billybopp

That looks strangely familiar .....

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I wouldn't worry about concentrated heat from a reptile heater - an incandescent lightbulb would be exactly the same sort of heat pattern. If that worries you, put the heat sources in the bottom and a sheet of aluminum or other metal above them to spread out the heat. - Bill

It might be quite a stretch to find a manual from just a picture. What is the model number?? - Bill

All good advice above, I've used all of them. Another thing to consider is that the leather needs to be relaxed before you start cutting (no no .. not like give it a cup of tea and a comfy chair relaxed). What I mean is that you'll want to lay out the leather flat and not at all stretched nor compressed before you start cutting. It's tempting to pull it taut to make cutting easier, but that will cause problems down the road as it shrinks back to size. - Bill

@AtomicLeather You are correct, the stamps and roll embossers are bookbinding tools. They're even more expensive than most leather working tools from what I've seen!! - Bill

Depending on the embossing height, if high enough I'd use a combination of layered leather bits to get up close to the level needed then dust goop for the final shape. The main difference is that using just stacked leather, you then have to remove leather to get to the final shape, sort of like whittling wood it's a subtractive process. Goop is more like working with clay, you pack it on and then move it around to get your shape, more of an additive process. I haven't done anything practical with either as I'm a crap sculptor but I did play around a little just to see what it's like several years ago. - Bill

I'm not going to make a joke .... I'm not going to make a joke ... I'm not going to make a joke ...

According to the parts books like it's an "Oil Regulating Screw" - whatever that means! - Bill 255RB-3.pdf Consew255RB-3 parts & opermanual.pdf 255339LSW2BLLSW28BL.pdf

Thanks again Dwight, but no. It's toast. The laptop fell from a table while powered on. I opened the HDD and there's a hard physical crash on the disk surface. I've recovered drives from a minor head touch, but this one you can see bare aluminum through the substrate. - Bill

I've heard that stamp called "Crazy Legs". They do make a really cool looking pattern. - Bill

Thanks for the offer Dwight! Sadly, I don't have the plastic and the drawings were lost when my laptop HDD crashed. Lost a lot of good stuff with that crash including some leather designs that I was working on. - Bill

I made a bigger jig like this years ago, out of thick plastruct plastic sheets, and used chicago screws as the pivot points. To make it a little more versatile, I sized the centering holes the same size as the other holes, and with a couple more screws that allowed me to add a third arm in the center which can be exchanged for different needs, exactly the same length as the ones at the edge. Need extra small belt holes? Make a center arm with small holes that fit that small punch. Need an oblong for the buckle tongue? Make a center arm, use that oblong to punch the plastic the right size and orientation and your oblong is centered and as straight as you were able to make get the plastic. You can also make a couple of holes in the edge arms and add a stiff wire pointer to set up hole spacing to help you move the jig the right distance for even holes. I took the idea so far as to put the design into cad software with a measurement scale on the arms to assist with spacing, and some accessories with the intent of having it laser cut in some nice clear plastic! Unfortunately, before the laser cut folks could get to my project, they went out of business. So, for now - my old jig still works even if it doesn't have all the niceties. - Bill

I can hear the OLD Mountain Dew jingle in my head ..... Good work!

It makes no difference that I have noticed, other than you might get a little more pigment coming up as you rub in the NFO. - Bill

Looks to me like you can use that 'un either way. The blades are thin enough to not leave a gaping hole on the top side if you're going all the way through. The tips are wide enough to give decent guidance for an awl. Best o' both worlds. - Bill

Would something like this work for your needs?? They come up from time to time on eBay and such, although usually missing the blade. https://www.ebay.com/itm/187610770315 -Bill

For the most part, you wouldn't want to split anything wider than 7-8 cm in any case. At that width it gets VERY hard to pull the leather through. I have a small Tandy splitter, and the widest I ever split is 38mm for belts, and that takes a LOT of hard pulling to get through even when the blade is freshly stropped. - Bill

Ahhh. The good ol' days, when Army Navy Stores sold tons of surplus, and weren't camping gear stores. I remember in the mid-70s, you could still find some WWII and Korea surplus, and of course a LOT of Viet Nam surplus.

I used to homebrew beer using the same sort of carboy. To make handling it easier, I bought a commercial handle that clamps to the neck. They cost about $5 at the time, probably more now. I also made a carrier harness using nylon straps. Not at all hard if you've got a sewing machine, but it would be a pain to sew by hand. Another type that I made had a double-purpose. I used some old terry-cloth bath towels to sew a bag that covered the whole carboy, sewed on some handles at the top, and closed by a draw string around the top. Beer is light-sensitive, so the cloth helped with that and additionally, put the whole thing in a big tub of water. Water wicks up the towel and evaporates to keep the temperature several degrees below ambient. As for the wicker basket, it's very cool looking! If you have materials and skills it would be great to keep or replicate, but that is certainly beyond my skillset!! - Bill

Remember back in the day, when you'd get a keyfob with your license # on it, and an address where you could mail them for free return service? Times have changed! LOL - Bill

Put a couple of notches on that strap, about 1/3 to 1/2 the width of the leather, at an angle, and somewhere around where the widest part of the pipe bowl is, and it could probably also serve as a cellphone holder. I hope that description is good enough!! I can see it in my head, but putting into words is not so easy. - Bill

Alec Steele YouTube blacksmith that occasionally does other things just for fun. This one caught my eye a day or so ago. Not necessarily anything useful for us, but entertaining to watch in any case! - Bill

He probably needed all those bullets to help make him look more regular sized - He was nearly 6'7" tall!

My first rock concert was Ted Nugent in 1980. We rolled down the windows on the drive home, and it took a minute or so to realize we couldn't hear any wind noise! I'm convinced my hearing still isn't entirely back to what it was before! Does that count?? -Bill