TomSwede

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

Hello and welcome Firerose! And also welcome to an addiction that can easily top hours per week compaired to computer gaming, well almost anyways. That is if you would be picking up orders in the future. Tom

Those handles seem to be excellent in giving a nice and good grip. Good thinking there. They definitly are cool to look at too. As many others I vote for getting some dye on them. Can't decide on colour or tone, just don't get 'em too dark. Tom

Thats a really nice seat and man do I love decoration on the back of the seat. Sooooo elegant! That cool skull looks quite realistic. Did you work with white colours or is it just the natural leather and maybe some shading? Nice job as always and I know that someone will be happy to be saved from that horrible original! Tom

Those are way cool man! I especially like the chaos/order ones. What a nice pair. I'm thinking a left/right would suit me well..eh.. so I would know wich shoe is wich when trying to put them on he he! Looking forward to see more from you in the future. I made alot of ambands, big and small for friends and foe and when older posts are restored I'll repost the pics of my own to them. Best regards! Tom

Hey Kevin and Ken! You rock my world! Coming home tired from work I have to say your comments really made my day! Thank you guys! BTW: I forgot to mention in the first post that the flask is round and not squareshaped inside the sheath, also the widest part of the flask is the bottom so the bottom panels are wet molded to accomodate the form of the flask. Tom

Thank you for your kind words Alex!! I answer your question first: I'd say roughly about 23 hours for the braidng alone but that is with one eye on the tv aswell as ascoffee and smoke pause 5-10 minutes per hour. Uisge beata is Gaelic for water of life, aswell as eau de vi is French and aqua vitae off course is Latin. Whisky is the modern pronounciation of Uisge. Best regards! Tom

With white lacing....hmm why not...another project could be born here... Thanks alot man! Tom

I'd like to see but the image needs to be reposted, please!

I like the leather piece better. Background look more realistic, nice touch. Tom

That tooling gives justice to that really nice skull art! Nice clean lines on those flames and some very cool details on that skull. Bullethole cracks looks so crisp! Love it!

Pile of workingmaterial.

This is a project I've been doing on and off the past two months. It will do duty as a water reserv during my clubs (GMWS =Gefle Malt whisky Society) next big public whisky event. We will have 175 people during two days but the flask remains safe at our clubtable with 10 people. After that it will contain my "whisky of the house"...hm seems like it will be empty most times then;-) Constructed out of tooled panels that has some 800 holes that was laced together with a really tight Mexican basketweave (just to keep it simple;-). The flask is not secured any more than the folded tops that keep it tight in place and the bottom also is a formed piece of leather that is mex laced. Handle. The attachment seems/sewing (?) were tricky and came out not so nice but luckily this doesn't show so much in everyday use and hopefully with less critical eyes than in here. It's made of one piece of mystery braid (4 strand) thick leather that were sheathed with a thinnest veg tan and water molded/shrunken. I left a long piece of the sheathing and made a 4 strand diamond braid that loops back as a carrying handle, inside there is a wire that keeps it in shape. The wire is what made it very difficult for me to get the sewing alright at the top attachment. Had I known from the beginning that I would make that carrying handle I would have made the mystery braid piece a little bigger to ease up the sewing. Estimated time in making this is about 50-60hrs. Any constructive critic is welcome!

I like that bag! Looks great for bringing home those heavy milkbottles from the store and probably more environmental friendly than the plastic bags that are so popular where I live. I can only agree with your opinion about the handmade characteristics, I really like the craftmanship to show through, now if I could just get rid of "sloppy work" too, ha ha All the best and keep up that good work!

