fishguy

Is there any concern of catching the bowstring if you have a buckle on the strap of a back quiver?

Up to now I have just been tying a knot to end a baseball stitch. Is there a way to backstitch like in saddle stitching?

can you show how to do rounded corners?

Thanks

I am making my first set of rough side out slim jim holsters and have been faced with a bit of a problem. After applying dye and oiling the leather it has taken on a kind of slicked down appearance. As I understand it, the appeal of rough side out is the suede-like nap. Should I go over it with a brush or something to try to restore the nap?

Interesting that it was apparently coated with gesso before painting. Gesso is basically white primer that is laid down on surfaces to prepare them for painting, it was used under pretty much all the historical paintings you have seen. Old style was rabbit hide glue with chalk in it, the new stuff is mostly acrylic (though you can get the old stuff). That would be one way to get strong colors, especially white, on leather.

Been toying with the idea of picking up a sewing machine to speed up my leatherwork a bit. I started looking on craig's list and have seen quite a few Pfaff machines. It would probably be used on 5-7 oz or lighter leather. Don't really mind hand sewing holsters and sheaths but long stitching on bags, belts etc. takes forever by hand.

On a nerdish note the reason carving the horns with a dremel tool stinks like burned hair is that horn is basically made from the same stuff as hair. Won't make it smell any better but now you know As for sealing drinking horns typically people use beeswax and or brewer's pitch (not good for high alcohol or hot drinks), or varnish that is approved for use with salad bowls. Actually one of the reasons that horn was used for cups and spoons and the like, besides being easy to work, was that it would not react with other things.

When I have applied neatsfoot oil after dying I have noticed some white crud on the surface. Ususally it can be buffed away, but now I have a belt where it just keeps coming back. What is the solution? More oil? wipe down with water? Is this something coming out of the leather or the dry surface of the leather itself?

http://www.whitechapel-ltd.com/ganti.html describes ammonia fuming

So what ever happened to this project? Did the 2/3 ounce leather work?

Um, I don't want to be a wet blanket, but there may be some legal issues with these things.

Not mercenary, mercantile.....ain't nothin' wrong with that.

I have done all sorts of different themes with tooling, stamping and embossing. Send me an email blaneb at verizon.net (use the usual @-I used the at because I am hoping to avoid spam) and we can discuss the particulars. I can do one for a tanto if you can send me a cross section so I know how big to make the hole.

Here is a pair of tsuba, gaurds or hilts used on Japanese style wooden swords for martial arts training. Typically these days people use plastic ones, or tsuba made from a single thickness of really thick water buffalo rawhide (hard to find)

I prefer that girl (Marlo was pretty cute in her younger days) to that guy but O.K. Check out John Waterer 's "Leather and the warrior" for a more scholarly treatment. The reasoning behind my statement 1. Leather is known to have been used in historical armor, and provides reasonably effective protection against many hand to hand weapons (not as good as steel, but oh well0 2. Metal armor was quite expensive, required high levels of technology and skill (for the period)to produce and was so probably unavailable to the common soldier. Leather was widely available and cheap and could be made into armor with tools and processes available to pretty much anyone. 3. Leather is preserved for long periods of time only under extremely specialized conditions and actually is a fairly unusual find in archeological digs 4. There were a helluva a lot more shoes and belts made than armor so if you are going to find any leather at all it is far more likely to find them than pieces of armor. 5. Compared to the amount of armor that probably existed, only a very small percentage was preserved. Most of it that exists to this day belonged to the gentry, or had some artistic or historical significance. It is highly unlikely that anyone would have kept a beat-up old leather helmet that belonged to some food soldier.

Those look really nice, good shape and workmanship. There were possibly a lot more leather helmets used than metal ones in the old days, but the leather ones don't last. Have you ever done a warhat-chapel de fer like this one http://www.albion-swords.com/armor/mercenary/pikemans.htm I think it would come out pretty cool and since it is the helmet of an ordinary foot soldier there were probably a lot of them that were made from leather in the old days.

Actually, the samurai carried both swords on the same side (always left), with the short sword more across the front and the long sword along the side. Most only used one sword at a time, so either one was a simple cross draw. If one uses both at once, the long sword is drawn with the right and the short sword with the left (involves a tricky little flip). Edge up draws also tend to require a lot of practice so you don't cut yourself when drawing or sheathing the blade.

I did a couple of years selling on a very casual basis at SCA events here in the U.S. Didn't sell a lot, but then again I did not have that much invested. Interestingly I found that after people had seen me at 3-4 events, they started buying stuff, even though my stock had not really changed. I also noted a distinct break between craftspeople who were actually making the stuff they sold, and people reselling stuff from China or lawnmower blade swords from Pakistan. Drives you crazy when you spend a bunch of time researching historical pouch designs, make the patterns, cut and sew them, and then watch someone look at it, put it down and go buy one across the way that is laced together with a cheesy metal hook clasp.

Never mind, I actually went back and read the post extremely cool I think one would look good with some of your faux brass steampunk devices attached.

I have read that leather mugs, -Jacks, were also known as "blackjacks" when they were waterproofed with tar (yum,yum). They were also fairly popular as a weapon in bar fights, the story goes that the name was transferred by association to the lead loaded leather club-"blackjack"

Just curious, why doesn't anyone make bracers more like leather "Cowboy cuffs", that is with the top portion of the bracer permanently closed and the laces, buckles or whatever on the bottom half to draw it up tight, it would make them a bit easier to put on.

Have you thought of making wooden models of the guns? i have done this for a few hard to find models such as the Taurus "Judge". Of course these were not super tight highly boned holsters, but they worked quite well for basic holster stretching and forming.

Actually if you want to get really hardcore about the lampblack there is a method I saw on a video that demonstrated methods used to make india ink. They had shallow dishes of canola oil with a wick. The wick was lit and the dish loosely covered with a ceramic pot to catch the soot. I have no idea how long this takes, and of course you need to be careful of fire danger. However, they were harvesting pretty big quantities of soot (what lampblack is). Bone black mixed very readily with the beeswax and I imagine lamp black will do the same. It is probably the same pigment in your water color, but the binder in the watercolor is not miscible with the wax. Have fun, took me a while to get the hang of pouring those things and getting a nice level surface, preheating the frames helped a bit. Yet another thing that was an everyday object for thousands of years, that most people don't have a clue about today.

nice job, the tablets are a little easier to read if you mix some black pigment into the wax, bone black from an art store is non toxic, reasonably period, and works well. Made a few of them to sell at SCA events, not particularly successful though. I always thought about making a medieval palm pilot with wax tablet, abacus (yes they used them in Europe too, that's how you add and subtract with roman numerals) and sundial, all bound together like a book.