billybopp

Looks good and quite usable! Wonder if a side release buckle would be the way to go on the straps? It's too tight, tho - it's cutting off circulation to your fingers and turning them blue. Bill

Wickett and Craig have tooling leather in black. Most other black veg tan such as bridle, harness or latigo can take an impression but only barely and with varying degrees of success... You really have to work at it, and wouldn't want to try too much with it. Good looking bag and belt, bynelson!

Great work! Gotta love it when your friends and neighbors get to see and appreciate your work. Bill

Blue green center is usually a give away that it is chrome tanned.

I can't imagine that belt would be very effective in any case - it looks like the act of walking would quickly work the gun loose and drop it. Yup. That's exactly what happened. I'd assume he left the safety off, or tried to turn it off as he was drawing. He was a brilliant bowler, but apparently not so well trained in firearms. Not surprisingly he didn't talk about it as far as I know, but in a small town, things like that get out. He was the subject of jokes for quite a long time.

I dunno ... If it goes off there the damage is more or less superficial. In the town where I grew up, long ago and far away ... we had a former pro tour bowler who bought a bowling alley that kept getting broken into, and the police were at a loss to find out how or stop it. So the owner decided to spend his nights there for awhile and catch the burglars. One night he heard the burglars coming in through a ventilation shaft from the roof and went out to try to apprehend them - and in the process fired the pistol that he was keeping in the waistband of his slacks, removing parts of his anatomy. He never had kids thereafter, and interestingly enough seems to have lost some of his vanity along with body parts as he shortly thereafter stopped wearing the toupee he had always worn previously. Bill

Just my opinion, but I'd go a little cheaper on a coarse stones- You only use them occasionally to establish the initial edge, or to clean up dings from dropped/damaged edges. Something that you don't need to do often. Finer stones should be better quality - you'll use them for edge maintenance far more frequently. Stones all should be flat for a real precision edge. By the time you get to the strop, you're only removing a tiny amount of metal to produce a finely polished edge, so I wouldn't get overly concerned about flatness. The leather will have a little give anyway, and again, you're removing very little metal there - just enough to polish and knock off the burr from stones. The experts may have a different take on things, but that's how I see it! Bill

I have bought from goodsjapan a couple of times and have been pleased. I have not yet bought from leathercrafttools, but many here have and have had good things to say, so won't hesitate to buy from them. Where I would be careful, tho, would be in buying something that has to match, and leathercrafttools doesn't tell you what the brand name is. Stitching chisels would be an example - if you have a four tooth Seiwa 3mm stitching chisel and decide to get the two tooth and six tooth versions - you need to be sure that you are getting Seiwa and not some other brand in order to get a match. Leathercrafttools doesn't always tell you what brand you are getting. The two also have different items in some cases. Goodsjapan sells Tokonole which I have used and is an excellent edge burnishing agent, but not available from leathercrafttools. While many of the Japanese and some Chinese tools are excellent, to some extent, I agree with @WoodysWorkshop and really like the old American and European tools. You do have to be careful when buying these from eBay, tho. There is a LOT of useless rusty old junk out there marked as "Patina", "Primative", "Rustic"(more like rusty), "Antique" and "Vintage". You also can't always easily tell which of these have been modified from their original form from the pictures on eBay - sometimes a problem, sometimes not. Nearly none of these have any "Collector value" if they are not in usable condition. More often than not, you'd do better to buy from BruceJohnsonLeather(member and sponsor here) and know what you are getting. His website can also give you some idea of what prices you should be looking at MAX on eBay. Some of those old tools also do not have any modern equivalent available. So, there's a lot to consider! Bill

Welcome to the obsession. No doubt buying that seat would've been far less expensive, but then again, the pride of making is yourself is priceless as is working with your daughter! Bill

Once again, awesome and very original work! Bill

Looks pretty darn good to me! Worth the blood sacrifice! Bill

Lookin' good so far! Bill

I haven't tried Angelus, but do use Fiebings. Bill

Looks like you've got it essentially correct, Elizabeth. There are indeed some sellers that sell first quality HO and Horween, but there's a bit of research to find out who's who in that respect. I would add that Tandy announced a few days ago via their YouTube channel that they are now carrying in stores Sedgwick in black, brown and chestnut. It has yet to show up on their website, and I have not yet made it to the local shop to confirm that. Being Tandy, however, I suspect that they will be asking top dollar for it and I'd be sure to check the quality - It wouldn't be unusual for them to charge the highest prices for second quality. Bill

eco-flo antique gel is notorious for penetrating through most finishes used as a resist.

