FlHobbyist

I had both eyes done a couple years ago. I have to wear glasses to see anything closer than a foot or so, however I no longer need glasses for anything else. It is well worth it in the end. Good luck.

Welcome to the board. There is lots of good information here on the board. Good Luck

Thanks for the advice. I was lucky and had some micro files lying around from my prior hobby. Once the black covering material was removed they behaved better, not great, but well enough for Paul Burnett's leather lessons.This isn't a great solution, and I'll keep my eyes peeled for someone entering the market, or I may bite the bullet and make my own, though that is an absolute last resort. In any event, I'll update in this thread if I find something better.

I've been watching Ebay quite a bit the last few months, and here are my observations. If the entire lot was put up on Ebay, he could expect to get around $3.00 - $4.00 per tool. I've seen tool lots go for as little as $2.00 per tool, and as much as $6.00 per tool. I don't have a distribution available but I estimate that 80-90% of the group lots will go between 3 and 4. This number seems to be the range where the ebay resellers will bid against each other, in order to get the lot and break it up for individual resale. As for buying individual tools on Ebay there is a pretty wide variation depending upon the rarity of the tool and random luck. The common tools like 104/105, 407, 204, 888/889 are available in the $5-$8 range including shipping. These common tools were apparently available in the old beginners tool kits and the market is flooded with them. The next class of tools were those bought by the professionals and the dedicated hobbyists. Some good examples are the 455, The acorn tools, and the figure carving tools. They can be bought in the range of 10-15 easily and occasionally a little cheaper. Finally there are the rare tools that I don't know a whole lot about. These include the tear shaped pear shaders, crazy legs pattern, and many obscure mules feet. I've seen individual tools go into the mid 30s. Though typically these obscure tools can be purchased in the mid 20s when they are available. About these rare tools it is hard for me to judge if what I've seen it typical or not, it is typical now, but I have no idea if what we are really seeing is a couple of crazy rich people bidding against each other.

Thank you! I'm using a razor knife that I strop often. On the corner of the pen cases, I've just started using a pair of Gingher scissors. I haven't mastered the technique quite yet, but the corners are a lot better than using a razor knife. Thank you! I am very happy with with one side of the stitching. The holes on the good side were made with a chisel. The holes on the other side were made with an awl. I'm hoping with practice they will get better. lol... Now I know such a beast exists! I will look for double cap rivets and use them the next time I do a double sided piece.

Greetings All, I just had the misfortune of attempting to practice making hair with a Craptool Hair Blade tool that I purchased a few weeks ago. To paraphrase a line I saw in a movie recently: Every time I think Tandy cant get crappier, they get even worse than the time before. The primary problem with the tool is that both ends are very, very dull and in order to make an impression on the leather, one has to really bear down, so much in fact that the leather is dented. The wetness of the leather was about the dampness I would use for carving or using background stamps (i.e. cased but on the drier side). Shaking my head. Now that the whining is out of the way; I did a pretty through search here and it looks like there are 2 viable options: 1) Contact Bob Beard, put in an order and late next summer an excellent hair blade will be on the way. 2) Make my own with xacto blades and a wooden dowel, which is sort of an ugly option for me as I don't own a drill, nor do I have much confidence that even if I did, that I could drill a straight hole. Though, I could go beg one of my brothers to do it, and with a little luck and a six pack of beer, they could do it if they remember to drill first and then enjoy beer rather than the other way around. Has anyone else started selling hair blades in the last couple of years? Were the old hair blades put out by Tandy any good? Money is no real hindrance, however waiting a year for a tool exceeds my current patience level. Thank you

I love the look of your Ostrich wallets.

