TomSwede

I really appreciate to see your carvings in the "nude" because so much can be learned from it. Once you show a finished piece... one is just blown away and it is harder to catch the most important part. The swivelknife work. Do you usually carve with a straight blade? Thanks for sharing, it is wonderful to watch your work! Tom

I think we have aired this before Caroline but it's about the same in Sweden. Not one guild and prolly no competitions at all I can enter. My supplier is the only one in Sweden and they try to carry as much as possible from Tandy but still I miss alot of the stuff that is preferred here wich is a problem because I learn most my stuff here and then this aquired information can't be carried out. Sealers and top finishes is such a thing. But you're dam lucky to have that roo lace at extremely low cost compared to Sweden as a small comfort for you. One of the good things I see with LW is that us leatherworkers unite and getting skills up, clash our heads together and talk pricing and how to bring ourselves out on the market. I see a little tendency with a growing group of people who is fed up with products that are cheaper and have a shorter lifetime than the carton box it came in. Another thing I've been thinking about is the prices on our perhaps biggest "enemy" plastic will hold up in future. Plastic is an oil based product so should getting higher if not the re-cycling can manage to keep it down. If we fight to survive as a team and open peoples eyes a bit more to our products by getting more craftsmen/women putting stuff out and work collectively to keep prices at a level where it is interesting for us to make products for the market maybe we can get back on track again? I think our stuff is just as cool as tattoos and that group has grown into a market where the competition is hard today. They also stand very united and keep a keen eye to each others work and to keep a somewhat uniform price all over the globe. Getting a tattoo in Thailand off course is cheaper than to get it in Sweden but if you look to what the money is worth you soon realize that the Thai tattooer is walking away with the big profit. My ordinary job is to operate the steam drying section of a papermachine. We pump out volumes up to 1000 tons (that's 14000 trees) of carton board per day 24/7. The stuff we sell to China comes back if there is slightest little problem with it. I tiny dot in the print of a carton box is making them see red. Putting dangerous chemicals in the milk they put in the box seem to be a smaller problem! This hasn't much to do with the rest I was writing about but is just a little reflection over the importance of the mentioned package versus what is inside of it, especially in Asia. We keep fighting for the love of our art, you're no longer halfway around the globe Caroline, just a mouseclick away (but surely this is a poorer way of socialising, wish I could, wish I could say -next round's on me, once in a while! to all of us! Tom

Depends on who is holding the crop;-) The crop looks very nice and I just love black an red combos! Carving looks good aswell. Soon enough you'll have more scrap than time to practice with it. Tom

Thoose look great!! I like the brown lacing on the darker ones but the wooden planks one is nict too with the contrast. I'm not sure on this but I was thinking that perhaps making the edge black on the wooden actually could lift the design a bit, maybe. Cool design with the small wooden planks on the JWE one. I'd like one of those to carry my cigars in. Tom

Nice cylinder! I like the design at top and bottom, off course I like the celtic heart and rings too. I just meant that the end designs makes it look more complete. Tom

Looking very good Brad! Love the carving, very clean and smooth carving lines. The stamping pattern is cool and nice bag too. I like it when the edg pieces are sewn fles to flesh. Tom

Looking good!! I've done lots of small celtic stuff and know how hard it is. I use a LED forehead lamp to see the tracing lines when carving because the small work has a tendency to allways end up beeing shadowed by the hand. Tom

Bra jobbat Brad! Perhaps you by now have come to the point where you realize that alltough English and Swedish share alot of common words they are spoken very differently. Sometimes I write a post directly out of my head so I put the English words down in a Swedish kind of way. After I posted it and I go back and re-read it I get a laughter because it looks allright to me but probably confusing to the rest. "Bra jobbat" is a good example where direct translation work fine, it's "good work" in English...only, the correct translation is "good worked". Translating "good work" to Swedish will be "bra jobba" wich is not a sentence but would suggest that you think "it is good to work". He he language is fun. Drop me e-mails if you need any help. I scored full points on my English by just attending class and open the book and sometimes I had to correct my teacher. Never really studied it though and it was many years ago but I enjoy digging in it because I learn from it. I think you're fishing for the word "uppmaning" instead of "bemanning" in the last sentence. Bemanning could be translated as crew. Glad to see you're struggling with it, keep it up and I'll get you a couple of fine american beers when you get here (Sierra Nevada-ale, anchors steam). Tom