Many leather workers, unlike regular folk, do not realize that most Band-Aids paper wrappers eventually begin to brown with age. Check your regular friends medicine cabinet/first aid kits and you'll find this out. You see, leather, wood, and metal workers cut and stab themselves with alarming regularity. Regular folk don't do that! Imagine that!

Love that color!

It aint a REAL project until ya bleed on it a lil.

I don't know about plane blades, but I had an old set of wood chisels that I re-purposed by re-profiling the blade, and they are the best end-skivers I have - I'm able to get the scary sharp and they work great. The only complaint is that the handles are a bit heavy - I may eventually just cut them off and keep just the blade part. I suspect that a plane blade might work just as well - but I would suggest doing some work to change the angle from a plane's standard 25degrees to something considerably shallower - It may take some elbow-grease, but will probably be well worthwhile. Bill

Check out Bob Park's pinned post here on LWN, .Be sure to read (and even download) the PDF in the initial post It's as good a tutorial on edge finishing veg tanned that you'll find. There are a lot of variations, but the principals are there. A lot of it depends on personal preference and the look that you are going for. It doesn't take much water to do the initial burnish, just a lightly damp sponge works nicely. Sometimes, on small pieces, I'll just lick my finger and slick with a little spit (don't tell anybody, but I know there are others that do that too)! Dying edges can be a little tricky, and again depends on what you are looking for. Edges can soak up a lot of dye, get really dark, and even bleed to the front of your leather if you aren't careful! The loose fibers can really soak it up, so a bit of burnish first helps compress the fibers and slows down dye absorption. I use a Q-tip to dye edges, and pinch it between my fingers to wind the cotton tight (helps to prevent fuzzies leaving dye where you don't want it)! I also squeeze out most of the dye on the edge of the container before putting it to the leather. It's best to go sparingly - you can always add more if needed but can't really remove it if you go too heavily. If you do woodwork, it's not too different from staining/finishing end grain. An exact color match is pretty hard to get, but for me that's OK since I like the edges a little darker. Personally, I don't like gum tragacanth, as it will discolor your leather if you get a bit past the edge, but a lot of folks use it and get great results - and it's what Al Stohlman suggests in his writings. As with so many things in leatherwork, there are many ways to get to a good result - sometimes exactly the same, sometimes a bit different - all depending on what YOU like! Beeswax leaves a duller finish, paraffin shinier and other things leave a glass like edge (one such is Tokonole). It all depends on what you want for the final look. Edge finishing chrome tan and edge coat paints(on chrome OR veg tan) are an entirely different subject, and you'll find plenty of info and opinions on that on here as well. Bill

Where you buy, in part, depends on what you are looking for .. If you want vegetable tanned leather, there are two tanneries left in the US and both make great leather - and you can buy from them directly - both offer tooling leather, saddle skirting, bridle leather, etc. Hermann Oak is considered by many to be the best, but there is a minimum order which is a bit much for most hobbyists. Wickett & Craig is the other veg tannery and they also sell to the public with no minimum quantity. Bill

Dyes usually go with no problems. You might want to filter resolene a bit since it can get gloppy in a hurry, and don't let it sit around for long. Bill

That's awesome! Bill

Is that brass just a sort of clip that holds pieces in place? Bill

I realize this bag is for cartridges, where the gun powder is contained in brass cartridges, but some folks out there still mess around with muzzle loading guns (muskets and such) and hence carry gunpowder to load them. Anything that might create a spark could potentially be disastrous - steel/iron can spark, brass won't. Since modern gear evolved out of that older style of shooting accessories, it's probably one of the reasons that brass is still preferred - for practical reasons in the past, and historic reasons now. Bill