I've graduated from rounds to doing Pen Sheaths and Fobs. These are my current efforts, and advice is welcome. The pieces with the Zebra patterns are my very first commission works from someone who I didn't already know. Don't get excited though, I figure I earned roughly 75 cents per hour doing them

An interesting article about the very early leather workers: Neanderthals were just as good at working leather as modern humans - and used the same tools still employed by leather-workers today - a new study has found. Four views of the most complete lissoir found during excavations at the Neandertal site of Abri Peyrony. Credit: Abri Peyrony & Pech-de-l’Azé I Projects Anthroboffins from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands have discovered evidence of interesting bone tools in neighbouring Paleolithic sites in southwest France. The digs uncovered equipment that was used more than 40,000 years ago to make hides more lustrous and water resistant. Boffins previously believed that the tools, called lissoirs, had only been used by modern humans, but the finds suggest humans and Neanderthals may have developed the implements independently. It's even possible that humans got the idea from the Neanderthals, which are considered a separate species from homo sapiens. Link to article: http://www.theregist..._leather_tools/

This may or may not be relevant to the discussion at hand; Tandy is just sent a flyer saying they were doing a reprint of this. I don't remember Gold and Elite pricing, but they want $259 with no discounts. I'd have to want to know something pretty bad to pay that for a book. I understand paying the big bucks for a rare historical book, but charging that kind of money for a new reprint seems a little greedy to me.

Thanks for coming back and confirming that it was in Sci Am, and not one of their (rare) humor articles. I am certainly surprised that that human leather was used, and the wiki article about bookbinding was a real eye opener. I don't know how I would feel about these pieces, weird, macabre, disgusting, yet still interesting. Maybe morbid curiosity sums it up best. In any event, thanks for the post

I'll prefix with I am still learning, and all of this is very subjective, but here is what I do and like. I like the diamond chisels that Tandy sells. They punch though 3/4 leather easily. I couldn't tell you if the work well on thicker leather or not. Originally, I would chisel pieces of leather that I wanted to stitch together, now though I only chisel 1 piece of leather, and then use an awl to punch the holes in the second piece. Because of the thin leather I work with, it has a bad tendency to stretch a lot when I tool it (even when rubber cemented while tooling). To me it is much easier, than trying to be exact with the second piece of leather. To summarize my method, which works for me now, but may change on a moments notice:1) Cut out leather 2) Groove both pieces 3) Tool, dye, paint, etc 4) Chisel one of the pieces 5) Use awl to punch holes and sew pieces together 6) Burnish edges One note, The awl I use is from Barry King, with a Douglas blade. I wouldn't use a cheap awl from Tandy to attempt this. If there is anything else you want to know, or if anyone wants to give me some advice, I'd be pleased to hear it. I've only been doing leather craft for 3 months now, and there is an avalanche of data that can be overwhelming.

Fantastic work, I really like what you did.

To anyone wanting to know if they are still around. The answer is yes, and the deal of 15 tools for $145.00 is still good. The easiest way to contact them is by phone. I called and talked to Lonnie on Monday and put in my order, and the tools came in todays (Thursday) mail. I'm a very happy camper, and will be ordering more goodies next week sometime from them.

I am curious about this too. I saw the Amazon and Ebay sales on the issue, but I don't want to pay the money to find out the truth of the matter. This tale is sounding more plausible by the hour. If it turns out being true, it raises a number of unsettling questions in my mind, namely, Why is this object so hush, hush? lol... About the jokes above. If ya gotta go, then go in style

I wonder if there were trolls around at the turn of the century. I suspect strongly this magazine was a comedy magazine, assuming it really did exist. I notice they imply this article was a reprint from Sci Am which I find very, very hard to believe. Addendum: The actual issue of Feb Sci Am, doesn't seem to be digitized and available on the web at the moment. The only citations of this are from someone trying to sell this old copy of Sci Am, and from a blog called The Devils Penny. I'm wondering if the name of the supposed author of this piece (M. Glen Fling) is a pun of some sort. Also, Scientific American has been known to run comedy pieces every now and again, mixed in with their usual articles. I'm just thinking if there was any truth to this whatsoever, the news would be notorius. Sort of like the various (false) claims about the Germans in WWI, that were then made true in WWII, we still hear about those claims often, though modern thinking is they may too be false.