Hi and welcome to the board Snakebyte! Vegetabilic tanned leather I think will be the best solution for you. It is easy (well, everything is relative) to mold and like Srigs said hot water makes it stiffer when dried. Boiling water is not a good idea. The grain side will curl up on you. A stitching groover might be a good idea if you plan on hand sewing, just don't ask for my help with it (as I just posted a long post about the troubles I'm having with mine) still, grooves for the stitching to sit in makes all the difference but I think the simpler one from Tandys is hard to maneuver. 1/8" I think might be a good thickness for the backside of your holster and prolly the outside to. Use the object of desire and place it on a piece of cardboard and draw a line around to get a nice shape you like and don't make it to tight. Use the cardboard as a template. This will function as your backside and not be molded so no need to worry about it getting too small. For the outer side you will need to make an oversize leatherpiece wich you can mold over the gun. A modeling spoon might be a good aid here, and strong thumbs. When you have molded it to shape you will be able to spot and mark up a stitching line and tack this piece to a wooden board and let it dry and later on you stitch where the tacks were so so stitching will hide it. When dry you can trim the edges with a utility knife so that it matches the backside. I'm no expert on holsters but this is the basics of the pancake type holster as I've read about it and I've tried it once with a simpler object wich came out nice but I did go with a much thinner leather for the outer piece as to get the hang of the molding part better so maybe try with a thinner leather test piece first. It should set you off in the right direction when you get hands on with it. http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com/ Try locate a dealer close to you and go there and check out stuff or surf around the site. The groover, modeling spoon, needles, stitching awl. It's all there and there are some good books from Al Stohlman, kinda old but still holds a lot of god stuff about stitching, constructing and all you need. Tom

Wow Art! That is a cool tank bib. Love the rivets and the nice pouch with the claw clasp. You've done it again! Tom

Hello and Welcome Karl! Nice to see a Londoner here. Not so far from Sweden with Ryanair. You'll be comfortable here. This place is very friendly and people share their work and how they do it alot so expect to see and learn amazing things! Tom

Marketing yourself is an ever ongoing battle. You think of it when you go to sleep and you basically practice it as much as you can. There are just as many marketing methods as there are people. I use myspace and now also facebook + website/blog to show myself. Wearing my bracers to a bar often generates lots of interest and a few times I had orders on the spot at bars. Friends and their friends, tell 'em to show off your stuff since you obviously want get away with selling for full price to them. I don't have hordes of customers, I barely break even on the stuff I make. I've made unprofitable portfolio stuff to show at my website, hopefully one day the right customer stumbles in and see that big bold rodtube and think it is a must have. At the moment I feel like I should do more to attract attention to my work but gotta have time to work the leather too. Allways carry something nice with you to showoff. When you say you work with leather people will be curious but probably not think about how cool stuff we can do. At least not here in Sweden. It is impossible to explain my work to someone here so I direct them to my website to look att all the stuff. This has not generated too many jobs the past four mounths the site been up but it has spawn a very high interest amongst people around me. I'm builiding a rep. I look for people with special needs and target them. Why did I make that first bracer? Easy..I wanted to showoff. The ones available looked like crap but my friends had them so I made one of my own and sold three more right on the spot because now those friends wanted to be no less;-) One guy at work came up to me and wanted a type of tool bag matched to his vintage US car and we discussed a bit and drew up a nice design then he said..-oh waitup, I'll go and check with two other guys. When he came back he told me that they had been surfin my site and the other also wanted this for their car. One of them is into serious car competitions with a $70 000 car and wanted it done and completely matched to the cars interior before summers first show. Could be favourable customer perhaps. Marketing is the darkest cloud over my head and I often feel bad about it. I'd rather spend my time here and work leathers alot more. Imagination is your best friend and most things are allowed. Lying about your product and backstabbing the competition is something I hate. Good luck with it, I'll let you know if I get any;-) Tom Edit: I hope no one saw the horrible typo I made, sorry!

