immiketoo

Agreed. Fantastic service even to Europe. Far better than other suppliers out there.

I have read and re-read that book many times. I still do it differently. I mark my holes with a stitch wheel. Then I poke all my holes with the leather piece flat on the surface using a piece of leather and a cutting board to stop my awl from going through to the table. I have become pretty good at keeping it aligned properly, and it works for me. Then, when I go to the stitching horse, all I need to do is stitch, although sometimes I do keep the awl in my hand in case theres a difficult hole. I know it's not traditional and I don't care. It was how I was able to get consistent, good looking stitches on my work. Now, I have tried a lot of awls by a lot of makers, and I finally found one that is exceptional. It's not fancy, but it does the trick. Sharp, but not TOO sharp. One maker makes them so sharp they cut the leather and that makes for ugly stitching. Sure, it goes through a mile of leather with ease, but the holes are ugly. So, the one I have been using and will likely add another one or two is made by LederLouis in Switzerland. He ships to the states and they are well worth the money. He makes prepared blades that will fit existing hafts and he makes finished awls with very plain handles. https://shop.leder-louis.ch/product/Diamond-awl-ready-to-use-45-mm-S/1595 Here's some stitching I was able to do using the methods described above and with this awl. Hope this helps. Just a different approach.

If you split, I'd like that M&P shield please

My pleasure, sir.

Or Diamond Dave

The best advice I can give you is to start at the top and tool the parts closest to the surface of the leather first and work your way down doing the background last. So, foreground to background. Then, with many vehicles, there are a lot of straight lines. Careful tracing or transfer to the leather is essential. You can print your image onto vellum and transfer it to the leather before it dries, but that has as many issues as traditional transfer, just different. Best to queue up some practice pieces with an image you like. Remember a lot of detail is hard to do, so a stylized image or simplified one might be best. This one is free.

One thing I do that may help is I play with the contrast and exposure in my photo editor to ensure I can see all the details I want. Sometimes detail is lost in photos and our brains filter the info to make the pic look correct. In other words, we see what isn't there. Photo editing allows that info to be printed and therefore transferred to the paper.

What kind of inspiration? Pictures? How to? I took some cool bulldozer pics a few years back if you want them...otherwise google!

Yes, we shall see how the finish fares. Hopefully you've found a solution. As for your background, that's doubly impressive. Ian more than happy to offer whatever help I can, but I doubt you'll need much in the future. Stay in touch and we can talk about hair and eyebrows!

This. My video is just showing the guy I sharpened the for that it works the way he uses is. The technique is terrible, but he skives sandal straps on the sole while the shoe is still in the last. He complained that the angle of the blade wouldn’t work for pulling it toward him. I was just showing him that it would work. Disregard the shitty technique.

Andrew, if you have found a UV protective finish that works, you might not experience the darkening, or maybe it will delay it for a long time. I don’t use a product like that so I can’t offer any opinion other than I’d like to see your results over the course of time. In the piece with the braid, you can see my struggle with the lips (well, all of it really) and how badly I mangled it. Do you have some sort of art background? Most people that can pull off a first piece have some sort of familiarity or artistic history. Again, well done.

Clean is the most important. Speed will come with practice and strength development. Its an unusual motion. And hey, everyone needs a doorstop!

Now your cooking with gas! Lisa sells a good knife. The super skiver makes a good doorstop I kid. There ar those that can wield that think like magic. I am not one of them.

I carried a 1911 on the job like this for 20 years. It is the only recommended was as noted above, but I ALWAYS got comments about it from civilians. Freaks people out. Oh well. By the way, love the hidden loops! That is some BEEFY thread though. Was it hard to stitch?

As someone who specializes in (and teaches) facial carving, I think this is a fantastic first effort. The most impressive thing about this carving is the lips. They are the most difficult part to reproduce. While the eyes are the most important, the lips or mouth make this piece. So much of the expression comes from the subtle curves of the lips. My only recommendation is the technique you used for the hair. There is only one way to make realistic looking hair textures and that is one strand at a time. Its a pain in the ass, but anything else detracts from the image in my experience. I've never had much for floral carving. It's over done, mostly stamp by numbers (And often poorly, with deco cuts that are nothing more than unplanned scratches). Faces take skill, subtlety and most of all attention to detail. Very impressive. One other thing. You may want to experiment with acrylic paint for coloring. Leather will darken with time, and in a year or so, you'll have Mexican Cameron Diaz due to the natural darkening of the leather. Also, here are my first two attempts at faces. I'll let you decide which one is which

Now that I am home, here are a few things I've used the gold paint on. Stuff is from a few years ago (2015) and they're all still holding up well. Its not dye, but it works quite well. The only think is you need a few coats to kill the transparency of it.

Any time. I’ll be doing a review on them soon, but if it’s like anything else they have, they’re nice.

There is a decent one available at Rickert Werkzeuge from Germany. Check them out.

Here's the tool I use. It works until I can afford a bell skiver.

Lol...fine! I just deleted it for you. I thought you were just very excited

Here’s a knife I sharpened for a local sandal maker. He sharpened it with a square rasp and the sidewalk. I had a lot of work to do, but it was all done with a coarse oil stone, the sand paper in 500, 1000, and 2000 grit variants.

I am no expert, but I am a sharp enthusiast. I learned form Terry Knipshield, and he is the king of sharp. Once you see how sharp something can be, you can't go back. Agreed. I have one expensive Japanese stone that cost a small fortune, and I only use it for finishing on mirror polish, but Ive found that for most things, you can get just as good results from 8k grit honing tapes for a fraction of the cost.

Lumiere gold acrylic paint.

In addition to the above, using a photo editor to change the image to black and white, then adjust contrast and brightness levels to make sure all the details of the eyes and nose and the dark areas are visible helps tremendously.

I have a box of whet stones and they sit there. Sand paper is far easier, less expensive and I get pretty amazing results by starting at 400 and going up to 2000 grit before a final polish. Looks like a mirror and skives with ease. I lay the paper right on my stamping stone and go to work