Reegesc

YinTX, I've watched your progress over the past five years and must say you've more than demonstrated that you've rightfully earned Journeyman status and might I add your chops suggest Master Level. Beautiful work. Just lovely.

You're not alone. :-) I had a good five years of pipe soldering experience myself before I connected the dots. It almost pisses you off when you discover how easy it is. Here's a 20% off Harbor Freight Coupon for your Doming Set -- good through this weekend 2/24/19

Here's a tutorial I put together on how to make your own coin conchos. There's not much to it really, you just need to learn how to solder, and really that's what this tutorial teaches you. Making coin conchos is sort of incidental once you figure out how to solder. This is something you can master in an afternoon. How-To-Make-Coin-Conchos-2.pdf

A little late to the party on this one, but I have something to offer that adds to Rusty's good point. For my first year I was overly cautious on all my projects, anxious even, worried I was going to screw it up. Finally, I got tired of that approach and just came to terms with myself that it's just a hunk of leather. If I screw it up, who cares? Just start over. From that point on I improved at a much quicker rate and felt far more confident...maybe even too confident. Soon I felt like I could make anything and I did make some cool stuff just figuring it out on my own....shoes, luggage. But 14 years later I'm comfortable in knowing that what that really means is I'm fearless and will take on anything, not that I can make anything. Case in point, this last Christmas I decided to make a stuffed monkey for a buddy's newborn son. Three attempts and all three went in the trash can.

"The "site:leatherworker.net" parameter restricts the search to leatherworker.net" Well I'll be. It never occurred to me that you could direct (or limit as the case may be) Google's search engine toward a site. That is a very cool feature and equally cool tip. Thanks Northmount!

Curiosity finally got the better of me and a Google Image search revealed what the deal is. "Air Bethlehems" -- a meme making the Reddit et al rounds. Trendy, tongue in cheek. "Worn by Jesus game 7 against the Roman's" in the joke genre of "Jesus saves... passes to Moses... he shoots... he scores!" So it's just a funny concept Ok, I get it. What makes it funny, of course is the "Air Bethlehems" meme, which is 90% Nike swoosh and 10% style of gladiator sandal. Further, your motivation is to capitalize on the popularity of the meme now, at it's height. So...it's not the sandals, it's not even the swoosh, it's the meme you're after, the sandals and the swoosh being in support of that and dictates that it has to be the same in order that it be readily identifiable with the meme. And that explains why there isn't an alternative like picking any ol' gladiator sandal and applying your own Nike swoosh. That wouldn't work because people wouldn't get it. All of that makes sense. What doesn't hold together, however, is how owning these sandals translates into social bonus points for you, i.e., usurping cool off the meme? How many people can you reasonably expect to be familiar with the meme? Let's be generous and assume 10,000 people know and love this meme and would go into a fit of giggles seeing you wearing said meme sandals. So the question is, what are the odds that where you live, anyone will make the connection? Without getting too far down the rabbit hole, lets just take a rough percentage of "Meme Knowers" to the population of the country. What that says is that "Meme Knowers" are evenly distributed in the U.S. including where you are. That works out to a probability of any one person being a "Meme Knower" at .00307%. Said another way, you would go through 30,000 unique interactions in order to cross paths with one "Meme Knower". That's a lot of interactions. By one measurement, it would take you 27 years to rack up 30,000 unique encounters. In a lifetime, a person will interact with 80,000 people, and 4 of those will be murderers. That means you are almost twice as likely to interact with a murderer than you are to interact with a "Meme Knower". And that optimistically assumes the Meme remains popular over a lifetime when in fact it looks to be a 6-9 month meme at best. The other consideration is you have no idea what is going to set those four murderers off. They come in all manner of varieties and it would not be unreasonable to assume one of them becoming enraged with your blasphemous tongue-in-cheek treatment of Jesus. Moreover, he might think he is Jesus in which case those sandals are a throw down. The only positive that can from that is they were able to indentify your body since you were the only one who owned a pair of "Air Bethlehems"....talk about irony. I can appreciate your motivation, I just don't see how you get there. Call me a softie, but I don't want you to leave with your soul crushed for lack of a social bonus points plan. Just a thought here, why not start your own meme and take all the credit? Here's a couple t-shirt designs I haven't done anything with. I give you permission to use as your own as you see fit. I hope you knock it out of the park and they parade you around while standing on the shoulders of the coolest people in your town.

