Nuttish

I'm not convinced the Chinese lasers are worth the money or trouble. The toolchain sucks and you end up having to become a hacker just to keep the thing working. Parts are not readily available and there is zero support. Lasercut leather smells like death. Our Epilog calls for 400 CFM at 6 inches of static pressure, which is oppressively expensive to do without installing a 90+ db motor or dust collector inside the shop. I sincerely doubt that recommendation is all that well conceived, but wutevs. You can adequately ventilate one of these things with one of those 400+ CFM stoner hydroponic blowers or the el cheapo Harbor Freight dust collector blower motor and the shortest, straightest runs of galvanized ducting you can manage for less than $300. $0.02.

You will have to do it by hand now that you've already cut the holes. Machines run parallel lines of tight zigzags with bars at the ends. You then cut the button hole open. Not the other way around. Have a look at Couture Sewing Techniques by Claire Shaeffer for excellent instructions on several traditional high end methods for binding buttonholes. http://books.google.com/books?id=fs9Iiw_zPZ0C&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91&dq=couture+button+holes&source=bl&ots=s8n6IP-K61&sig=G_1hp07nPYrvKdBF2VGTo5vwkUE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IZDSU7-FGda2yASq0YCwDw&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=couture%20button%20holes&f=false

Very late to the game here, but I hope this is helpful to someone even if you figured your process out. Chrome stamps just fine on a 2 ton arbor press. I'm attaching some test marks made on several Horween Chromexcel tannages. I laser cut my marks and make jigs with alignment tabs so the placement is perfect and, as importantly, the stamp is held perfectly square to the grain so the impression is uniform. Super quick and easy. See attached. Somewhat unrelated: some people drill their arbor presses so they can more permanently attach their marks. I use several on each piece, so this is the most effective solution. Your mileage may vary, and I know not everyone has access to a laser cutter.

Late to the game, but I have a relevant Q: In addition to storing pieces flat, I'm wondering if it also makes sense to put a large piece of kraft paper or something else between them to minimize the possibility of scratching the grain side. It's not idea, but my workshop drops some dust and dirt from the ceiling because it's in a 120 year old industrial building.

Look at Nigel Armitage's YouTube channel for his video on awl sharpening. You're going to get miserable results sharpening the thing unless it's straight. The proper angle comes from the width and thickness of material as it tapers back. Do not despair. It's long enough to grind a new point and set the correct angle. Or you could start over. They're cheap :-)

Camano, that's quite nice rivet setting. Whose peening tool are you using? I find that the Osborne one is essentially useless for setting the burrs or doming the rivet.

Lightly damping the leather caused inconsistent staining. Casing might work, but it's not for all tannages. Masking it vaporized glue into the surface. Placing it on pins helped reduce some charring, but ultimately I just use the cutter to go through the grain and then complete the cuts by hand. YMMV. Surface engraving is going to make black marks. It's literally burning the surface of your organic material. Your options are using rubber stamp mode to deeply engrave acrylic or delrin stamps to press in with an arbor or shop press, or suck it up and scrub some of the charring off with saddle soap and a toothbrush. My business neighbor has an industrial laser for production cutting metal and 1" + cast acrylic and the like that flawlessly cuts leather in any weight. You could job out the work to be done on a better cutter than the worn out ~35W machines most hackerspaces have. My hackerspace just got a 4 x 8 Shopbot. Please keep us up to date on whether yours meets your leatherworking needs. That would be an absurdly cost effective and quick production process!

Mind posting a pic of your results? Intriguing.

Reactive fabric dye (eg http://www.dylon.co.uk/), washing soda, salt, well rinsed, dried, and waxed.