The Abetta knife came in yesterdays mail. I was pleased because it came in one day before the earliest expected arrival date. Their shipping address is in PA, but I'm speculating here that they importing from Canada, or more likely somewhere more distant. It looks like they only get their stock deliveries ever week or two, hence their long shipping and handling time. The knife was packed in bubble wrap and placed in a cardboard container, if the knife was sharp this would be a problem, but as it came to me there was very little danger the knife would cut the bubble wrap plastic. The knife blade is 4.5 x 1.75 inches, so no problem there. I don't have an exact weight for you, but estimate it weight at around 3 or 4 ounces which in my opinion is very light. The thickest metal on the blade is .125 inches, and it makes a distinct tinny sound when tapped by my fingers. The blade was not sharpened at all when I removed it from the package. I don't know if there is a test for sharpness, but I think it would cut butter, but probably not sharp cheddar cheese. In my case this is a plus and a minus, on the one hand I bought this knife so I could have something to practice my sharpening skills on, on the other hand I would sure like to see how sharp a round knife is suppose to be. Since it only costs around 8.00 (15.00 with shipping), I'm not disappointed. Do I sincerely believe this will become a real leather cutting knife? I doubt it, but I desperately need to learn how to sharpen a knife, before I get a real knife, and ruin it. I see a LW knife in my future, but my skills as well as my wife's understanding need to grow before that day arrives. The Tandy Knives I also bought: I was in my Tandy place a few weeks ago, when I was ignorant about the types of steel. The manager made me a deal on the medium Damascus round knife and the small AS round knife. I got them both for 60.00. I don't feel ripped off, but I'm not nearly as happy as I was. The Damascus knife wasn't thoroughly sharpened when it came out of the box, It will cut leather, but I have to bear down on it pretty good. I haven't touched it with a whetstone yet, as I have this vision of this very knife being available on EBay in the near future, and I don't want to screw up the blade any more than it already is. As for the small knife, I've been practicing my sharpening skills on it, and occasionally I get it pretty sharp, however I think my angle is too narrow and my technique is lacking so I get it sharp enough to glide through paper, and then a piece of leather ( less than a foot), and it needs another round of sharpening. If anyone has any questions, comments or observations, I'll be glad to either answer or hear them. That LW vision continues to grow in my mind, tick, tick, tick...

I think it looks pretty good.

I took a quick look at LEATHERCRAFT FOR AMATEYRS and it had some interesting ideas for patterns and things that could be done, as well as stitching instructions. It is definately worth the price Thanks for sharing, and the link to archive.org

Sorry for reviving such an old thread. I just purchased a set of 3 Hackbart bevelers and I couldn't believe how good they were. I'm a believer now in the value of higher end tools. I wanted to know is Hackbart still in business, and should I write them at the address given above to get a catalog? I checked their website and it looked like it hadn't been updated in some time. Does Hackbart still offer a catalog, and tool set deals? Bob

It breaks my heart to hear that Tandy may have decided to follow the path of 'get rich quick' and then 'close up shop' like so many businesses have. I hope this is just a bad phase they are going through, but I'm never optimistic where greed is concerned. On a more positive note, thank you for guiding us newbies towards Springfield. I had come upon them a few days ago, but I only glanced at them thinking they were another Tandy distributor like Stecks. Because of this thread, I went back and checked them out more thoroughly, and they are much more. Rightly, or wrongly, I'm mostly interested in stamps right now and it was with utter amusement I saw their packs of 5 Baron stamps for 1.99. I've been seeing those very same stamps at Ebay for $4.00 - $6.00, which isn't a bad profit margin when you can get it ....lol I'm going to give them a try on my next order.

Very interesting, I would never have suspected they were a cross over from other, much older, art forms. To a degree this clears up the confusion in my mind about the term.

I think it would be an amusing tale to find out why the acanthus florals are called acanthus. They don't look like the pictures shown in google, they don't grow in the US, or if they do they aren't that common, and the word isn't a very common one. I'll bet there is quite the tale pinning the tag acanthus on the flower carvings someone was carving back in the day. I had always assumed the flowers were ferns and squash blossoms.

Wonderful pattern! Outstanding, and thank you for sharing.

I'm glad to see another Floridian newbie. I'm over in Lakeland, and am returning to leathercraft after a 40 year hiatus (I did a fair amount of leathercraft when I was in high school). I hope you can find a pattern for your Apron case. Bob