billybopp

That really looks great! I don't think I've ever seen a billet and belt keeper done that way and I like it! -Bill

Different people have different tastes in awl shape. Some like more pointy and tapered, like a rapier sword, some more rounded broadening like a spear point, and some more straight sided like a broadsword. Each will behave a little differently in the leather and in the way they shape the hole. All of them cut along two edges of the blade, and just get thicker toward the base along the other two sides. The rapier tip makes a nice clean hole that is not so different in size between front and back side, but you have to place the tip in EXACTLY the right place and orientation every time which is hard to do. The spear point tapers to be much wider along its length, which means that in thick leather the hole can be quite a bit wider on the side where it enters than on the side where it exits, and also you need to be fairly precise with how deep you push it through. One awl will let you do a wide variety of hole sizes, tho. The broadsword tapers a bit at the point, but is then straight after that, so holes are about the same size front and back, and you don't need to be so precise with the depth. The downside is that the blade has to be the right size for the hole that you want so you may need more than one. Both the spear point and broadsword point will settle into the marks made by a pricking iron pretty nicely and make it easier to get angle and centering right. The picture below might help a little bit: Leftmost is a Tandy all-in-one awl with a spar point, and is an old-school saddler's style. It's a crap blade, but I managed to get it sharp enough to use for a short time .. but long enough to know I didn't like it! You can see by the thick leather it's lying across how different the hole is one side of the leather to the other. The length of the blade also makes it harder to position. The middle three are Seiwa awls which are broadsword types with little to no taper beyond the point. There are three sizes since the width of the blade alone determines the size of the hole. The short blades make them a little easier to position as well. These are my preferred weapons unless I'm working on something too thick for the blades to penetrate all the way through. The rightmost one is more rapier-like, and tapers along most of its length, and is sharp for most of its length. It pierces the leather easily, but is pretty difficult to position properly. There may be other shapes and other opinions, but this is what I've discovered for myself! Hope that helps - Bill P.S. Somewhere in this thread, there is a really good description of the classic spearpoint with pictures and description on page 11 of this post:

Looks good ... Great idea! - Bill

I use cloth athletic tape around my fingers where the "wear points" are. It's cheap, readily available and even gives a bit of added grip on needles. - Bill

Really beautiful piece. Well done! - Bill

Very nice looking! Great work. - Bill

Those colors really do go together well. I'll take one! Oh wait ... I should probably get a gun first. - Bill

Welcome aboard, Boris! Growing up in a hobby shop (REALLY jealous here), I'm sure you've got the patience part down. Tandy kits aren't the greatest thing in the world, BUT they do start to give you a feel for how things go together: Think of them as snap-fit models for leather. The pre-punched holes are enormous, but still start to give you a feel for sewing leather, etc. They are also usually nicely proportioned designs, are usually a blank canvas for you to do a little tooling, dying, etc if you are so inclined, and often include a few suggested tooling patterns with a list of needed tools! After my first Tandy kit, I realized that I could trace the leather pieces on some card stock and then use that as a pattern so that I could buy leather and cut out the same pattern (without the enormous holes for sewing if you want) - at far less $ than the kit cost for probably better leather. Plus, it's kind of fun go back to a project you made early on and redo it with the skills you've gathered in between! You may be amazed! Tandy kits are on sale this week (Nov. 10-18) at 40% off, so there ya go! They have wallets, bags and a ton of other kits available. Even some stuff that Mrs. Boris might like for a holiday gift. If you are shopping Tandy, a couple of books I'd recommend are "Leather Tools" and "The Art of Hand Sewing Leather" by Al Stohlman. There are several others worth having, but those two should be in just about every leather library! Also, a really great and not-too-difficult first project is a belt, as a few above have suggested. A belt may not come out pretty, but unless you cut it too short, there's not a whole lot that can go wrong enough to stop it from holding up your britches! Tandy has belt blanks and buckles from very plain to fairly fancy. The only things you need for 'em is a hole punch and a knife. A little fancier and nicer, some dye and finish(resolene or the like), an edger and a slicker maybe. Get as fancy as you like with it! - Bill

Happy Birthday, @chrisash! No doubt you'll do some amazing stuff with that new printer!! - Bill

I think the project that I want to try, but intimidates me most is a pair of properly fitted and made shoes. - Bill

Well done, as always. Thanks!! - Bill

Strap end punches are a lovely thing, but as you've found getting them lined up exactly can be a challenge. If you're using them often enough, a jig might be the way to go. I made one of these some time ago, but gave it to a friend that admired it with the intention of making an improved version for myself...Which I never quite got around to! It would be easier to describe this with a drawing or picture than words, but here we go... Get a cheap plastic cutting board, cut two strips off the ends an inch or so wide and make sure that the ends are square to the long side. Glue or screw these to the cutting board at the width of your strap and dead straight across the ends. In use, lay the belt between the strips then rest the "wings" of your strap punch right up against the skinny end of the strips. Provided that the punch "wings" are true, that will help you get the angle just right, you then only have to worry about centering it. If the "wings" are not true, you can either remove a little metal from the "high side", or adjust the positioning of the strip to compensate for that "high side". If you're feeling ambitious, you can cut a little notch out of the business end of the strips that will just cradle your punch to get it centered as well. I hope that description helps ... I'll try to put together a drawing at some point if words aren't helpful. - Bill

