Reegesc

Love your handle idea.

Sorry, I don't understand your question. For Chicago screws you use the female end with a base to solder to the coin. For rivets you use the male end with a base to solder to the coin. Then you use the rivet cap (female) or the Chicago screw (male) to attach the concho to leather. I don't think there is such a thing as a rivet or Chicago screw without a base and certainly not without a cap or screw. How would you attach it to anything without a cap or screw? Did you watch the video? Pretty much explains it.

Well, it's a start...but they have a long way to go. The key thing is to energize new blood. The ONLY business I see doing that is Tony See's Etsy platform. That guy is knocking out of the park. Please go go check out his Facebook group. All young people making great stuff and having a blast. Selling Ritza thread and Angelus is not going to do it. There needs to be fundamental change to the approach with this art form if it is going to survive.

@JhLeatherwood --- You are spot on about Tony See. He is singularly the bright spot in leather craft today. I've had many conversations with him and his Facebook group are a fanatical group of fans. Talk about creative...wow. The guy just blows me away.

@Spryos -- Agreed. Harry Rogers videos are great. He's such a likable guy, so down to earth. Another point I'd like to make is there is to much emphasis on the technical aspect of leather working. What is needed is more emphasis on creativity and freeform design and frankly that means new blood and new thinking.

@allinea -- Excellent post

Beautiful work man. Really, very nice.

I got one better than that. A Scottish joke -- "McGregor the Goat F****r". But darn it, I just gave away the punch line.

Thanks man...that's exactly what is needed. kudos to you

Hahaha..... a thinking person and funny. I like you already.

Yes, it's a salacious title but how else can one get eyeballs diverted from the ass grabbing "Show Off" section? Be that as it may, if you have made it this far then perhaps you're a thinking person. Welcome. The following is a rant about the state of the leather working craft industry. In my opinion, it's an appalling state of affairs. Please weigh in with your thoughts. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The other thing that I seem to be the only one who gets this, which means the only one to think about and be pissed off about, concerned about it, would like to do something about it. And that my fellow leatherwokring compadres is that our industry is the red headed step child of all the crafts and it's shrinking . It pains me that the craft I love so much is represented by a company as clueless and as incompetent as Tandy is. I'm specifically referring to their abdication of responsibility as the defacto industry leader. Self interest alone should be motivation enough to take a leadership position in our micro market. But honestly, in the fourteen years I've been working with leather, I cannot think of one single innovative anything that has come out of the Tandy camp. They are the industry leader, but they do nothing to advance the craft. Just the same old boring crap, frozen in time....1964. By my estimates, our micro craft market here in the US is around $300M year in revenue. That includes all the retailers and the micro tanneries who cater to us and all the handmade goods we make and some of us sell. You may not know this since Tandy looms large in our minds as the largest retailer in our micro industry, but Tandy is a tiny company at $83M in revenue. To put that in perspective, the average new car dealership in the United States does about $40M in sales per year. A car lot, for Pete's sakes, is half the size of Tandy. Wrap your mind around that for a moment. In contrast, The total US crafting industry which we are a part of is...drum roll... a whopping $50 BILLION industry. F I F T Y B I L L I O N U N I T E D S T A T E S D O L L A R S. Are you familiar with the Scrapbooking craft, that frivolous fluffy stationary craft that glues various items to stationary to decorate scrapbooks? That goofy craft is a $1.5 Billion market and that is down from its height of $2.5 Billion a decade ago. But leathercraft can only command $250M? Our craft is a useful craft. We actually make stuff that is useful and has purpose, and yet we weigh in at just one sixth the size of a useless, whimsical craft like Scrapbooking? How in the hell is that even remotely possible? And while the US crafting industry is growing and forecasted to continue growing, leathercraft is forecasted to contract 5-10% in the mid- term. Who, I ask you, is minding the ship here?

And mad respect for you too, Tugadude, the soft spoken artist ambassador. xxxooo

First off, I have mad respect for you, YinTx, so thank you for quoting my point about the old guard and how this art form is literally dying before us and that we, the artists, are doing nothing to stop it. It's a travesty.

I realize how rude my voice comes across, how it violates etiquette and sensibilities, but the issue resonates. You're thinking about it and that's all that matters. Maybe, just maybe, a few minds are now shifted toward a better way forward. ~deep bow~ You're welcome.

Nothing against Albob or what he made or even to show it off. I'm making the broader point that this art form is dominated by old guard practitioners who value technique over design and that thinking is taking the art form nowhere, killing it in fact. But I will say this, there is one person who is single handedly pushing it forward -- Tony See -- but sadly even he doesn't get it.

Here's a schematic that I took a screen shot of some time back. I don't remember having even taken it let alone the source. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't but here it is at any rate.

Thanks for the source, That set is a lot closer to the real hardware than what Ohio Bag sells. Yours uses those tiny rivets as Hermes does whereas Ohio Bag uses screws and has fake rivet dents in the front. Very cool, thanks.

