TomSwede

What a nice notebook! I like thoose oldschool tattoo flashart designs. They seem to work very well on leather but when I think about it most flashart seem be working fine. After all they were made for skin. That wooden border/frame was really a nice touch. Was that your own idea perhaps? Well done Frog! Tom Oh, BTW nice colouring there. Stuff like that scare the hell out of me!

That's one cool gear shifter knob and that lacing going over the top looks just great. Tom

Thank you Frog! Much appreciated!! Tom

With the pricetags on theese bottles you actually have to convince yourself to take a little dram on saturdaynight rather than the usual opposite situation, lol!

Jajjemen Gävle är min hemvist för det mesta, har även ett litet hus upp i Finnskogarna väster om Ockelbo- My little gettaway from the big big noisy city!! Thanks for loving the flask. I decided to find another glass top for it, the present one is not fitting very well and I don't like the look of it either. Tom

Thanks Drac! That should be easy to find, hopefully. I'll be heading downtown next week so I'll be sure to visit the petstore. Tom

Hey Ken! Well not for free really. Our society is restricted to 10 hardcore whisky fanatics that refuse to spit out the testobject;-) and prefer heavy metal music to the delicate analysis..hahaha..other than that we take this serious. So the society buys in alot of whisky wich will then be covered by an entrance fee that is about the cost of a fairly cheap bottle of scotch. For this you get to taste whiskys that you need to be a detective to even get a hold on and then you off course would have to ransac your conscious and see if you can really afford that bottle. We had five types of whisky + a special rare type to buy on the side this time. The special one and the top one of the fives were limited editions and the cost is about 320 USD per bottle if I just recalculate from Swedish crowns. I have no idea what the bottles would cost in US or Canada. We have five of each sort so some simple math shows that we are dealing with quite alot of money to get all this together and that is why we have member restriction in the club. I think it's a real treat to get to try theese ones and man do we have alot of fun. In may we will go to the scottish island Isle of Islay (our mecca) and have a blast and all expenses are paid by the society. We sell alot of beer and snacks and some more regular whiskys on the side aswell at those events so the society brings in some good money even though we have very low prices compared to what you pay on a pub or bar. Check out this bottles serial no. Told you we were all metal folks;-) Thats the special on the side whisky. Best regards and thank you for shown interest Ken! Tom

Sounds like a good idea! I searched a bit for BB guns and I'm not sure if they exist in Sweden, probably at some specialist shop. I'm keepin an eye open for it though or other possible material for a beanbag. Tom

Since pictures are appreciated so much here I just add a few more of this flask at it's first duty of service. Here we have it as a waterbottle on one of our public whiskyruns/test/seminar. We have about 175 people during 2 nights so theres was alot of interest and appreciation in this flask and I just soaked it up like a sponge. The gentleman posing with the flask is an official ambassador of whisky and has taken the oath by the official scottish council of whisky. Tom Photographer of Gefle Malt Whisky Society (because I can shoot whilst beeing drunk)

It sure gave a nice rugged look to it and I like the style on the edges aswell. I used Fiebings red oil dye and carefully touches with spiritbased black on top and over that a new layer of red with a small piece of sponge. The black dissolves a little bit and can then be pushed around a litttle bit with the red sponge to (hopefully) achieve desired effect. I used this for the letters on a black bootstrap. The desired effect was to get the red letters to look dirty and greasy (mechanical workshop style). Tom

Some nice wristbands there! I like the red/black mesh style on the wrath piece. I'm experimenting a bit with that myself. It'll be up when I get the hardware to complete it. Is it regular spirit dyes or perhaps oilbased ones? Cool stuff, thanks for sharing. Tom

Hi and welcome to the forum Syd! Everybody here is very friendly and helpful so don't hesitate to ask about anything. Posting photos is very appreciated here. There's not really a minimum thickness for tooling but you need veg. tanned leather for tooling and stamping. Thinner leather off course doesn't give very deep impressions but are sometimes required when making an item. For thin leather one can work with techniques that'll fool the eye to think the desing is deeper than it is (shading and inverted tooling for example). I'm no good with this but I've seen those that can master this art, some are here. I work mostly with veg. tan leather around 1/8" (3mm) because I like the flexibilty. Not to stiff ot to thin and wobbly and it takes tooling well. I just got a marbletabletop and realized what a huge differnce there was compared to the old piece of garden stone I used as workingsurface under the leather when tooling so try to find an underlay as hard and flat as possible. Good luck on your journey in the leatherlands! Tom Oh almost forgot, DON'T eat the donuts here, I think someones dog been doing something with them;-)

