MonicaJacobson

Okay, that's awesome. I do like the hide from the last roll top bag you made. It was intentionally rough looking in a cool way. Yeah, I get you. It's a picture of a hide from a general batch, and that's better than a picture of a 2 inch square bit of hide.

Okay, I wondered about that. I wasn't sure they'd have the time to pay such close attention to each hide. I thought it'd be more like, "throw it in the box, out it goes." And whenever I looked at the webpage, everything was so dauntingly varied, textured, lined, and mottled. I guess that means you're getting a real picture. There's nothing more frustrating than a tiny, generic color when you're trying to see what a hide is like. So... cool. I'll definitely try to order some Horween from them. I had resigned myself to picking up whatever Springfield had and hoping for the best.

Thanks biglew - I bought some very nice Horween Dublin from Springfield, and I've been trying to get up the gumption to buy from Maverick. I hope they're not leaving the country... @Red Cent - Thanks, I'll look into those. I'm going to try some Bridle Leather from Wicket & Craig, but that's still a smooth leather. Maybe it won't matter, and no one will ask for a more textured look once I've made a few things with nicer leathers.

Very nice! I love the geometric stamping on the spine and back, and I also like that it's not necessarily a typical design.

Very cool!

I'm in a bit of a fix. I made this bag in Austin leather, and now I want to move away from using Tandy leather. Don't get me wrong, Tandy was awesome and I wouldn't have been able to get started without it, but at $14.60 per square foot, I could do better buying Horween from Tannery Row. However, a lot of people really like the textured look. So what kind of leather could I use that would be a good stand-in, but good quality? I saw that Springfield has Waterbuffalo, some of it done Crazy Horse style, but I don't know how waterbuffalo wears, or anything about the Crazy Horse stuff. Thanks, Monica

Ditto zuludog - I think you do your best work if you're making something you want or need. There are all sorts of people, and some people thrive on practice, but I like to make something useful, or I cut corners and do sloppy work. As a result, lots of things I made were really crappy. However, I had a great time making them. I made some tobacco pouches for my Dad and brothers, some journals and journal covers for my sisters, lots of bracelets and a few poorly designed wallets. Good luck on your search for cheap tools. Do you have craigslist in the UK? I had similar trouble, starting out - no money for it at all. I bought the bare minimum of tools, and scraped along, buying a few more things every couple of months. Here's a list of the things I got in the first few months, as a bare minimum kit: awl mallet (I use an $8.00 deadblow hammer from Shars.com) A few dyes Resolene or Saddle Lac - some people use mop & glow Someone's old Tandy stamping tools I bought on Ebay Tandy Pro swivel knife Angled swivel knife blade Strop edge beveler grooving tool needles thread saddle soap or gum trag (I didn't have these - I was happily oblivious of the need to burnish edges) edge burnisher I didn't have a pricking iron at the time, but it makes a huge difference. You can either buy the overstitch wheel to mark where to make holes to make sure they're evenly spaced, or you can train your eye (which can take a while), or you can buy a pricking iron. If you do that, you need a four prong one and a two prong one. Depending on the type of project you want to do, the slits and the spaces between them need to be smaller. Roughly 6 stitches per inch for a bag, and more like 8 - 10 stitches per inch for wallets. (Though, honestly, you can cheat on that when you start out. It's not the most important thing in the world.) Also, if you're buying things on ebay, you can figure out exactly what you want on Tandy's website, and then search for it on ebay. You should also check Tandy's prices to make sure you're getting a good deal.

Hi Barbara, At least two other people joined in the last month, and said they started leatherworking because they wanted to make collars for their dogs. You're in good company! Your English is great, and welcome to the forum! Monica

The turned lining is awesome. I've only seen one other person do that, so... pretty cool.

Beautiful!

That is a beautiful bag. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have any trouble making money with purse making. You could always do an online store (or local) and say you don't do custom, but you'll make stuff, and if someone happens to like it, you'll sell it to them. I've done it that way up until this year, and it's been great. I've been doing a lot of custom work over the last couple of months, and I'm not having time to develop new ideas! Anyway, your dog collars are awesome, too. I look forward to seeing what else you make!

Stanly, it's possible that you could avoid turning it completely inside out by using the seams as natural ridges. I'm not saying you should, but you don't seem to like the idea of turning it inside out. Also, if you look up "molded leather dragon" on google, a lot of interesting ideas pop up. I know this isn't what you're interested in doing, but this is an interesting backpack. This mask is supposed to have progress shots, but they're from 2011 and not working. I dare say if you follow the pinterest link through and contact the guy, he'd probably send you some pictures. I really think you're just going to have to give it a try and see what happens. Good luck, and be sure to post what you end up doing, as I'm very interested in how it turns out.

Beautiful tooling, great job!

Hey Allan, it looks great! You should check etsy prices for a basic ballpark figure. I would be tempted to charge more like $150 - 200 for something like that, but I'm also really bad at charging my friends what I should charge. Also, I haven't sold any belts at all.... so I'm not really sure what the norm is.

Very nice! I also enjoyed the video, thanks for posting!

Very, very cool!

That's awesome!

That is ridiculously awesome.

Wow, those are sweet.

This is what we all need. Huh, well, it weirdly goes to the guitar - but look on the left and you'll see a LV waffle maker.

Very cool! I really like the one with the small amount of green burl on the top.

Hmm, I think you're going to have to experiment a lot. You could wet-form veg tanned, but I really don't know how well that would work unless you could form it over a dragon-head shaped mold. You could work with paper and figure out a pattern.... you could look up patterns for dragon stuffed animal heads, enlarge them, and turn it inside out after you stitch it together.

Cool! Looks great to me.

Hi from another Atlantian (or at least, Atlanta-ish). Looks great!