stevieboy7

Who cares how the iron looks... as long as it works? Doesn't seem to be worth double the price for some fancier aesthetics. I don't know of any good leatherworking guys waiting on the AmyRokes... its just pushed by SimaPrague (they're probably giving him money/products for shoutouts) and all of his fanboys are just following suit. All of the good leatherworkers are either happy with their Blanchards, or have picked up a set of Japanese or Korean Irons that are perfectly fine.

As with most splitters, you're really only going to get 75% of the blade width at max. If you try splitting something that large, your going to run into a few problems with binding if the piece turns at all while feeding,as well, your blade needs to be stupid sharp and perfect everywhere to work that perfectly. It's not impossible, but I wouldn't expect to get constant results/repeatability at any constant rate.

You're looking at least $100 for materials to make anything decent. You need motors, one to power the knife and one to power the roller, or else you need to make them both run off one, or hand-crank. Either way, that can easily add another $100-200 cost. If your son does the metal-work for free, do you not value your time at all? I imagine it's going to take a minimum of 20 -30 hours to get a machine that probably doesnt work. You're going to invest a LOT of time, and a lot of materials and money and have something that doesn't work. There's a reason they're so expensive, they're very complcated machines, that are notoriously finicky. If you want to do it as a challenge, fine, but don't try to label it as saving money, as you're going to end up spending more than buying one to get a working machine.

Will this work or offer any discounts for shipping to Canada? Love your product but the shipping to Canada can hurt at times.

You want to talk about paying a lot of money for space in Vancouver? Expect around $3/sqft /month for shared studio space. Just trying to have enough room to hold all my leather and tools costs so much. Trust me, BC is not much better.

Vergez Blanchard sells what looks to be a very nice set. Honestly, I've been using the cheapo mini punches for like 3 years now without issue. Have you tried getting a different punch surface? and with most leather tools, you need to do upkeep with some fine jewellers files to keep them sharp!

any reason you didn't have the hole punches included into the die?

you can find used kingsleys on eBay for a good price pretty often, just keep looking!

waiting on 0.8mm tiger thread!

Just an FYI before you try to build or purchase anything. All pull-through splitters (homemade and otherwise) are really only meant for leather straps. Anything wider than 2" and youre going to have a very rough time. If you're looking for something to split down leather parts from 8-10oz, you'll need at least a crank splitter, if not motorized. Best option would be to have someone with a band knife splitter to take down the thickness for you.

Just curious how much it costs for you to send a package within the USA? Must be at least $5-10? This you are giving away for free for USA. I don't understand why USA sellers have a hard time taking that "free" cost off of international shipping. I have no problem paying more to have it shipped to me in Canada, but why does USA get free shipping, and international doesn't even get a discount? That's what so frustrating for Canadians.

Thanks for the reply. Considering I got them for nothing and have around 90 of them, even if they're worth a few bucks each, that's pretty great! I think I'll finish cleaning them up and try to sell as a full lot; hopefully someone can actually get some use out of them. The whole lot was in pretty terrible condition, rust about, just kept in piles. in a garage corner.

Hey, I recently bought a BUNCH of old machinery and supplies from a local (mom+pop leather company that closed doors 25+ years ago) He threw in these rusty stamps that I've managed to rejuvinate, and I was wondering if I could get direction on the best way to sell them/if there is anything rare/valuable in here? Is it better for me to sell singularily or as a lot? What is the approx values I'm looking at. I attached a bunch of photos. The stamped on leather are just the ones I've cleaned. Also, A few of the stamps were gold-anodized. I tried cleaning them the same way (rust remover) as I did with all of the chrome tools, but it seems to have taken off the gold coating. Is there any way that I can clean them without removing the coating? Does it hurt to not have the gold coating? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

I was lucky enough to get it! Shipping wise, it was only $30 within Canada. If I want to ship something similar from the States to Canada, 90% of vendors quote $100 plus. So this was a steal.

Where you using a metal hammer with it?

You have to realize that there is 2 types of skiving machines... Edge skiving machine (fortuna, like the one you linked) End skiving machine (like a splitter with a spring tension to skive belt + strap ends) A edge skiving machine is electric. A non-electric edge skiver = skiving knife that you use by hand. End skiving machines are generally ONLY non-electric bench-mounted splitter type blades.

I'm not sure you entirely understand the difference between splitting leather and skiving edges. Theres no possible way that there could be a 2-in-1 machine for this process as they are fundamentally different. (pushing leather through a blade to split, or using a rotating blade to essentially sand the leather from the edges) There will be nothing in your price range for either. The skivers are all around the 1k$ range, and crank splitters start at 600$ + shipping

if your sides are different, then your sewing technique is wrong, listen to Macca. there are a lot of variables in sewing, in the horse, what angle the holes are (pointing up and away from you? or up and towards?) are you stitching towards you? away from you? Left hand priority? right hand priority? and you putting the needles in the right orientation? Are you throwing a loop correctly? Once again, this can only be answered by photos... and you testing every single possible combination.

Motorizing =/= automatically faster and quality will drop. If you want the best quality, you're going to do everything by hand, and take the time. With anything in life you can have 2 of 3 things: Price Quality Speed You can have an inexpensive quality product, but it will be slow(take time). You can have an inexpensive product fast, but quality will suffer. You can have a quality product quickly, but it will cost money. This is why, when you look at all of the people doing high quality items, they are doing it by hand, as price does not matter, and quality is of utmost importance.

