WoodBoneAndStone

Beautiful work! Negative comments?!! I don't think so!!!

Incredible!

That is so cool! No insult intended by the Kermit the Frog thing. I was impressed at first sight regardless of what it was! ...and pardon my ignorance!

This is impressive. I'm not sure what it is but really cool shaping. I'm seeing a Kermit The Frog helmet. Please tell us what it is!

Very nice!

Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad to have found this friendly and helpful community. I expect to learn a lot here. What a great resource with all the talent I've seen so far!

If only leatherwork would pay like our regular jobs!

I am new here myself, but why should that stop me from welcoming you to posting?! I know exactly what you mean about the regular job interfering with a serious devotion to leatherwork. The downturn in the economy and extended layoffs is what got me back into leatherwork and brief callbacks to work, though very much needed, have the annoying aspect of interrupting the creative flow.

While I'm quite comfortable sharpening my head knives I would like to know how to best sharpen my Al Stohlman Brand Trim Knife. I once ran across some cylindrical whet stones once and regret not buying them. It seems like something like that would be useful for sharpening a curved blade like this. Please advise.

Although this isn't exactly the way I go about sharpening a head knife it is a good method. I saw one video by someone else that made me cringe. I would freak out if he was doing that to my knife!

As was already said, very clean. I like minimalist, my preferred style.

I have had mixed results with attempts at multicolor projects. I have tried coloring the focal design first and then added a resist before covering the entire project with the darker background color and then wiping it off the resisted area. I found I needed to touch up the color a bit. I have colored the design and then, as Chief suggests, carefully started the background color with a small brush. When using an opaque color Dwight's method works great. Good job on the hawk, Dwight! Regardless of method a little touch up is usually necessary, at least when I do it. I like the shotgun butt cover too. Great job!

A head knife is really quite easy to sharpen if you have a good whetstone, some jeweler's rouge and a leather strop. I actually enjoy sharpening both of mine. It almost puts me in a trance. I'm sure you can sharpen yours yourself. I lay the right tip of the bade on the oiled whetstone almost flat and make small clockwise circles while slowly turning the blade toward the other tip of the blade. When I get to the left tip I reverse the small circles to counterclockwise while slowly turning the blade toward the right tip. Then I flip the head knife over and do the same on the other side. I follow this procedure a number of times. The strop I use consists of a small board with canvass glued to one side and a piece of leather glued to the other side (available at Tandy). I rub jeweler's rouge on the canvass side and pull the blade across it, again laying almost flat, away from the cutting edge starting at the right tip of the blade while turning the blade toward the left tip as I pull it across the canvass. I do this a couple of times on both sides of the blade. Then I go through the same motions on the leather side of the strop. It doesn't need to be a speedy motion on the strop. Just use a little pressure and it will give your knife a razor edge. I hope I explained that clearly enough. You can do it!

Sounds tedious. The only hair-on project I've done was a sheepskin vest. I, too, assembled it inside out but since the wool side was the inside of the vest I was working from the hairy side. Wool getting hung up on the thread and pulling through the stitching holes was a constant annoyance. To avoid that I shaved about a quarter inch of wool from the edges of the leather and ruined some hair clippers in so doing. I have yet to piece together a collar. I only have small pieces of the sheepskin left. Looks like your projects turned out great!

Great job with the heart!

Nice! What material is the red heart?

I bought a small jar of gum tragacanth for burnishing edges and it quickly went moldy. Maybe I should have kept it in the fridge? I have never used the product since and find wetting the edge with dye or water, rubbing the edge with glycerin saddle soap and burnishing with canvass works just as well.

Thank you so much for the welcome and the compliments!

I'm Greg in North Carolina. I'm a Mason by trade and got into leatherwork about 18 years ago when I needed a new tool bag and decided to make my own. I have been working with leather ever since, filling my own needs for leather goods and making things for coworkers. With the downturn in the economy construction came to almost a grinding halt. At the end of 2011 I decided to open a shop on Etsy to sell the things I had created over the years and started doing new work again. I would be honored to have you check out my shop: http://www.etsy.com/...oodBoneAndStone I'm looking forward to learning the ins and outs of this site and interacting with other people who like to create. Just a small sample of my work: