Johanna

I had another member report a similar problem, but I don't see anything amiss in the forum, and I can't duplicate the issue. I will look around the IPB forums today and see if I can figure anything out. Dickf makes a good point about checking your bookmark- the URL to the forum is http://leatherworker.net/forum/ Johanna

If we put a 'stolen saddle section' in the forum, it would be easier if the saddlers would link back to it from all their sites. That way a victim of a theft will only need to submit their info once, not try to daisy chain to all the saddlemakers individually and then hope the saddlemaker updates his site. I could ask the Monkey to make a banner people could click. I have no objection to it if it would help reunite saddles with their rightful owners. It would be up to you saddlemakers to use your sharp eyes to make it work though. Johanna

If we don't educate the public, how are we going to get the prices for our work that we deserve? When I was introduced to Leather Land, I didn't know leather could be tooled, or how to tell leather from vinyl. And I was managing a fabrics and notions store! Johanna

I've got a messed up right wrist. I would be very interested in a custom made brace/splint! Velcro is the easiest way to fasten it, I think, and would allow for some adjustment when my wrist is swollen. Looking forward to seeing what others have to say. Johanna

90% of the time when I call or write to someone and ask if we can have permission to use something of theirs here, they say "Yes!" and are tickled to be asked, and that other people noticed that they are trying to do the best work they can. Collectively, there are hundreds of years of leatherworking experience here. People take the time out of their busy day to answer questions and exchange ideas. Some folks will go way out of their way to help someone else. I don't know what kind of magic there is here at LW, but I like it. Whoever sprinkles the fairy dust, thank you! Johanna

Kate- you left off the most important part of your resume! Kate is the other Admin on LW! I am a housewife and mother in Ohio that does websites for leatherworkers, local history buffs, and pretty much anyone else who has a check that will clear and a little patience. I do other computer work, too, and am the sole tech support for every Grandma in our church that wants to get email, as well as leatherworkers around the world. In my former life, before the kids came along, I was a retail manager for Books-a-Million, Tandy, JoAnn Fabrics, & 7-Eleven . Oh, yeah, and a home-based custom leather business paid the bills for a few years, too. I liked being an entrepreneur when we had the leather shop. If we wanted something, we hustled some extra work. If we needed a break, we took it. Many of the activities we enjoyed (from bike runs to Pow Wows to reenactment events) were also business opportunities. Our friends often stopped by, and we drank coffee and smoked in the shop with the music turned up loud. Gettting paid to play was the best part about the leather shop! Sometimes I go bang out a belt or something because I'm in the mood, but the shop closed ten years ago. LW keeps me from missing it too much. Johanna

Carr52- Clay Miller (Bert) is in charge of the contests and challenges, and if he hasn't already accepted your generous offer, I will for him. Thank you for thinking about the members here- they like prizes! I've been a little distracted- we've been restoring the old posts from the great server crash last year. About half of them are visible, and you should see the rest in a few days or so. I've been waxing nostalgic, then Kate whacks me with a stick and tells me to get back to work! We've been tossing around ideas for the next challenge, so I'm sure Clay will announce something soon. (We have to give him some slack- he has a full time job and a bunch of kids!) Thank you thank you Johanna

Isn't it sweet to see the old posts coming back? I think we have another 3000 to go...*sigh ~J

Leather is measured in 64ths of an inch. Since leather is not made in a factory on rollers, it varies in thickness, which is why the hides come in a "range" like 8-9 oz. 1oz = 1/64 inch = .015625 inch = 0.396875 millimeters The "ounce" designation has nothing to do with weight, only thickness. Johanna

No.

When Wade and I married, we each had a house, but mine has a two-story barn (all men eye that barn enviously) and it's bigger, so we live here. For the first couple of years we rented his house to his sister, and that was fine except for the midnight maint. calls and assorted expenses landlords have to pay. We rent it to a family friend now, and he takes care of all the things sister used to call us for, so all is well...but...if he fell off the edge of the earth, that house would become a financial liability quickly, and it is not going to be an easy sell despite a prime location. (We do not have first & last & a security deposit, nor do we much in the house fund, period) We are looking into refinancing to get locked into lower mortgage rates right now, but it is worrisome, because Wade's company just instituted pay cuts and benefit reductions, and laid off a good percentage of the work force. Our area's economy isn't good right now, and even when they reduced his pay, Wade said, "I'm lucky to have a job." My warning is that even if the house is paid for and unoccupied, it will still generate expenses, like utilities and taxes, so if you plan to sit on it for awhile, make sure you get good tenants you can trust, and establish a fund to cover exploded water heaters and other unforeseeable costs. Johanna

Maybe someone ought to email Hide House a link to this thread? ~J

This is an open board, available to anyone interested in education, entertainment and fellowship in leatherwork. Invite anyone you want, the more the merrier. I can always make more coffee. Johanna

Hey Suze, Wade and I will make the leather covered cupboard pulls for a good price....like maybe only $150 each. Seriously, if I had that market to sell them, I would be sewing the doggone things every night. Cost of materials? Less than $2. Time spent? not much. The leather strap pulls are almost comical, if they weren't getting the prices. Anyone on this board could make 38 of them in less than a day out of the scrap bin. People with sewing machines could make them faster. I loved the delivery time, too- 6-8 weeks. That tells me they don't sell many, so they don't keep an inventory, and someone, maybe someone from this board, gets a call and says "some lady wants 38 in tan" and prob pays the leatherworker $5 each for them. I wish I were kidding. Love, your cuz, Johanna

Yep. I know you have the tech skills to download the right software, install it and associate it with the correct file types, but on your dial up account the download would take several hours. My email back might take a few minutes to download, too. Glad it's not my job to interperet the contents. I'm still having nightmares over that ridiculously long muscle that I can't pronounce over top of all those bones. ~J

If you're ready to bite the mouse in half, send it to me and I'll shoot it back to you in a regualar zip file, if it even needs to be in one. Was that sentence too long? Johanna

Marlon-The more I'm around leather, the better my immune system tolerates it, and I usually only get hives. I can't wear raw veggie tanned leather against my skin though...Let's say I'm "sensitive" to leather. We're putting the old posts back in one-at-a-time, and this is the only thread that got a bump. Did any of you "old timers" who posted in the original thread (2006-07) get an email notification? I'd like to know if that is working or not for the older posts. Let me know if you got a notification for this thread, and whether you posted or were subscribed to it. Texas Jack- If you look at the date on this thread, it was started about two weeks after the board was originally set up in the summer of '06. We had a server fail about a year ago, and though we had back ups of the threads, we weren't able to make them show because we were missing some key parts of the table structure in the database. (Failing servers don't make good back ups!) Kate, who is a gifted leather artist, is also a geek, and she wrote some code I don't understand and figured out how to fix what was broken. I didn't mean to sound like I was tooting my own horn, but with all the "thank yous" in that thread, I wanted to point out that it's a lot more people than me making LW possible! For those of you who wanted another update (one of you said my life would make a good soap opera- you don't know the half of it! ) Jane is 10 and in the 5th grade now, and Jack is about to be 9 and in the 3rd Grade. Jane knows more about my cell phone than I do, and Jack likes Carlos Santana and ZZ Top and wants to play the guitar like them. I am relieved that he doesn't care much for the pop music of his generation, because Jane makes me listen to enough of it. Both of them would like to do more in the leather shop than I will let them, but taking the kids into the shop has saved my sanity more than once. Busy hands aren't getting into trouble! Jane likes to braid and bead, Jack likes to stamp and generally hit things with my hammers and mallets. Wade's son, Zack, 14, shows an actual talent for leatherwork and I probably should encourage him more, but then he might get bitten by the leatherworking bug and develop a tool addiction, and it would be all my fault. We call Wade's daughter "Marilyn" after the girl on the Munsters who was so normal on Mockingbird Drive. Seriously- the one dog has two different colored eyes, the cat has deformed toes and the other dog should probably be on Prozac because he won't get off the couch and we think he's depressed. Everybody here has issues, including me. Life is good here in Ohio, and I'd be okay if there were just more hours in the day to get things done. I make websites and mop the floors. I can't complain, but as one saddlemaker told me, "Kids are quite a price to pay for a few hours of nekkid fun, huh?" I can't imagine life without them, but they keep me hopping. They are 14, 12, 10 & 9 and all you parents are nodding your heads right now. You've been here. Someday maybe they will all grow up and move out, and we will have the house to ourselves, and find things where we last set them down again, but that is just a dream right now, and I can't allow myself to get too caught up in the fantasy. I'm just happy when there is enough hot water for my bath. In my spare time, I do different things for the local historical associations, garden and do my flowerbeds, and take the kids to Pennsylvania whenever I get homesick for the hills. I do a couple of websites for guilds even though extracting content from them is like pulling teeth. The newest guild is in Cincinnati, and they are planning to apply for IFoLG membership in Indianapolis this fall. If you live anywhere in the tri state area (Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio) call the Tandy store and ask for Micheal. He's putting together another dynamic group of people who love the leather. It gets in the blood. Now, everyone get back to work! You aren't making any money surfing the forum when you could be at the bench! Johanna

Well, it's been a year since the big crash...remember that? And lookie here, the old posts are starting to come back (Thank you Kate!) We started from scratch a year ago after the server died, but we survived and thrived because of our loyal members. As I write this we have almost 4100 members. About 2500 unique visitors are here are the site every day, not counting the search engines which simply live here, rather than trying to keep up. You folks have made almost 60,000 posts in the last year, and nothing shows any sign of slowing down. This has been fun! I read through this thread blushing. Don't thank me for LW- the real credits are below: I would like to thank the team behind the scenes- everyone in green and brown for keeping things running smoothly. Thank you to the blue folks who chip into the kitty with money so that we can keep the lights on and the coffee fresh. (If you want to feel good about helping your favorite leatherworking web site pay the bills, click "My Controls" and "purchase subscription" or go the main page and donate any amount you want.) I would like to thank my husband, Wade, for his incredible patience and understanding why this board means so much to me. I would like to especially thank ClayB and Clay M (Bert & Ernie), Art, Bruce, Kate, Holly, Denise, & that stinking monkey- this wouldn't be possible without all of you. I owe Kate for keeping me relatively calm during the three days the board was down and I was losing my mind. Because Kate does back ups, too, I can sleep at night. I would like to thank the saddlemakers for breaking down the wall of silence and teaching their valuable skills. A tip of the hat to all the artists and specialists here who answer questions and don't mind sharing. I appreciate the way you newbies manage to keep the blood off the carpet and the questions coming. All you other guys that are just here for the doughnuts and coffee, well, it wouldn't be the same without you. I would like to thank God and the Internet for bringing so many fine folks together for conversation and friendship. We've got a great bunch of people here, and you folks truly are the best. Johanna