CXL would make a crummy strop. A piece of paper on a piece of glass would be better. It's also so greasy and waxy that it will eventually mark pieces in your stitching horse jaws. In my experience, CXL sides are wildly inconsistent from section to section. The bend closer to the shoulders is far less stretchy than other pieces. It also seems to me that the little flaps and belly side are only useful for silly little novelty accessories and stuff. Remarkably, stretchiness also seems to depend on the color, and maybe even the lot. My burgundy and dark brown are thinner and far less stretchy across the entire side than what they call tan. If you got pieces someone else chose for you, I reckon they chose crummy pieces. CXL is just fine for making small leather goods, albeit it with somewhat time consuming paring and edge finishing, but the attractive pullup and what bearded hipsters who fetishize "carry goods" and wear $350 jeans want makes it worth it.

Girl, W&F's Mason coozy is totally just hand punched. You can see the little endearing inconsistencies. And man is he a genius for figuring out how to get $28 for 4x8 from the butt end of a side of bridle he couldn't use for straps or bags. Genius.

Try a 1 lb or less brass blacksmithing hammer with the face dressed to be slightly convex. Peening rivets through leather is still ... cold forging.

Ditto others about using a pricking iron as a chisel. They're for making marks on, not in, and not through the grain. If you insist on using a pricking iron as a chisel, as someone here said, the teeth widen as you go down and will make enormous holes that will never close. Holes opened with a proper sized awl do. You can modify a pricking iron by grinding a face to reduce the height of the teeth (you might consider this even if you're using a pricking iron as intended) and using a Dremel to remove some of the material from the sides. A brass hammer in that weight is for blacksmithing soft metal. It will eventually deform steel tools. If you want a perfectly serviceable maul, buy a foot of 4" HDPE from Grainger and have a friend turn a handle right into it on a woodworking lathe (HDPE will flow out of an engine lathe chuck). No, you can never use a pricking iron, chisel, or punch over a piece of steel if you ever want to use it again. I use an el cheapo 3" thick grade B surface plate with a piece of thick felt glued to the bottom for whacking and paring.

I would suggest picking up a copy of the Leatherworking Handbook by Valerie Michael. Ignore the creepy masks. They're just weird. She's got a section on the butt stitch and box stitch. The box stitch is the traditional stitch used for boxes and tubes. The butt stitch is the traditional stitch used for joining pieces of leather in the same dimension.

Using a burnishing tool will only temporarily round the grain over the edge. I assume your Hermann Oak strips in that width are 12 oz+ bridle or similar temper and weight. You need to make some choices about removing material. If you wish to round the grain edge without substantially rounding the side edge, you can use a #2 (slight), #3 (slightly larger), #4 (biggest) standard edger e.g. https://www.osborneleathertools.com/product_details.php?pid=194. They have a round bottom, but are a monstrous pain in the ass to sharpen and never come from the factory with a useable blade. If you wish to put a larger radius on the edge, you might consider using a Bissonette edger. Held at a consistent angle on the top edge, they remove a consistent amount of material from the grain to the side edge and can also help evening little cutting issues. I can post some some example pics of each strategy if you wish.

I figured a production process out. Thanks.

I'm looking to have some dies made to cut pieces for small goods that will be saddle stitched at around 9 spi. Some of the hipster stuff I'm looking to compete with appears to have its stitch holes punched by the die, and they're larger and spaced farther than my work requires — I'm using .6mm thread and (hopefully not much longer, since they're not practicale for production work) pricking irons. Is it possible to get dies made that include flat blades at 3mm from the edge to open stitch holes at 9 spi? I've spent quite a lot of time trying to understand how steel rule dies are made, and it appears that there is a limited number of punches available commercially and they're all round. Perhaps I should be looking at CNC milled dies? Laser cut? Any insight appreciated.

This is the butt stitch. You can find it described in detail in the Valerie Michael book. It's just a saddle stitch at a 45º, but you don't need to mitre anything. The downside is that the stitch seems more prone to puckering than a flat saddle stitch, so proper thread tension is the rule. Check out document tubes, pool cue cases, fly rod cases, etc. for examples.

Laser cutter.

That photograph is terrible. Only two stitches are in focus and I can't even tell whether that's an edge. I'd need to see several inches of the front and back.