I use some pull-out spice racks that I got on sale for really cheap. 4oz Fiebings bottles fit perfectly, and using a pull-out rack really maximizes space usage in a cabinet. - Bill

These mug wraps have made great personalized gifts for me in the past, and I've managed to sell a few too. The key to making these relatively simple was finding a straight-sided mug so that the wraps can be made straight rather than curved. They are a combination of roller embossed, stamped and tooled, but the real work was in coloring them and choosing something meaningful for each person. I also did some that are entirely hand-tooled but can't find the pictures of those at the moment. -Bill

I wouldn't know what to do if I became allergic to meat! That's a tough row to hoe. I'm sure you've learned to adapt, and sure that I would eventually too. It's not easy finding all of the proteins necessary for our human dietary needs without meat, but harder still for pure vegans who avoid meat, and also eggs, milk, etc. It's quite one thing to give up meat out of necessity, and another to do so voluntarily due to some sort of moralistic stance. I've never heard of Tuf, but there are so many faux leathers out there, and some really are useful for their purposes. I forgot to consider exotics, but you are quite right. Those critters tend to be harvested just for their hides with the rest going to waste. The fact that many of those are also endangered makes things all the worse. It is a sad thing. Patent leather was indeed originally real leather with a coating, and dates back nearly 200 years, but most of what was called patent leather from the latter half of the 20th century on was really just some form of vinyl. Lets not forget the ever-vigilant ex-smoker in the list of folks that'll let you know!! And I often wonder if electric car drivers give any thought to the fact that manufacture of the batteries, the electricity that they use and other factors can often mean that their "low pollution vehicles" actually have a great carbon footprint than an economical fossil fueled car does. I suppose, also, that we leatherworkers tend to evangelize a bit about our love of leather too. - Bill

"Vegan leather" is just the newest in a long line of marketing terms for fake leather. Patent leather, faux leather, man-made leather, vinyl, naugahyde, pleather, biothane, possibly "Corinthian Leather", and many others have been around for decades, with Biothane and Vegan leather being the most recent that I am aware of. It has its places and effective uses (for example you probably would not want real leather for your dining room chairs, particularly with kids around), but mostly has its bad reputation as a cheap leather substitute sometimes being passed off as real leather. Some of these (vinyl), can be a good substitute for thinner leather (garment leather) when you are working out patterns and prototypes for real garment leather items. If your client insists on "vegan leather", despite all the negatives listed above by @TonySFLDLTHR and others, I'd suggest look at Biothane. In addition to all that, I'd advise your friend/client that "real leather" is a by-product of the meat industry. VERY few critters (minks and chinchilla come to mind) are slaughtered just for their hides, and they would go to waste otherwise. That seems to me less cruel than just letting the non-meat parts go to waste. You probably won't convince a vegan otherwise for they are a stubborn and preachy lot, but you can try. If you go to a party of 100 people, and there are two vegans in the room how do you identify them? THEY'LL TELL YOU. -Bill

You might try something like this and cut off the tongue... https://www.tandyleather.com/en/product/double-bar-buckles-nickel-plated -Bill

By definition, one inch is 25.4mm, so divide 25.4/3 = 8.466 holes per inch. 3mm is the distance between the holes, the number of stitches would be 1 less, so between 7 and 8 stitches per inch.

Great costume. And what HE said! ^ ... Or even worse a nursing home.

I've never used meat glue, and had never seen or heard of it until recently in this video:

In my experience, the answer to that is pretty much always lint. - Bill

I'd go with an arbor press for these embossing plates. They are relatively inexpensive, with a 1 ton press from Harbor Freight currently priced at $59.99, and they frequently have discount coupons. They're terribly handy for a lot of uses in leatherwork, and other things as well. Remove the circular base plate, and lay a piece of flat steel across the "toes", or even a piece of sturdy plywood, leather atop that, place the plate and then back it with another piece of steel or hefty plywood and pull the handle. If the plate is fairly large, you may need to move it around and squeeze it in separate places to get an even impression. - Bill

Oddly enough, a day or so after I saw this post, this popped up on youtube. If you look at about 14:30, you'll see a Landis sole stitcher and shortly after a garment machine, probably a Singer. Of course, being a carrier there's also a lot of great footage of Viet Nam era jets, and even a few piston powered aircraft that were still in use. (for those of us that are also aviation buffs!) I meant to post this sooner, but 12 hour workdays don't leave much time for the things we actually want to do! - Bill

The card slots look to be "ribbon slots". You'll find me info about that by searching "Ribbon slots" here on LWN. - Bill

Either way can work, but there are trade-offs. Natural fibers such as linen tend to fray and pick up more color near the needles. Synthetics such as polyester also fray and pick up color, but FAR less than do natural threads. Dye pick-up and fraying tend to occur most in the last few inches near the needles, so allow a good amount of extra thread for that. Lighter colors will show dye-pick up more than darker. As @Matt Smentions above, shorter lengths are easier to work with, but you can't totally hide the splices. Longer lengths are harder to work because they can get tangled, but there's nothing to hide other than the overlap where stitches begin and end: you just have to work a little differently to prevent tangling and a bit more work pulling thread but note, as you move along you're dealing with less thread after each stitch and it becomes easier. There's pretty much no choice with natural thread than to go with shorter lengths and splice. Synthetics give you the option to go either way as find comfortable to you. My personal preference is to go with synthetic and no splices. - Bill