TomSwede

Looking really good so far Kate!!! Can't wait to see it finished. Tom

Looking very good Kimber!!! Fairies seem to be very beautiful and detailed!! Ayny chance of closeups?? Nice work!! Tom

What are you dyueing?? Old and worn areas doesn't exactly match my criterias for tooling leather so Iäm wondering if you are dealing with garment leather or?? Tom

Happy new year!! Seems like you wanna use spirit dyes perhaps. Can be a very tricky to dye it evenly. I use 3-4 cottonballs that is wrapped into a soft linnencloth (use a string or rubberband to it it together at the top). Applyin some onto the "ball" and putting it on in a circular motion. You can dillute the dye with denatured alcohol if you don t want it to dark and I usually have my leather a bit wet wich helps the dye to spread and make a more even outcome. Try on scraps first, dyes are not easy to work with. Good luck with it!!

I´m with Tina!!! Yellow, red and mix them + diluting with alcohol. What mixtures...just gotta exeriment away I think. Keep us posted!!! Tom

Looking very good!!! Grey blackish is great looking for the front design and stamping. Slick lacing!!! Tom

Thank you!!!! Yeah an LP deserves something phat!!! Keep pounding!!! Tom

Cool looking armguard and nice design to it. Tom

If I knew I was just gunna make a one off special I would go out and buy something allready made that I like and just switch the cover for my own in leather. (prolly cheap, lol) Tom

Sorry to hear of your loss(es) Bruce!! Very good looking guest book and a great idea for a remembrance collection or how I should put it. Tom

Hi and welcome to the board!!! The seat is really cool and I just love the skull and the detail!!! Excellent!!! Goodlooking border designs too!!! Good to have you here and aother broter in the skullcrew is always welcome!! Tom

Hi and welcome Andy!!!! I allready noticed and wowed you tankard/jug, excellent work. The wealth of information in here is indeed amazing and given the time to study you'll find many gems hidden inside the threads. Most people here are very open to share ther tehniques and secrets and the atmosphere must be one of the friendliest on an internet board ever!!! Pics are valued to the state of treasures here so feel free to post. There is a upload limit of 1 MB so resizing pics and reduce size may be what you need to post more pics in one post. Check the subfroum for taking pics for more detailed tips if you need help with that. I think there is a pinned topic right at the top of that forum that deals with free programs and such for resizing and shedding weight off of jpeg's. Tom

Haha yeah what to do when six months of the year means living in total darkness and cold weather than sit inside and play wit your tool(s) ;-) Mora is definetly a wellknown Swedish brand!! Tom

Oh yeah, I agree with the others!! Nice knifework!! I really like those inverted letters, top one belt has a really great looking font!! Tom

Thanks Noah!!! Yeah the block dye tecnique is fun to work with. The secret lays mostly in the tooling, pay attention to any unintentionally raised areas and go over the cuts with a modeller to try and get them as even as possible. Thx Roo..same to you :-) Tom

Very neat stuff!!! I really like the last pair of bracers!! Tom

Thanks Storm!! The little fella loved those bullet holes (13 years old)! Tom

Thank you very much all!!! This definetly the most complex bracer I've done. Over time you've seen me using a few different tecniques but most times I make a design out of doing it with one or two major techniques. This one has most of the techniques I use in it except for blockdyeing. Most skills picked up here so as usual, I owe it to the good people and the sharing atmosphere here at the board, nutting else!!! He he I've been nagging about the importance of borders alot so just had to make this one work without borders...to try and get my point through that there is always an exception that confirms the rule. Hope it does!!!! Here's the finished bracers post:Lionshead with wings Thanks for looking and commenting, I am overwhelmed....again !!!!! Tom

Than you very much Tao, sorry for late reply. Thank you Kimber!! Yeah eyelts have been discussed alot. The eyelet setter (the bottom pice) from Tandy is less than average in function. My solution: I have a marble tabletop so I just lay the leater with eyelets down on the table and give it a good whackin (about three blows) with the top part of the setter. I developed a feeling for when the eyelet is setttled okay since the marble is so hard, it lets me know through the hammershaft when it's done. To much force will flatten the eyelet ( I guess, haven't had that happen...yet). Thank you very much Desiree!!! There is no particlar texturing done in the face. I used a checkered beveler for major contours and modelled the rest with a regular modellingspoon (small). The eyebrows and eyelids is a bit "lifted" meaning I used the sharp edges of the spoon to cut inunder the conturs and raise them even a bit further to make more realistic eyes. The entire nose section is raised just a little bit to make it "pop out" a bit more. I used a larger modellingspoon for that wich was used to push out the leather from the fleshside. It doesn't protrude much but just gives it a little extra pop. Oh another thing..the whole lions face is painted with very diluted black dye (light grey is a more accurate term on the color) so maybe that contributes to what you feel is texture?? No antiques on the face, just handpainted with that grey color. Tom

Thank you VEEERY much Rhona!!! Such things is great to hear!! Your stuff is equally good and very original too!!! Keep at it, RESPECT!!! Thanks Crystal!!! I just couldn't bring myself to do a regular solution for two reason a) The normal solution with havin the adjustment strap lock into itself requires a slotpunch and it's just too expensive for me to buy one at the moment + I'm not totally happy with the esthetics that it has for this particular strap. I'm not overly enthusiastic about buckle adjustments but did actually lean towards it for a while BUT..MUST have a buckle that I feel is right in color, size and esthetics and boy am I picky sometimes. Couldn't find one sooooo ended up with this. Thanks much Kustomizer!!!! Eco-flo black over red on the adjustment strap. Very fun to play with and I really really liked the way the eco-flo black applied to the flesh side. Created a nice texture sorta. Tom