Colt W Knight

By the way, if you got blocktype blade guides, you can make hard dense wood blocks instead of those fancy plastic ones they sell. I use maple, and soak it in oil.

The red saw is an old cast aluminum craftsman I refurbished and painted red. The green one is just a harbor freight central machinery. I'm trying out some high impact strength ABS plastic and Nylon( Remington made rifle stocks with the same material).

I made them from brass

Here is a tapeered maul with mahogany handle. Still needs finished, but with the humidity so high today, it's not really suitable for spraying lacquer.

I cut some lead out today, but I don't really like the way I got it setup now. I'd much rather streamline the hole thing with as little dead space and parts as possible. These little mauls are working really well so far.

One step ahead of you Bill. The handles are drilled all the way through and tapped to accept weights if need be. Originally, I thought I would use various thicknesses of brass to cut the retainer nuts. The problem with that is that the brass is expensive.

I have really been trying to improve my tooling lately, and when I broke it down, I had 2 serious problems I needed to fix before I can make any progress. 1. My beveling is choppy 2. My arm gets fatigued on bigger pieces I think, what it boils down to is my Al Stohlman maul is damned heavy. I did some testing, and I think the heavy maul is definitely a culprit. The normal UHMW Polyethylene white heads on most mauls I have seen just doesn't hold up that well over time, so I decided to try out 2 different materials. Plus, I wanted to dust off my grandpa's old wood working lathe, and get it back up and running. I am going to experiment with handle size, maul head material, and maul head angle. I have finished 2 so far. Waiting for a some lathe parts to come so I can do some turning on the head material. Lacquered figured maple and walnut handle, 1/2" Stainless steel threaded rod, black head, and brass retainer Lacquered cherry and maple handle, 1/2" stainless steel threaded rod, beige head, and brass retainer Handle is drying at the moment

Leatherburnishers Website now says that they are officially closed, and if anyone has an outstanding order, they will receive a refund. http://www.leatherburnishers.com/

I'm a big fan of Angelus acrylic leather paint, I bet their clear should be good too. I have been using mop n glo with great success, would I havent found a reason to switch from it yet.

I just use a roller to apply pressure all over, and I don't do any weighting.

Thanks, I have made 4 purple purses so far. People really like turquoise, purple and red it seems.

1. What kind of leather are you cutting? 2. Metal framing squares are notoriously out of square. If you Google how to fix a framing square, it will show you how to check which way it's out of square, and where to strike it with a ball pain hammer to fix it. I usdually use drafting squares and a straight edge to get nice 90° cuts. On soft temper leather, like deerskin, I use a template to mark the leather, then cut with scissors. It stretches a lot.

I bought a used Con sew 206rb-1, and I was able to pay it off in less than a month making guitar straps and padfolios. It use to take me 5 hours of work to handsew a padfolio, and my hands would hurt for days. I can see a padfolio in 5 minutes now. Guitar straps in just a few minutes. Can't wait til I can order the big cowboy 4500. I want to use bigger thread

Too me, your tooling impressions do not look crisp because 1. The leather wasn't cased properly, and 2. When you rewetting the leather, it causes the leather to swell and loose definiton.

How are you casing the leather? Did you rewet the leather while tooling?

I was using the summer hammers you describe. Bought a nice leather working maul, and I would never go back. Mails are the way to go for leather working, in my opinion.

Airplane stripper will take the stink off a dead oppossum. It also melts my skin, so you have to be super careful with protective equipment, and I am pretty sure breaking the fumes is a bad idea too. I use it to strip epoxy enamels like fire arm finishes and industrial equipment to use.

Were they like the CNC embroidery and quilting machines? The new Adler leather sewing machine have all the fancy bells and whistles, and they are super expensive too

I worked for several coal mines that ran 24/7, and they always scheduled 1-2 week shutdowns during the same time. Growing up, dad always called it vacation time, eventhough he worked 16 hour days for 2 weeks straight fixing/upgrading/preventative maintenance on the dragline and shovels. When I got old enough to work these shutdowns, I realized why dad was always so cranky around that time of year.

Yes, fiebings pro oil and pro dye are the same. I guess they are phasing out the word oil to ameliorate the confusion.

Ive done similar work with drill presses before. The real negarive aspect is the internal components arent designed to withstand a lot of preasure/force and they will break with extendes use. I broke a big one working in a strip mine using it as a press. How much pressure do you need to apply for this? Never done any embossing on leather before.

That stuff is tough as nails, weather resistant, and easy to clean. Much less maintenance than leather.

Applying conditoner/oil to leather will darkwn it some, but if its really getting a lot darker, I suspect you are applying too much. Most folks over oil, and it took me a long time to understand that you dont need a bunch of oil. You just need to apply a light coat and give it time to absorb all the way through the leather.

Finished up another purse. This one is made from Purple Designer Delight from hidehouse and black deer skin. Sewn with #138. I am finally starting to get the hang of tooling, and I figured out what I was doing wrong using the beveler. 20-30 more of these, and I might be able to call myself a real leather worker. Black tooling is hard to photograph.

I tape the back with packing tape. Some folks glue the piece to the grankte with rubber cement.