That looks like Horween bovine Chromexcel. If I recall correctly it comes in 4-6oz, although it's pretty variable and you might find up to 7 on some hides.

+1 Jeff Peachey. Nobody's paring as finely with such fragile materials as bookbinders. Here's him discussing English paring knives and old woodworking planes. http://jeffpeachey.com/tag/leather-paring/. I believe he also discusses French paring knives elsewhere. I use a Vergez-Blanchard No. 2 French paring knife http://www.vergez-blanchard.fr/boutique/fiche_produit.cfm?ref=3_1001_3&type=31&code_lg=lg_fr&num=2, a 1000/8000 grit combination waterstone, and a strop. I can get a gossamer skive in just a few passes. The trick for this knife is keeping it extremely sharp to the point that you may find yourself stopping to strop or even dress the edge every few minutes if you're doing a lot of work. You must use the flat side up for paring because you can control your depth of cut exquisitely. You may then use the beveled side up to clean up by gingerly scraping. When used properly, this knife wants to work perfectly without you having to do much work or thinking at all. It's actually difficult to dig out or tear your piece because of the geometry of the blade once you begin your cut. Regardless of the tool you use. You must always make sure that there is absolutely nothing at all, no tiny flake of flesh, no scrap, no bump in your working surface, under your knife or you will tear out thin edges. Hefty makes very convenient plastic containers called "Cinch Saks" for you to store your Tandy safety skiver in.

All you need is something to whack with that's not going to get too dinged up too quickly. If you follow Bruce Johnson's good advice you'll keep your punches sharp enough that you won't need a long heavy maul. I bet if you take your chisel up to a 8000 grit waterstone or sand paper you'd be able to whack through harness leather with a piece of 2x4.

The blue stuff is. Who knows what's under the thinner leather. As long as it's stiff/flexible enough for your application, all I'd care about is whether Barge will melt it. It's not uncommon that people use cardboard, mat, or even thin pieces of wood to give structure to handbangs and briefcases, so don't worry about whether the material you choose is "weird". What works, works.

I would get your pieces mostly dimensioned except what you'll sand or pare off after you've finished stitching, if you even do that. Then mark your stitch lines with wing dividers. Not sure what kind of leather and what style of passport wallet you're making, but know that stitch groovers are not necessarily appropriate for all work. You'll never see one used on high end European leather goods. In any event, those chisels aren't for what you're trying to do. Nigel Armitage has a Youtube tutorial on using wider pricking irons to mark curves. His strategy works quite well. If I recall correctly, he also gives a demonstration of using an overstitch wheel to mark curves. He's exceptionally good at holding his diamond stitching awl at the proper angle, so him using an overstitch wheel, which does not make a diagonal mark, is ok for him. I can't get such consistently good results even though the diagonal mark is really only a reminder that the the flat side of the awl tells you whether your angle is correct. There's obviously no problem if you're using a round awl. If you are using a diamond awl and you don't feel comfortable using a pricking iron, your next best bet is an old pricking wheel. Nobody makes them anymore, but you can get a reasonably priced one from Bruce Johnson. Pricking wheels make marks as you roll them over your piece, but they are a small diamond shape that presents the same angle you'd hold your awl at using a pricking iron rather than a rounded depression from an overstitch wheel that tells you nothing about what angle you should be opening your holes at. Re: wing dividers around corners, I feel your pain. Even if you're finishing your edges, you still need to get fairly good smooth ones so your wing dividers make consistently parallel marks. With practice, corners aren't any different than straight lines. It helps to rotate your piece as you go around so that you're not suddenly holding your tool at a wonky angle. Re: order of operations, I'd make whatever pieces I need to be perfectly square and then punch off my corners. I frankly think corner punches such and that Nigel Armitage is entirely correct that a coin or washer and a sharp knife nibbling off tiny tangent (seriously, that's what the geometry is) slices is quicker and works better. It allows you to take a straight edge to align your circular template to each side of the corner - you can't do that with a punch since it's already on the outside of the curve you want, where the circular template is on the inside. Man I just wrote a lot.