprised that nobody has mentioned Inkscape yet. It's free, being continuously improved, and quite mature and stable as far as open source goes. Just take a look at the features section of their website.

The section pertaining to the making of the stitching chisels starts at about 44:00. There's a few other interesting parts, like the one on sharpening scissors. Probably safe to say they're really sharp, the guy shaves his arm with one of the blades.

I found a similar stamp on Zack White. It should work the same way.

This was what I was thinking. I was under the impression that adding in all those extra holes would actually be reducing the strength. Maybe, it's near the ceiling of the number of holes possible and isn't reducing the strength enough to matter much. It does look kinda cool, though. Is it possible that this was done by hand stitching or edging the needle closer by lifting the foot and tweaking by hand?

Well, now that I don't have school stuff that requires all of my attention, I have been able to work through my backlog of projects. This case is one of those projects. I was unable to sleep recently and couldn't stop thinking about how to work that concept of a kickstand to prop the tool block up I really wanted. I kept working on how the block pivots, available room, complexity of the design. This came after talking some of the folks in the chat and realizing that I was trying to make the kickstand far too complicated. All I really needed to have something pivot into position, fit neatly out of the way when not in use, and possibly use magnets to hold its position. The magnets might not be necessary, but could be a fun addition. I have a couple parts mocked up and started to test fit them. So far, keeping it simple has made a huge difference. I hope to have a few pictures soon.

If I were going to attempt to replicate this, I would look at tools that have the ability to produce a randomized and convincing wood grain. My first thought was something along the lines of those wood grain squeegees. These could be used to vary the distribution of the stain/antique when applying. You'd need to find a way to keep from soaking in too fast so that you could work the squeegee around to make your grain patter. Looking closely at the pictures, though... It doesn't appear that a wood grain squeegee is the tool being used. It looks like there is a fair bit of overlap on the darker sections that reminds me of something along the lines of a stainless steel scouring pad. As long as you weren't using too much pressure when passing one of these scouring pads over the surface, it shouldn't dig into the leather and leave lots of gouges. These are just a couple of guesses based on looking at the provided image. The actual technique may be completely different, but I hope that it gives you a good starting point. As others said above, there have been some pretty interesting results posted in the forum for dealing with wood grain ranging from carving it in by hand to getting an actual chunk of wood and bashing the grain pattern into the leather. I really depends on the results you are looking for and will likely take a bit of experimentation on some scraps to get it down.

The saddle soap and neatsfoot surely can't do any harm... Have there been any issues with sag towards the middle of that quiver style? I tried one similar and it kept bending in the middle. I thought about including some metal or wooden rods to help add rigidity.