, Wiow, those are awesome,, Great job on both your leatherwork and metalwork. With skills like that, you could make anything.

Yep and the best accompanying videos too. God I wish he was around back when I started out. Back then we didn't even have paper. You had to "visualize, memorize, and vocalize by saying goofy sing song phrases like One Two apply the glue. Three four apply some more. Five six dry then stick. Seven eight, now cut it straight. Nine ten...I forget what that one was. Oh remember, Nine ten don't throw your cigarette butts in the trash bin. We said it but nobody followed that one.

Ever read "Tobacco Road" by Erskine Caldwell?. It's set in the very rural Applachia circa 1932, sort of a precursor to the" Grapes of Wrath". The way you describe your upbringing reminds me of that novel and how for fun the kids would throw rocks against the side of their house. It such a surreal scenario you don't know whether to laugh or be empathetically depressed. That said, there's something to be said for not knowing what you don't know. I mean you can't long for that which you haven't experienced. . Ya know what? That's bollucks. Provenciality is a waste of life and its only good because its familiar. Well, for old folks it doesn't matter much, but for kids;...you can't grow kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown. From the sound of it, you know this quite well.

Good job. Your enthusiasm is infectious. This old craft needs you and a whole lot more just like you to move it forward with new ideas, new designs, new thinking. There's a group on Facebook, six thousand strong, mostly young people like yourself who are doing some incredible leatherwork. Check them out if you get a chance.

Oh we'll come back around to leather working eventually. I spent a year and half in Dublin and absolutely loved it. Well, Ireland itself isn't anything to write home about. If you seen one idyllic farm outlined with an ancient rock wall, framed in green and dotted with puffs of brilliant white wool from distant scattered sheep, you've seen them all. What makes Ireland great are the Irish. Just the loveliest people. Stubborn sonsofbitches but lovely nonetheless. And singers, my god what beautiful voices. I'm a singing fool myself and make karaoke covers on YouTube, been in bands back in the day, so I speak from some authority on that topic. Back to the stubborn part. The gig I was on was negotiating a very complicated joint venture with the Bank of Ireland as it turns out. There was an article in the paper about an international deal that went south and it was a pretty big news event because had it worked out it was going bring a lot of jobs to Ireland. One of the deal guys from the foreign firm said " "Negotiating with the < Irish> is like pushing water uphill with a rake." It certainly felt like that at times. But after 5 pm, the ties came off and the pints flowed and we were best of friends. I was the finance guy and hence worked with the numbers and at every opportunity I would get my Irish counterparts to say "third". You know why. I had to go to Ireland to discover the deep kinship that exists between the US and Ireland. Once there I learned that one in four Americans claim Irish ancestry. I was shocked to discover that Dubliners celebrate the Fourth of July,....fireworks, the whole deal. I've traveled all over the world. There is no other country that celebrates the 4th that I'm aware of (Google Brain either, just looked it up). Every Irish person I met had either 1) been to NYC, 2) had a trip planned to NYC, or 3) had relatives living in NYC. A guy on our team, a born and raised American, applied for and received an Irish Passport and citizenship under the long standing statute that anyone who could prove a grandparent was an Irish Citizen was automatically granted citizenship themselves, and their spouse....which also meant he had a EU Passport and the right live and work anywhere in the EU. Lucky Bastard. With a last name of Caffrey, he was shoe in. Me? All German, which is fine, but damn to get that Irish deal, geez... One last Irish story. A local gal was on my team and she talked about growing up poor in rural Ireland. Some little dinky boring village. They didn't even have a TV (that part sounded like hype, but anyway) or maybe it was one channel. She described their social situation as so boring that it could almost cause illness, To counter this and just for the entertainment of it, her family would hangout at the Train Station on Friday evenings and target one traveler. They did this for years, she said, so it was not difficult to pick out just the right person by the way they dressed and conducted themselves. They were after a young traveling foreigner, a budget traveler, an adventurer. Once targeted they swooped in on him (always a him) and sort of demanded that he spend the weekend with them free of charge. They never went home empty handed, And once home they would quiz him about the goings on the world and pick his brain dry over the course of the weekend. She said she got the BEST education from years of those experiences. Even if exaggerated, that's a helluva story.

It's hard to argue with pragmatism. It's like that quote from the movie Platoon where Charlie Sheen (Chris) is explaining why he volunteered to join the Army and even requested Infantry Duty. "I figured why should all the poor guys get drafted and the rich boys get deferrals? Didn't seem right to me." And Ketih David (King) replies "Shit, you gotta be rich to think like that."

Oh Santa, you can't say that, even in the off season. If Nordstroms hears that...<shudder>...you'll be on the Bad Santa list like <snaps fingers> that! It's all downhill from there.

That site looks great and on its way to being awesome if I could figure out how to translate it to English. Do you know how? Usually there's a button to "Translate this page"