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.

Not sure if I have too much I can add, but I'll do my best. Bookbinding can be pretty involved, but it depends on just how you want to go about doing it. I have only done some coptic stitch style bindings, since it fit the project I was working on at the time. For my project, I ended up using some 1.5 - 2.0mm thick leather to wrap it all up in. Anything thicker, and it would not have wrapped around the edges very well. Even then, I still have to do a heap of skiving to keep it from stacking up too thick when the sections overlapped and were all glued down. I think that it would be better to sew the signatures together, then attach the stitches along the spine to the leather strips, but I could be all wrong on that. I tried to find a few links to what I think you might be aiming for... Link 1, Link 2, and Link 3 I know that you can get veg tanned goat skin than is pretty thin, but offers the ability to be tooled. The other aspect is than you can place objects under the leather when wrapping it to give it an extra level of dimension. Maybe some cut scraps of veg tanned that can be shaped to add to you design, the sky is the limit. Based on what I experienced, the thinner leather will likely give a better look and not add a lot of bulk/thickness to the final book. Just in case you are interested, here are some images of the journal that I had made and photographed. The images below are links to the full size. I hope this gives you something to work with.

I wish I had pictures of the one that I had made for Mike (immiketoo). It was made from brass with mostly flat faces that were rounded off near the edges. One face was nearly flat where the other face was more rounded. It was around 14 oz due to the brass, but that meant it didn't need to be swung very hard to get the job done. The taper to the curve near the edges allowed the hammer to flatten out his lacing and stitches without making all sorts of dents. Not marring up the leather with all sorts of dents is the key, though. Several of the ideas above will certainly do the job. It will likely depend on what you can source locally and what you find most fitting for your task. Some of the hammer profiles meant for auto body work are already very close and you easily modify a rawhide mallet face, too. Had I known how much of a chore it was going to be to make that hammer with my current tools, I probably never would have started. I learned a great deal along the way and a few new ways not to do things, too.

This is, indeed, a swivel knife. It's meant to be used as a drag style knife where the cutter follows the direction of the movement of your hand. The (now dead?) TangleBoss was a much nicer knife based on the same concept. I was working on a project that was meant to make replacement blades for these. It was put on the back burner and should probably be finished up and crossed off my list. I was even entertaining the idea of making an adapter to fit them in a stock swivel knife and sharpening jig. A forum member, by the name of supershute had a post with pictures of a brand new one, the box, and instruction sheet, if you want to take a peek at it. I have heard that some people really liked using these things.

Can't help with the leather, but I can point you in the right direction for something that might be able to help with running power tools where you're at. It's a Step Up/Down transformer able to deal with 50/60Hz compatibility and handles 5000W. Here's 10,000W version... I looked up lots of them, these were the two that looked like they might do what you need and had the best reviews. I suppose this only helps if you brought all your tools with you, though. No idea what shipping would be, so you might just need to start keeping an eye out for deal at "car boot sales" and what not.

If I were to guess, it'd be to make it easier to put a border around and inside curve. I noticed when he was doing the demo on that bit of scrap that he had no issues transitioning along that odd compound curve. I don't think a flat fence would work for such a task. It'd probably be easy enough to make a flat faced guide to do up a continuous straight edge, like a belt. He might even have one that just got camera shy, too.

After making this post a few days earlier, I ran across some other stuff that might be worth sharing. I do know that there is a huge number of people here and we cover a wide variety of skills, interests, and area of expertise. Some may not be interested in this, so please keep that in mind. For those that do like mixing things up a bit and blending new with old, this might be right up your alley. So far, I only found two artists that have a large section of works that might translate pretty well to leather. First up, a gentleman by the name of Alex Konahin, from Latvia, has some incredible illustrations that contains some very curious subject matter to place traditional styles of embellishment and decoration. Like Tiffanys open an entomologist line, or something. You can see his gallery on his website. I linked to the animals sections, bet the other pages have even more. Next, is a prolific artist name Si Scott. He's out of the UK, has done a lot of work, and plenty for some really big companies. It's possible that you've seen his work without realizing it, too. It isn't immediately obvious, but his gallery has some potentially NSFW stuff in it if you scroll down a ways. I suggest looking at this google image search that shows much more of his work with lower risk of NSFW things and more straight on shots of the work. I would say that Si Scott's work has a very fluid feel to it, maybe tribal, but far less jagged or abrupt. If I run across any other examples that look like they might translate well, I can add them in. P.S. NSFW stands for Not Safe For Work