That's a great tutorial L'bum and "feddering your ledder" is what I'm talking about in the first part of my previous post and that is the same little spoon that I use. Can't wait to get my hands on the new one with a better handle. The red plastic sheeth...aahh man I hate it. Tom

I have a really small modellingspoon, I think it is Tandys since my carrier told me new ones that actually had a good grip were due to arive soon, anyways, I always use this small spoons edge after I have finished carving. Just running it in the knifegroves and smoothing things out, it also opens the cuts a bit more and further optimizing the latter tooling. It really does make a difference. Once tooling is done I sometimes use a bigger spoon on the backside of the toolingpiece (wich is clamped hard in my hands) and push the design outwards to further enhance the 3dimensional feel a bit. To me this seems to be best done with the leather cased right and damp allthrough. If needed I apply water with sponge from the fleshside and put it in the fridge for a while. Probably must try this a few times to get the feel of right casing. I have also done a tooling without the tools, just pushing everything down with my small spoon. Many lines tight together so I feared I'd ruin/distort thing to much with heavy tooling so I just pressed/beveled everything with the spoon. There are lots of use with that thing and I even loved it when I was trying the Mexican basketweave lacing. When closing the lace I used it to ease up the lace to get the needle to come through. Hope you get any ideas from this and have a merry x-mas. Tom

Hej från Sverige and welcome to the forum! Been here a few weeks and have some experience in tooling leather. Mostly armbracers so far. This is a great place to learn more and I'm currently undertaking projects with the aim to pickup some new skills. Results will be posted when ready. See that you already have a good friend worth mentioning. DCKnives fine mexican basketwave thread has helped me alot. Thanks DC! Tom

Merry X-mas to all you leatherworkers, may santa bring some new tools and off course some custom orders that makes us push the limits of our ability and so we make the next year an even more thrilling experience with lot's of new stuff that will fill the show off thread!

NOTHING can convince me that a long FAT strap with lots of basket weave is simple and that sunburst really make them pop out in my eye. Good work there and as always a pleasure to see yor straps. Just gotta get myself together and start practising with that weave stamp that sits in my toolbox. I'ts eyeballing me everytime I have my hands in there;-) I really enjoy them "simple and beefy" straps because the tooling art stands out more, on the other hand the other straps with a lot of sewing and hardware attachment for lenght adjustment and such appeals to the more technical side in me, to get that stuff together is a bit of enginering and thought process. Curious to know what your preference is? Seems like you have quite some experience in guitar straps and probably are aware of terms such as "less is more".

Thats is one nice item! I love the way you have worked with different materials, makes it really luxurious. Just so you know it, my lastname begins with an H;-)

Always wear my LED forehead lamp to avoid shadows- great when carving down long straight lines. Anything with an open lid seems to get knocked over. Dye on the floor is no fun

That's an awesome design, skulls and flames are bulletproof I think, or maybe I should say fireproof;-) The backgrounding is among the nicest ones I ever seen and the dotted line on the outer edges makes the whole piece stand out even more. That seat will make someone very proud!

Things in Sweden are way more expensive than US in general. I know that SLR camera equipment is about 50% more than you would pay in US and some years ago when I had the snowmobile we thought of renting a container and ship new ones from US, also about 50%. We have some very high taxes, for example snowmobiles have a special tax for being environmentally hazardous that is about 10% of selling price. I think it also it would seem to you that we earn alot of money for our work wich in the end gets eaten up by higher prices off course. I wonder what an papermachine operator working in shifts all year around would make, anyone?? My yearly income (wich is high even in Swedish standards) is 475 000 kronor through currency at this moment 6,41 kronor per dollar makes a total of 74 103$. If I'm correct on this now maybe the price difference is evened out a bit. 90012 Remläder vegetabil natur prima hel 3,0-3,5 mm [Köp] 3,0-3,5 mm 114 Kr That is veg beltleather natural colour Prime grade 1/7 off an inch (if I got the math right)and the price in dollar is 17,78$ per sq.ft.

Nice work! Hope you fill in with more nice pics as you go or when finished. I'm very interested because I have 2 plates for old Indian bikes laying around but havent built any seats yet.

Tjäderläder in Jädraås, Sweden Ha ha, I would just love to hear some of you guys read that out loud. The stock they carry is quite large considering how many people in Sweden that is (not) doing this so I think they deserv a mentioning. Serviceminded and nice people in the shop, a big plus! The questions they have to put up with from me, oh my, oh my. I even had them working overtime on a Friday!