TomSwede

Nice pics, thanks for showing. I love animal wildlife and have done some photoraphy of birds too. It is very difficult. Today I had to help a young magpie out from our glass terrass. It got in and smashed against the window and got dizzy so I picked her up and sat her on sons bouncing mat. She flew off and....crashed right into the only tree available nearby...duh, typical. Landed in the grass and after 30 mins she took off and seemed allright. Tom

You beat me to punch about the man bag thing. Knew it would come up somewhere;-) Like you said this texture is really nice and classy. Hope I get to work with it sometime. The bag looks absolutely great and everything is neat and in place. Beautiful buckle too! Nice and clean job Luke! Tom

I'm gonna handstitch a 5" wide bassguitarstrap. Could go with out it but customers demand. I charge per hour and he is informed about the extra time/costs. Beside that I need to practice both stitching and the groover tool. For my own use I think I might have had it stitched because I like it but a nice tooled border is also a possibility, depends on motifs and design. Tom

Awesome again!! Good and easy to follow tut, great to see such an open mind and the will to share you're work bro! You're one of a kind and the piece is drop dead gorgeous!!! The roses look so good as trim and the red is perfect to the fleur de lis style frame. Good work!! Tom

The best pillow a leatherworker can have!!! Looking great! Tom

Cool looking green man! The leaves look really good and has great autumn feeling. Tom

Great looking pieces! That eagle really looks good! Tom

Thanks for info! The only info I've seen that I remember is that cuir boili is de facto cooked wax into leather. Boili does suggest that something is cooked in the process but maybe it could be descriptive to hot water or drying in warm temperature. Good pointers and thanks for the info, allways thought I'd have to test this out myself one day. Maybe I can gladly skip that now and focus on other stuff. I'm sliding away from historic leather art more and more. Tom

Those look really great, very nice pattern you got there! I really like that winered colour and the black borders and clean from tooling makes actually a very beautyful leather art piece. I have one question. Title says cuiboili and I think you mean cuir boili wich is a method of using hot wax but seems like you did only waterhardening? Anway they are nice and wax hardening is not really necessary if you don't like to fight with swords;-) I definetly prefer to harden before dyeing but sometimes I have done dyeing before this process because fine brushing is so much easier when the piece lays flat to the table and one can easily find good support for the arms. Either way I don't get very much difference in hardness betwen the two methods. I allways dry them stringed to my arm. Tom

Looking very good Mattmatt! The stamps line up well, edges are nice and smooth, you caught on to the idea of having a border to keep it all together and the colouring is great. It looks like there is some sorta blackening effect on highlighted areas, maybe just an effect from the lighting/camera equipment but it looks really cool. Great job, I agree with abn, alltough I try more to be a carver. Thoughtfully stamped design is hard so work with that because you seem to have that kinda 6th sense some people seem to have on stamping....and do not give them to your friends to much, you might end up shooting your own foot so try and make your friends to spread interest for your work to others. I was just writing something about myspace, maybe use that media and post your work and have your friends go in and comment the pics. Or facebook..blog...or all of them. Tom

Tried to fix the link to your profile. Here it is again: http://myspace.com/anarchyleather I use myspace and now also facebook but facebook seem to be a place for people with notting to do with their sparetime and sit and post virtual guitars, pets and taking quizzes but myspace has attracted some work for me lately and still do. I checked my customers there a few days ago and was impressed to see how many had me listed in top friends. That is really good news beacause I use the name Tom Leatherart to stir up more interest wich will hopefully keep up the chainreaction thing I've been experiencing this summer and fall. I still haven't had the time to get to the point where I seek new contacts with bands and musicians wich is my aim at myspace so there still is stuff I could do there but I just prefer to hang out at my fav site called LW alot too;-) At this point I still have loads more to learn so a mix between both is my cup of tea at the moment being. I also try to seek out and connect with as many as possible LW and other leatherworkerfriends worldwide as possible. I think it'd be interesting of you to come back to this thread in a few months and vent your experiences with it. Well, I'm off to see your myspace page and add you (think I've allready have you on my list but prolly just never seen you online too much?) Tom