Heck that's half the fun, making leather bets. I've purchased a lot of their clearance sale stuff and it's ends up as you expect, distributed like a bell curve. If you are as risk averse as you sound, give Wickett & Craig a look. The generally have a election of overstock hides. Wickett & Craig ranks in the top 3-4 tanneries in the US. This is premium American leather, you can't go wrong Pick up some of their $8 - $12 bellies You won't believe how nice the leather is for next to nothing. Just got four Havana Skirting Bellies... leather is excellent $1,60/ft

I dunno man, looks pretty swoooshy to me. This is obviously somebody's design. Copying is copying whether a ginormus name brand or little ol' me. In addition to the legal issues, there's also an ethical issue. You ask permission to the use the design and if it's for money they should getta piece, ya know? You don't just help yourself. So where'd you get the pic,? What's the story behind your custom request ? Why can't you purchase from wherever this pic comes from? If it's a conceptual drawing, whose drawing? yada yada. At best you might get a hit to do an interpretation, which means something different than this. Just saying man, it's not as easy as can you copy these sandals? Except in China of course. Which leaves us with our speeches and ethics and them with the money, power, and the good roads. (That would make a good famous.quote wouldn't it?) See how complex this gets? You start with sandals and end up with WWIII .

Old thread but I thought I'd share video by The Texas Country Reporter featuring Spartan Leather. It's run by a group of combat vets -- a vets helping vets organization. Very cool.

DOH! Good point. He posted in the wrong forum. OP, you should post your request in the "Counterfeit Goods" forum. Good catch hwinbermuda

Doesn't look technically diffiicult... for someone with a sewing machine...and whole lotta time.... I would charge $500...if I had a sewing machine

Thanks, that was fun to watch. I was curious what they might be generating sales wise and did a back of the envelope calculation using the stats shared in the video. I came up a respectable $15M in sales. Then I was curious what total sales were for this micro industry (hobbyist/handcrafted business) so I combined SLC's $15M with Tandy's $85M to get $100M then doubled that to account for all the rest. That gets you a $200M industry which sounds like a lot until you consider that the US Leather Hide Industry alone exports $2B in sales and that the entire global leather market is around $100B. So that means our little slice is a mere two tenths of one percent of the economic pie and shows just how rare a breed we really are. And I rather like that.

Ha...well, which is it boys? Completely different or dang near identical? That said, it looks like a friggin' Sherman tank...and it is a Cowboy...so...?

Happy trails, Chief.

Here's the Sabah Turkish shoe pic . I didn't make these, but I would love to if I could only figure it out. I know that they are made inside out and that's about it. They look easy enough from the outside, but man I just get lost the couple of times I've tried. That dang side stitch and the cupped soles. They look simple, but they're frickin' complicated. One of these days.... I've also attached some pics of other shoe projects completed since then.

~Clap ~ Clap ~ Clap ~ True to the motto, excellent execution.

That is frickin cool Grey. And Good Lord, how many stitches per inch did you torture yourself with? Looks like 20

Man that's nice. Minimal and elegant.

My motto is "If you can't do it over the top, why bother?" And friend, that is WAY over the top. Very nice indeed.

That is a most generous offer. I accept and shall ship your goods forthwith, with Godspeed and safe passage.

The only reason I post on this xxxx xxxxx website is to get praise from you Grey. ;-) Thank you thank you thank you. Hey, you're an artist and do jewelry work. What do you think of my recent offering on ebay? https://www.ebay.com/itm/302610090254?ul_noapp=true Give me an honest consumer appraisal and I'll make you one for free even if it's the last thing on earth you would be interested in buying. Because if it truly were the last thing on earth you would buy, that would be a pretty interesting thing to have, wouldn't it? Hey, I like giving stuff away for free, particularly to those who never ask for anything or expect anything. Which reminds me...I have this false memory of sending you a box of LEDs and the switchy things that come with them. But I keep "re finding" them here in the shop and every time I do I think "I thought I sent this crap to Grey?" So, could you please make up your mind and decide whether you want this led stuff or not? Geez....

Excellent finish out. I'll bet it smells as good as it looks with all that freshly sawn spruce. Years ago I built a small stand alone shed (nothing special) and for a couple weeks afterward I would hang out in the evenings with an AM radio tuned to a country station, a cooler of beers, and just take in the smell of the freshly cut wood. I wouldn't be surprised if you were doing the same. :-) Thanks for the update. Edit: On the other hand, a shop named "Black Dogg" is probably listening to a classic rock station however. :-)

Merry Christmas Fellow Footwear Friends, Here's my latest flip flop creation. It's hard to see in the pics but I used beads for the toe stem (toe thong as some refer to it). What's cool about using beads is they freely rotate and hence no rubbing. What's not cool is figuring out how to attach them and get a smooth transition from the uppers to the sole. In this case I cut off the pointed end of the uppers to make a flat end. Then I made a cover that folded from the bottom and punched two holes in the fold so that the beading wire could loop through the holes then straight down to the sole where it is secured underneath with a spacer bead and bead crimps. To further aid in the visual transition I used two beads, one for each wire, as it exits the cover. I then crimped the wires as one to maintain the position of the two top beads than strung a single row of beads as usual. You need to use large hole beads so that it will cover the crimp. This helped a lot in the visual transition from the cover to the toe stem otherwise it looks too abrupt with a single file row of beads. I'm not sure what to make of these. Jamaica comes to mind, maybe something Usain Bolt would wear.