rawcustom

Not sure what responses you will get. i researched this quite a bit not long ago and came to the conclusion that there were no hard opinions on the matter. I was really expecting to find something about natural bone being superior or synthetic has some benefit, but at least nothing I read went anywhere near that. Seems like natural bone can pick up dyes and coloring and I would expect the same from wood alternatives. Hence, I've yet to purchase one and figure I'll just make my own from this year's elk leg bone. Although for the price point this tool doesn't make financial sense for me to make, it's just a stubbornness and wanting something with a little more meaning to myself. I'll be interested to see the replies and see if I missed something as to why one material over another.

I have no local selection for the leather acrylic paints and need some to finish a product this week. There is a local hobby store, so any difference in the acrylic paint made for leather vs. what I will find there?

First off that is some top notch work, very impressed. I printed the pattern and am very interested in making one. My question is what size and type of lace are you using? Thanks

Very awesome work. I've been looking for belt carving outside of the usual Sheridan stuff, and this is a perfect example.

Beautiful work Ed. If I fully abandon my swivel knife project I know where I will be buying one.

Get a cheap pull retrieving magnet from HF ($9) and probably 4 sheets of the following wet/dry silicon carbide sandpaper: 120, 220, 320, 400, 600, 1000 Attach the magnet to the blade as a handle and place a sheet of sandpaper on raised piece of glass or your rectangle marble/quartz/granite tooling pad. Line up your sandpaper to the edge of the raised flat surface and spray some simple green on for cutting fluid. Now you should be able to sand the blade the length of your sandpaper, and the elevated flat surface will give you clearance for the handle while you sand the blade flush to the bolster. Flip the sandpaper around after a while to use the far side and repeat. This will be the fastest way to refinish the blade and keep the surface flat and true. It's a personal call how far you want to take it. If you're looking for eliminating 100% of the pitting don't be surprised to watch some of the makers stamp go with it.

Ok, that makes sense. I could tell the edges were dressed and finished, and thought you must've wanted to have a bit coarser look to it. I had a time getting some mixed materials to burnish on an edge like that before as well. Made me realize that doing a binding on the edge could actually be less work.

I like the design, simple and clean. Did you skip burnishing the edges for a rough look?

I think you have this in the wrong forum. There is a classified section for posting items for sale.

If this is a hooked blade like most clicker knives than you will likely have quite fight regrinding a bevel with a flat stone. You will find most of your effort and stock removal will apply to the point and the base of the blade and miss the middle (bottom of hook). You could invest in round stones, or my choice, round diamond files, but if this is a custom why not contact the maker and see if they will tune it up?

Something like this could be modified, courtesy of the screen repair industry.

To me that looks entirely machine, so I would guess some portion of the machine is leaving that when it punches through. Never having used one, no idea how or why this would happen. To make that pattern by hand you would need a highly modified wheel, or maybe repurpose some other industry marker. There seems to be half a dozen different types of star wheels out there from arts and crafts to mechanic tools. Each mark seems uniquely squared from the seam so I would rule out chisels stamps or similar. If it were me I would look at what star wheel type tools are available and maybe take a solid circular one and a dremel tool and make my own.

Sounds like junk thread. Go to SLC or Tandy and order thread they specifically say for use in your awl and you should be good to go. With some research you can find the right size substitute, but it should be waxed and I think most of the tough stuff is made from nylon. I know the thread I've used in a speed awl there's no way you are going to break it without cutting it first.

I agree that you are better off charging more and working at a specialty than gunning for the lowest priced product. Maybe winning the price war appeals to some, but it seems many people fail to account for their time when they set their price. I'm not making a killing at my part-time knife and leather making, but I charge enough to cover my material, supplies, and enough of my time to make it worth doing. I would probably stay with it even if everything went to charity, but I would find myself hunting, fishing, and spending most the time I spend now on knives on plenty of the other fun things in life. Like I said I applaud him, and not sarcastically. I think its great and gives others like me the crazy idea that someday maybe I can get the same.

This looks like the right thread to add my recent internet find that offers a paradox to your scenario. How about high volume with high pricing? http://www.mrlentz.com/shopping/product/the-minimal-mark-wallet/ http://www.mrlentz.com/shopping/product/the-minimal-slip-wallet-06/ Not sure what his business is like but I applaud him, especially if it is working out. I knew a guy who was trying to sell a cabin he built. It sat on the market for months with no activity and this was during the housing boom. He finally changed realtors and the first thing the new guy did was up the price 50k. He said that most people weren't even going to consider it since it was low priced, so in their minds, low quality. After raising the price he got several offers and sold within a month or two.

Definitely showing progress in the end product and suitable material to start with. You have more patience than I do to cold grind 1/4" thick A2 for a head knife. I'm sure you found that the thinner stock saw blade works better than driving that big wedge through leather. I understand the skip on finish work for your own blades, that seems quite common with knifemakers and I'm guilty as well. I finally got around this year to upgrading my old beat up hunting knife to something I wasn't embarrassed to show someone else, and I've been working on upgrading my leather tools to all incorporate bocote into the handles so they look more of a set, but I have to squeeze my projects in between work that I will actually get paid for. Hard to justify spending more time than needed to produce a usable tool on something that will stay in your shop.

Was going to post a link to my thread where I made one, but it looks like it may have been removed. Not surprising since it drew in some trolling from a real winner. Old tool sniper used it to make his own beautiful awls that he posted here: http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=57584#entry370131 Both designs used pin vises for the mandrel. I make my own blades from O1 drill rod, but I've also used osborne blades without any trouble. If the blade is diamond through the end you just line the edges of the diamond in the slots of the pin vise chuck and it's solid as can be.

Really wishing I hadn't seen this thread. I told myself that my leather knife collection was complete. I will have to study that design and come up with my own variant. I like the idea of the raised handle. Maybe make mine in a pull configuration.

Ebay

The lizard is thin, but fairly rigid. My design in layers goes: lizard-spent giftcard-calfskin-lizard.

This is one of the coolest leather projects I have seen. I love taking leather beyond garments and holsters. Simply beautiful.

After more research and experimenting I can venture a guess that the heat depends more on type of leather, thickness, and depth of crease desired. I did find that I like the near burnt finish of a hot crease. Seemed like once you got it fairly warm it left an almost burnished looking face on the inside of the crease. Does this sound right to all of you hot creasing leather?

Thanks everyone. I spent too much time on this site trying to improve my knife sheaths that I was exposed to the leatherworking bug I guess. Some really amazing people and talents here that show you can make anything you see in the stores, only better and to your liking. I have a question on lizard skins. Anyone know why SLC sells them for $12 and Roje wants $30+ for theirs? Seemed like other exotics were pretty similar priced.

Thanks. Phillips Engraving was great to work with. I looked into delrin but my design had too fine of lines for an effective delrin stamp. I emailed Phillips and another stamp mfg, one that shows up first on the search engines. Phillips dressed up my image, engraved the stamp and had it a couple days in the mail before the other place even got back to me. The other place was also about 4x the price and trying to pitch me on upgrades on top of that. Glad I contacted Phillips.

I picked up a misc. drop bag of exotics last time I ordered from Springfield Leather. Figured most will work their way into an inlay on a knife sheath, but I'm finding more excuses to make leather projects. I'm pretty sure this is a lizard belly, anyone who knows exotics better than me please correct.