WOW man! That's a wicked ride, the satin black off course does it's job too. I think that bikes attitude will just get better and better during wear and tear and age with pride alot. Nice going theme with the leather there and well done! Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed it alot and I'm not a bikerperson. Tom

Tried this for the first time yesterday but didn't have time to finish so I bagged it and put in fridge over night. Now the piece is done tooling and cut to shape and that packing tape is still tight as ever on the thing. Normally the leather kind of curls up a bit wich is annoying but with the tape there were nerely no curl at all, now I have to figure out next annoying thing. Got myself a nice marbletable to use as workbench (oboy was that a huge improvement) and with the packing tape it would slide away pretty easy when tooling (especially with that steep beveler that is very hard to "walk" without leaving marks). Maybe I can find a similar tape with a more rubbery surface. Packingtape=recommended Tom

Thanks Ken! Now I think I have the courage to get me some soon. Tom

Hey Ken! One of the older threads mentioned a little bit of darkening in the leather from the ammonia, what's your experience? Curios since I can't find any without ammonia in Sweden and still are hesitating. also i was wondering how it did hold up against spiritdye since my memory fails me. Thanks! Tom

Oh forgot the obvious! A macrolens would work just fine for you and not very expensive either only crotch is that they are useless as a "walkaround" lens. Many portrait photographers prefer macrolenses and they sure do blur out the background. Just make sure you control the field of depth properly with the f-stops or you'll end up with a (non)depth like this.

Don't get hooked up on cameramodels, all Canon SLR's will allow you to step up the ISO level pretty much without disturbing noise wich will be a good aid in your dark shop. I go with Canon because of the good variety of used lenses available on the market but I think Nikon will do just as fine. For product photography you can do quite allright with longer shutterspeeds since the object will be static. Even lighting is more critical I think. Therefore I recommend a good tripod and a remotecontrol trigger (can be found cheap on e-bay). For product photography you'll want to blur out the background as much as possible to really make the object pop out of the picture and this can be resolved in different ways so I recommend you start in that end and look for what kind of lens you want. It's not the camera that makes the photographer but the lenses make a real difference. One get's what one pay for and sadly the little better lenses are incredibly more expensive. I recommend that you rule out kitlenses for this type of photography aswell as wideangle lenses and if a zoom is really desired it's gonna cost some money. Good luck with your next investment! Tom

Thats is cool! I agrre with Ken, that orange thread is supernice and nice touch with the main leather. Did you antique it yourself? Looks just great. Tom

You know what! I ain't gonna post no picture here...because. Beautiful winterscenery like that is what we should have in theese parts of Sweden right now, but we don't and that's just how it goes theese days. Today the sun is actually up on a bright sky and the grass looks more green than brown, a little warmer and we'll need to bring out the lawnmovers. Soo I took my sorry ass from the 'puter chair for a moment and plowed through the recycling corner of our home. It's been neglected since x-mas so it was a BIG pile to sort out. Managed to pack it up so I didn't have to go twice to the recycling bing but don't know if that's a good thing (I'm really a beer guzzler and should get some exercize once in a while;-) so now that's done and hopefully theese efforts will provide a more stabile weathersituation somewhere in the future. I love the winter and it's killing me to experience those green winters. Snow is magic! About the picture, my camera needs recharging so todays statement is to neglect that and be a little greener, the puter is on and that's enough already. Best regards and sorry for hijacking the thread a little bit but your beatiful pictures (and hearing about that eagle) just got me in one of those worrying moods and for shure some bit of envy aswell. Just wish I could be there in the snow and go icefishing and all those wonderful winter activities. Tom (feeling blue)

My first experiences in tooling was on pre-dyed, allthrough black veg and being a newbie and all I managed to get some tooling down on those pieces and the owners of them bracers I made claim to still be happy with them so pre-dyed can be tooled. Don't think there were any big difference in how it takes the tooling.

A search on "Japanese pranks" usually generates some good laughter.

I just love that wallet! Soo nice and clean and..lots of skulls! Tom

A nice piece that is, love the eagle logo and the nice red tone of that dye. Good job! Tom

Hey man, welcome to the board! I am another one with no artistic ability so check for my latest picpost in show off section and see where this can take you! All you need is a little imagination, draw it from what you see here and everywhere around you, bang your girlfriends boots are missing something and wham you'll find yourself making a nice addition to it or purse, handbag, armbands, chairs or whatever. Don't be afraid to try tooling and such, theres plenty of nice art to use readily with the aid of computer and printer and you have some very nice helpful friends and shaggy doughnuts here that gladly will help you. Scouter says it very well, its' the journey! All the best Tom