What Macca said is enitrely true. Plus, it still seems like you're just coming up with a number off the top of your head. You really need to put some thought into how long this product takes you. Even if EVERYTHING was entirely pre-cut, I think it's impossible for you to make this product (dye, punch holes, stitch, finish edges) in 10 minutes. Seriously, just time yourself. It probably takes around 10 minutes to stitch.... You also just can't say "Oh, I'll get punches made for a 20$ product, that will save time!" Punches cost money... like a decent amount of money (at least 100$ plus for a super simple die. Ontop of that, you need to buy some sort of press (hydraulic, or hand, at $800-$2k for a decent one to save time) or pay someone to do it. And even so, it's going to still take you a decent amount of time to get the die lined up around leather marks, and punch, then reline-up etc. In the end, for the price you're thinking, you'd have to sell 5,000+ product to make a return on investment. I wouldn't even start talking about multiple companies... you haven't even established one! Make some interesting products (your 2 current designs have been done to DEATH by other leatherworkers) and just work on getting better yourself. Sell stuff once you're actually happy with it. The first 5 prototypes of any design you're going to make will be shit, theres no way around it. It takes time and effort to refine a design to the point where its ready for sale. How to create a product: Come up with 10 interesting designs, Make a prototype of each, see what needs changing, make another prototype, change again... etc.etc. Until you've made at least 5 prototypes of each design. Study the EXACT breakdown of the final prototypes you've made. Leather (including shipping to you, time, how easy it is to get again), hardware (any metal) thread, and manufacturing (from when you unroll the leather, to when you have a product that is ready to package (EVERYTHING inbetween is time). Look at which products make sense for at LEAST 2x cost resale. If you want to actually make money ontop of covering costs, charge 2.5-3x and if you want to sell in stores that are not your own, MSRP should equal at least 4x cost. At this point, you set up a store, and properly get to marketing/social media. Now look at this list, you've skipped EVERY step, and just went from idea->sales without any calculations or thought inbetween. If you're actually serious about this, you really should take the right approach. You can't just say "oh I'll make a bifold, that will sell well!", go actually make a bifold, they're not easy to get nice. and take A LOT of time and effort. As well, finding leatherworking apprenticeship is VERY hard to do. I think that every person who has done an apprenticeship (where the master pays you) has done some sort of formal schooling or degree in leatherwork (fairly popular thing in Europe) in North America, leatherworking schools don't really exist. (or, as with europe, are very expensive)

You can't really compare an established 175 year old corporation with a guy who's giddy about getting 9 views on an etsy listing (3 of which were me...) Not trying to shoot anyone down, just trying to keep things realistic here. Especially considering how much he must have spent on tools (who buys blanchard right off the bat?) he will have to sell a lot to just come even. He has nicer tools and supplies than I do.

Yes, I am Hand and Sew. I've been doing the selling deal for about 2 years. I don't know what your age or experiences are, but you can plan and plan all you want, but things (especially leatherwork) never really work out that way. I've had 15000+ views on a promotional video, I've been featured in magazines, blogs, videos, websites... you name it. But all in all, I've only really been able to do about 500 sales (thats including some wholesale I've done on Massdrop) That's less than one sale a day. And that's with a ton of views and traffic through all social media (instagram, facebook, twitter) as well as a lot of self promotion on Reddit. Its fun to have a plan of attack... but like I said, don't expect anything crazy. Certainly don't invest a shitload of money into it. This is a hobby... not a money-maker.

Sorry, It's very hard to tell by the posted pics, and the roll without the sticker on it looks really odd. haha In terms of leather goods on etsy... you really have to put out some interesting product to stand out from the crowd. As many leatherworkers on here will tell you, this is definitely not something that you can gain a living from.. only really enought to pay for the habit if you're lucky enough. First, your stitching looks nice.. but that cast off in the middle of the side looks really weird, and is essentially useless. As well, can't tell if/what you're doing to your edges... Second, your pricing is wayyyy too low. If you're going to create any sort of brand identity, you will want to price correctly. Pricing: (minimum) cost of materials: ~5$ for your leather and thread (if not more...) + wage for time taken: maybe 1.5 hours @ 15$/hr = $22.5 Price it cost you to make: $27.5 MSRP = Price *2 = $55 This makes sense considering the other goods on etsy made by similar makers. You can't (and shouldn't) try to lower your prices to compete with sellers in China/India/wherever, their product is massproduced and low quality. If you lower your price to that, you are saying that you have the same quality product as made in china.... As well, you are devaluing leatherworkers as a whole, saying that your time, effort, tools, and knowledge is worth nothing. Now, you don't need to charge that much.. but it's a good mark for where to start with pricing to cover your costs + time. Depending how happy you are with the particular product, you can charge less (if it's a prototype/ has problems) or more if very polished.

if you're stitching by hand you should probably get some proper sewing thread... I would avoid the low-end machine thread you're using, not very strong and tends to break. if you've already splurged enough to get some vergez tools, I'm sure you can buy some nice french lin cable to match!

You could also lock-stitch this by hand.