You can wash clothes like that in regular detergent, but do NOT put in the dryer. That's where the leather gets damaged. hang it up to dry. If you want to get grunge off of suede, use a toothbrush and some baking soda. If it's regular leather, any standard conditioner will clean it- just be sure not to slop it on the fabric by accident. If the whole garment is leather, especially suede, spend the $$ at the professional dry cleaner that regularly deals with leather. If the person behind the counter seems unsure about your item, run, do not walk, out the door. Johanna

I have a friend who does craft shows and she always puts out a jar to "win this" and people drop in their business card or fill out a slip of paper to enter a drawing. But like Ray pointed out, some people don't want to be spammed. I had a look at your website. You do some unique work that a collector or professional musician might want to be kept apprised of, but there is no guestbook on your site. That might be the place to start collecting that mailing list. Add to it the info from all sales tickets you write. If I bought a guitar strap from you, constantly got compliments on it, and my best friend's birthday was coming up...well, the email saying "hey, look what I did that's new!" would probably make me a repeat customer. There is a company up in Maine that restores trunks and is a retail supplier. He uses a mailing list to send out a periodic newsletter. It is so well written and funny I always read it. (People are nodding their heads. Churchill Barton of Brettuns Village, of course!) If Ray started a newsletter or blog, I would sign up for the same reason. There are just some people you know you would enjoy sitting around drinking coffee on the back porch with, ya know? For an artist like yourself with a niche market, you have to be able to communicate why yours is better, has more value, quality. You may want to include a little education on your site. I know what goes into doing inlay, stitching and measuring, but the average customer does not. They assume you have a magic machine that attaches everything in the back room. They didn't see you standing there with the strap of leather and an idea, then going through your stuff until you found just want you were looking for...let them see you as an artist and an individual, but your site is sort of impersonal. Pics really help sell good work, too. Close up detailed pics will sometimes send the customer over the edge. Your question was about a guestbook at a show, but my answer is that to use your site might be even more effective, especially since you do such specialty work. People looking at your guestbook would see "oh, it's even better than I expected!" "thank you for the quick courteous help!" etc and that helps add to your credibility and reputation. You do list your website on your business cards, right? I know sometimes I sit down with a pile of them and visit the sites after I've been to a show. "Oh, yeah, I remember that lady- she put the jewels in the guitar straps!" When dimosaurs roamed the earth, and there was no internet, we leatherworkers were limited to our geographical locations to sell. Thanks to the Internet, UKRay has eaten Oreos. People here sell to anywhere they can ship, and are glad to, especially when they are highly specialized leatherworkers. HTH Johanna

It's a good idea in theory, but within our small community of leatherworkers, we have too much diversity. What is "best" is subjective, because what works for Jim in Utah may not be the right answer for Tim in Australia or Jose in Brazil. Joe might need a machine to sew chaps and chinks, while John might need one to do harness work. The "best" sewing machine doesn't exist, only the "best one for you". Same with tools, hides, books, suppliers etc. Someone just posted about tools, and got several recommendations. "I like his backgrounders, and someone else's bevelers, and take a look at the basketweave stamps made by so-and-so." You might say, "Oh, those backgrounders are way too small (big) for me, and I like the basketweave stamps made by this maker. Meanwhile, someone else is saying, "Great, but they won't ship any of it to Siberia, where I live." Depending on what you are making, what your style is, who your customers are and where you live changes the "good, better, best" rankings. But when 85 saddlemakers say, "I get my "blank" from "a-company", that's a good indication that if you are a saddlemaker, you might want to try it too. Ten people can post horror stories about something they bought, then one rocket scientist will post an exquisite work of art made with the same thing, and we all go, "hmmmm..." and wonder what they did differently? The best source of information is right here on the board, with hundreds (thousands?) years of experience and opinions. Occasionally a crackpot will post, but his peers usually clear up any misunderstandings immediately. ("Point the blade AWAY from your other hand!") That's really the best that we can do, to draw on the collective knowledge and experience of the members. Johanna

Have you tried a carpenters pencil? Many of the old timers are shuddering at ink on the back of anything, whether a lining will cover it or not. Johanna

WESA is Western and English Sales Association. from their site: Jan 16-20, 2009 Denver, Colorado

Read that again out loud, Tom! Johnny said "gotta love the internet!" Cheers for 2009- may we all be blessed with health and laughter, and the friendships here at LW. Johanna