I was actually getting ready to add Inkscape to the list I made. It slipped my mind earlier when making it, but I was focused specifically on CAD related software and it slipped my mind. They mentioned on their website that they are planning the next release soon and to switching to a shorter time period between releases and bug fixes along with it. They also mention in the FAQs that several file formats are supported natively and that some other formats could be exported to with specific steps explained. I did locate some information on how to make GIMP look and behave more like Photoshop. That was always my issue when I tried using it, because it felt far too foreign. How to link 1 and link 2

For my fellow geeks and nerds, I stumbled on something pretty cool. I am not the artist or affiliated, but figured that it was too awesome not to share. Maybe someone here can find a use or inspiration from it. All credit needs to go to this guy, a graphic designer from Missouri.

This thread truly shows that the sky is the limit for what to use, doesn't it? I am most familiar with SolidWorks, so I understand the "using what you know best" aspect of it. That's really the crux of it, though. If you know how to sketch out some designs on paper and turn those into a functioning object, then stick with that. If you know how to model it all out in a software package and then create a flattened pattern, then that's awesome, too. It just comes down to what you know or are willing to learn to get the particular task you have done. I comment on this because I just recently had to start looking at different software packages that allow me to model some hobby specific things without breaking the bank or violating any licensing restrictions. I don't have the spare funds to purchase a non-educational SolidWorks license, so it mean searching around for something else that had a similar work flow with a price tag that is much lower or free. Not that the several thousand dollar price tag is unjustified, just not currently possible for my wallet to handle. Here's a list of some of the things I found. Free: (completely and provisional) FreeCAD: Open source, totally free, and not very intuitive. It works, and had loads of features, tutorials, an active developer, and a forum, so help is pretty easily gotten if it's needed. I found it functional, but too different from what I am familiar with to be able to be effective for my needs. SketchUp: Now owned by Trimble Navigation, which means new licensing options. Free for personal, non-profit, or educational purposes, but the Pro version requires purchasing. Well established and pretty simple to pick up. Having a shallow learning curve, a huge library of help, tutorials, and pre-built models is excellent. SALOME: Open source, and totally free. This is a huge modeling and simulation package with loads of options. It has a pretty steep learning curve, but lots of tutorials and videos to help you out. The work flow is it a bit weird, but capable of some pretty complex and high level stuff. progeCAD 2009 Smart: Free for non-commercial stuff. I didn't look too closely at this one, yet. It does look to have a healthy list of features, but I can't comment on much else. flood: I intended on playing around with this, but have yet to get to that, just yet. It looks like a purely online, web and cloud based tool for parametric solid modeling. I couldn't find anything on licensing, but the code is open sourced, stored on github, and is still in beta. Onshape: I intended on testing this one, too. It has both free and paid options, but I didn't check the fine print for the details on it. Lots of options and the tutorial videos looked like the workflow was similar to SolidWorks. The video I watched had a guy build a pretty interesting birdhouse, for several birds, and create an assembly from multiple parts with ease. It looked promising. fusion 360: A newer package from Autodesk that has a similar workflow SolidWorks, tons of features, and flexible pricing and trial options. This is the one I am playing with at the moment. It's a free trial, but can remain free for educational and hobby ($1000 per year and under) purposes. So far, it looks very nice and pretty straight forwards to pick up. Tons of features! Payed Licensing: Geomagic: I was not able to test this one out. I don't know the pricing due it needing a put in a request for it, but they offer a free trial. PTC Creo: This used to be Pro/ENGINEER. I didn't get to test this out. There are some free software tools and a free trial. You need to place a request for pricing, so I don't know much else beyond that. SolidFace: This software looks like it has a modern style of workflow for parametric modeling and a pretty long list of features and capabilities. I didn't test it, but there is pricing and a free trial from the website. Cubify: Several options for different needs, but lots of features for the price. Does have a free trial, but I didn't test this one out. I hope that someone finds some use from this list. I know that most of these software packages won't be for everyone, but maybe it'll give an option, or alternative, to those interested in getting started, or looking to switch to something new.

Very clean work!