How about a warm and cozy piece of sheepskin hair on? Nice for cold days in the woods, I think. I have 2-3 slings to do and got all free hands from customer so definetly gonna try one with sheepskin. A thicker felt type of material seem to be common in my parts of the world (where a beautiful handcrafted sling looks identical to a factory made one only that is made by hand and I've never seen a handstitched one either). Those have the edge folded and sewn through both layers wich makes a nice looking edge (if you close the eye to the fact that the leathers edges is just cut raw without any slicking or edge pampering at all). I don't know what you can do to help with blocking blackening from the rings other than perhaps use techniques like "burst out" black or dark brown towards edges and the ring attachments. Maybe a coat af acrylics sealer will healp at this point?? Nice looking sling! Keep it up, the world needs more custom work from their own specialists rather than the machined leather putty stuff that fall apart over two seasons. Tom

Kinda a fun story!! I'm a bit too far from Denmark for an "over the day" trip but if you get up to my parts I'm sure we'll be able to host you and and your family in one or both of our homes. Hope you get along well with your project. A sketchpad and pencil is also a great accessory to use before getting hands on with a new project. I use it all the time and prefer a "checkered" pad to help keep things straight. Good luck! Tom

Nice to see you and your work again! Just like a "flick of the switch" and "the fly is back on the wall again" ! Great style as usual and it's allways good to make a clean piece once in a while. Nice event you got going, I sure want to set up an paypal account now but have a load of work piling up aswell. "For those about to rock, we salute you............................."*BOOOOOOM* Tom (Back in black is really the best album AC/DC ever made, I allways considered this to be one of rock historys most ironic and sad moments)

I really like the style of this one. Nice job! Tom

Hello and welcome to the board! I thin you got some good answers to proceed with for now but don't hesitate to ask again if you still have probs. About your name, Kattegat. Do you have any connections to Denmark or south of Sweden? Tom

If you are like me you could probably learn how to stamp both right and left handed to relieve the normal hand a bit. I have to admit I never tried it on leather but I used to play the drums alot when I was younger and even tough it slowed pace down a bit I did manage to drum like a left handed person aswell as playing basic comps with one hand. I also played two bass drums and could switch freely in between them. Just a thought that struck me. And just for the fun of it while we're at subject, check out this guy. Michael Angelo Batio and his double guitar action. This dude plays anyway, anyhow and just because. No fake, dude does this live. Tom

Happy birthday guys! You are now 202 years old. Tom

But when you post you sure do!! Excellent stuff! Reading the board has earned it's points I think. Everyone one of those is unique and marvelous. The scale masks are my favourites here but I never felt like a fox really;-) (too short tail..not open for enterpretations, weird people of the board;-) The orangey colours is exceptional. Awsome! Cheerish those hard to do projects because they are necessary to continue too develop new skills and how good isn't it to at least break even on a training piece! Customer will be happy with that one. Good to hear from you, we'll eagerly wait until next time! Tom

Welcome to the board Randahl! Very nice introduction, we love pics. I agree with Denise, the eagle is a very nice motif and carried out in such a nice way. The other works looks awesome too! Tom

Great looking and lifelike portrait! Just amazing! Tom

Hello and welcome to the board! Very beautiful work! Tom

Thanks Johanna! Very great and intricate stuff! Oh you lucky you! Det var nog mitt Korsnäs du besökte! Du skulle inte känna igen dig idag. Min pappmaskin, nr4 är helt ombyggd idag..tyvärr. Jag jobbade i rullmaskin då du var där. Jag har nog besökt din gamla arbetsplats för 7-8 år sedan. Strax utanför Stockholm. Lillebror

Oh yeah! Clasparna är supergreat!! Tjäderläder säger sig vara störst och tja, det är väl marknaden som bestämmer så inte sådär supergreat. Kan förstå att dom inte vill ta hem 25 000 st bara för att jag vill ha två i enfärg och två i en annan som genererar en order på 25 000 st till. Under tiden så övar jag mig lite med acryl då, kanske man får matcha storesyrran en vacker dag;-) alltså rent tekniskt när det gäller att applicera färgen. Har lite acrylskrot på g på bloggen just nu. Tom

Nope, but we sell alot to Tetra pack and those small concentrated juice boxes is very likely to be from us if they are tetra pak, if you buy a box with Irish cream bottles the wrap paper that is printed on (the final outer layer) is from us (they have to get the exact right green colour, patented, so they only use our paper because we are so consistent in quality). We also sell to Combi block for juice containers and I think we still re the only one in the world to sell to both those. We have more customers than any other in the business and run too many qualitys of paper to list. I don't follow up to much wich products it ends up in. Just the customer list and driving program is enough for me so I can tune the machine for each quality. Where is it, where is it?? I'm highly interested in seeing the work of someone who is great with that! Rod and Denise= Hellbent for leather?? Hard to remember all names, this site is growing I think. Tom