Blown away someone said, I totally agree!! The dragspel design is absolutely stunning and the braiding is really like the whipped cream on the mashed potatoes You gotta stop teasing me with that clasp;-) but what really caught my eyes instantly was the nice design of the front flap and how nice you got the initials placed. Fully carved/decorated and still a nice display area to highlight the owner of a very special custom design purse. Excellent!! Tom

Yeah, that strap is dynamite so definetly should be in the spotlight. It was very inspirational to me when I saw it the first time. Happy for you! Tom

I love the sound of corn flakes when eating it!!! Ok back to leather topics for me. Had a bit of a slacker weekend so slipping into my best pair of leatherworking moccasins today, I have all week free to do what I want! Tom

That is what John did for me. I put it together in photoshop PSD file format. I'm not sure it's vectorbased but PSD was fine to work with (maybe he converted it?). Send him a message and ask him. Indypbear is his boardname but I probably wrote that in my initial post. Tom

I just thought to myself the other day that it was a long time since I saw a mask from you. It is kinda strange, I agree but the colours is...WOW!!! A Harlequin costume type might be suiting I think. At least it got me thinking of it. Nice job! Tom

I like the look on your vest! The harness looking thong is cool and lovely fat braid is all in may favour. Welcome to the board, good start!! Tom

Hi and welcome Doug! If you can locate a Tandy store be sure to pick up one of Bruce Grants braiding books. Alltough a bit hard to understand and follow the drawings I still think it's worth the money. Tom

Good one rdb! The evening sun can be great to shoot in. The bar owner will be happy! Tom

I think now is the time we start to get it slowly creeping onto the shelfs but still I agree with you. It's a bit of an anti-climax when it comes. As a heathen viking type of guy I don't pay any particular attention to celebrating any specific dates, its the end of the year and start of the next one. The circle is complete and the wheel is turning but I'm overly happy if I can be part of the family gathering at the 24th but I do work alot on that date so often miss or can only be part for a few hours, not being able to drink anything nice either because I have to go to work and such. That is a big anti-climax too. So seems like we don't have just as early hysteria as you do but something that is bugging me more and more is the hysteria with x-mas presents. People take huge loans and buy on credit to afford their presents and the pricetags on what you buy for presents is ridicilously high sometimes. I'm talking about buying big screen telly's, videogames, home cinemas, the latest Sony Eriksson mobile phone with all the goodies and such. I'd never accept a gift like that. Two reasons, it's too expensive- I'd feel like the giver is trying to buy my affection and if I want something that expensive I definetly like to pick it out from the shelfs myself. A box of chocolate makes me overly happy, a single malt whisky...oboy this person loves me! Tom

WOW Anne!!! Congratulations and standing applause to a well done and carried out project I'm very impressed! The size and magnitude of this box is just awesome. Those corner covers is a great idea. I might borrow some ideas from that for my next rodtube, can I? Well, time for you to put some heavy rock on the player, sit down in your favourite couch and have your favourite drink and just enjoy your finished project. You came out on top of it! Good work Tom

Burnished is the right word and it does work up a thirst;-! We love pics, but in show off it's really up to you to decide what to post, however when putting into the critique subforum detailed pictures is more of importance. Like, if you took a close-up of that off centre stamping and was wondering how much it has offset your bridle in an "all in all" scale it'd be good to see it detailed and the complete bridle as whole. You're doing fine and seem to have a good teacher so I just look forward to see more work from you (I don't think I could get such a good looking bridle on my first try) Tom

Hi and welcome to the board Annie! It's hard to catch the details in your bridle and I don't know anything bout bridles but he overall appearance seem just fine. Looks like nice even stiching and edges look like they got some close hand attention too. I was thinking that the edges might be the lining that is sewn and turned but that seems like something that would come after your first project but since you have a teacher maybe that is just what it is? Tom

Nice job Jordan! Fine looking basketweave! Measurements and figuring them out is a pain especially when you don't have the object to fit availabe to check with as you go along so good try anyways. Tom