billybopp

If you look on the guy's website ( thanks for the link, Claire ), he uses that mottled effect on a lot of his leather items, and particularly book covers. http://www.lescuirsdebelfeuil.com/en-ventes.html Bill

Really nice! I've done a few all leather can and bottle koozies, but never tried insulated. Beer doesn't last long enough for insulation to be a help here. Bill

I don't know .. But I'd like to! That's really cool. I will ask the spousal unit ( an art teacher ) later this evening. Bill

<-- This guy is a BBC America fan .. Doctor Who fan ... Top Gear ... Monty Python ... Orphan Black .. Sherlock ... Red Dwarf ... The Young Ones ... and on and on ... Oh .. and very excited to see how the new Doctor is going to work out. Rumors are that he's almost as grumpy as Hartnell was. I understand that the REAL BBC doesn't show "Almost Royal" as BBCA does, so you may not have seen it. It's largely improv and pokes fun at both Britain and the US. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=almost+royal Yeah. I'm a big geek. Bill

LOL! That works too, Dwight. I have at times used sharpies for some touch-up work. For me, the antique at the end does some of the same of what you do with sharpies at the beginning. When it settles down in the letter outline it covers a bit of unevenness at the edge of the paint in addition to making the letters stand out by outlining them, but the paint still has to be close-ish. I always enjoy your posts, love your work, and get a kick out of your sense of humor. Bill

It's almost reassuring to know that USPS isn't the only messed up postal system around. Almost. I recently had a package not get delivered as it was supposed to be, and no notification was left (as there is supposed to be). I tried tracking the package through their system with no luck. The seller had no luck finding the package when I contacted them, either. FINALLY I got a final notice that the package was to be returned to the sender, and I could pick up the package at the post office, or go online and request a re-delivery. Since I don't own a car (and don't need one in the city), it costs me about $4.50 to go to the post office, so I requested re-delivery. After a couple of days, no package so I bit spent the train fare and went to pick it up. Upon complaining that there was no re-delivery nor any notice in the first place, the clerk shrugged his shoulders and said "Don't ever request re-delivery. Those packages always get lost." SHEESH! ... Oh .. and it was a $10 item which ended up costing $14.50 and lost time. And if you think that's bad, last year I ordered a numitron vacuum tube on ebay from Russia. It took 2 .. Nearly 3 months. It seems that Russian customs takes a month-long holiday ... All at the same time every year. Just one more reason to not do any business there! At least you're not alone, Claire! (BTW .. I'll be waiting to find out what postage is on one o' those pyramids) Bill

There are a couple o' big pyramids down in Egypt that might work. Watch out for the shipping costs, tho. They're a little heavy. Bill

A couple of other thoughts and tips: While you don't have to have really expensive brushes for this sort of thing, cheap ones are often more trouble than they are worth. Moderately priced brushes that are cared for will last quite a long time. Think: something in the $5 range at an art supply store rather than $0.50. When you are painting, keep a glass nearby with enough water in it to cover your brush bristles. If you need to put a brush aside for more than a minute or two, keep it in the water. This will prevent the paint from drying on the brush and potentially ruining it. You may want to consider brushes for different colors. A little bit of red pigment remaining on even a well cleaned brush that is then used to paint white can lead to light pink. Not good. Generally a set for white, for black, for reds and browns, for blues and greens, and for yellows can work well. Paint a band around the handle to indicate which brushes go with which colors is helpful if you do this. A set for the block out / resist is helpful too. That stuff can be exceptionally hard to get washed out and will stiffen brushes eventually. When you have finished painting, clean your brushes thoroughly under running water. A little dish detergent works OK to help clean, but I use this stuff which works great! http://www.amazon.com/General-Pencil-Company-Masters-Preserver/dp/B0009RRT9Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408639306&sr=8-1&keywords=artist+brush+cleaner Shape your brush tips after cleaning, and put them in a glass or other container with bristles up for them to dry. Take a look at your brushes before you start painting to check for any stray bristles. If there are some, cut them off. Painted areas with a thin little line that the stray bristle can make "outside the lines" makes for a bad day. Make sure your leather is clean before you start. Wax and other "stuff" on the surface can lessen the adhesion of the paint. I've even had occasional trouble trying to paint over already dyed surfaces. Paint adheres to bare leather best. Make sure your work area is clean before you start. A stray bit of sand or leather cuttings can scratch the leather, or leave a nice big bump under your paint that is much too noticeable. Make sure your hands are clean before you start. A big old fried chicken thumb print on the leather can ruin your whole day. For that matter, fingernails are excellent tools for leaving little marks in your leather whether you intend them to or not. They're best kept trimmed or used with great care. If you are having trouble with paint adhering to smooth leather ( usually not a problem ) a little light sanding then cleaning will usually roughen up the surface enough to give the paint a "tooth" to adhere to. If you are making an item that will see hard use, dye may be a better choice than paint. Paints only penetrate leather a short distance, and any small scratches will leave the underlying leather exposed. Dyes penetrate somewhat deeper, and will not show shallow scratches so much. Many of the above items might seem obvious, but I've dealt with every single one of them at one time or another through inattention or just plain "brain fade". Hope that helps. Bill

My only experience with pre-dyed leather is with garment and lining lamb and pig, but they cut cleanly with knife and scissors. The edges are good enough on what I have used have been dyed through, but again that is stuff that is probably thinner than you want to use. I'd suggest get some samples and experiment. Bill

Anhurset, if you're ever in Philadlephia let me know. I'll take you to the Penn Museum which is 5 or 6 blocks from where I live. We went there a few months ago for a lecture by Zahi Hawass, and briefly got to meet him after. It was quite an experience. Best of luck with the rest of your schooling! Bill Oh .. And more on topic for this thread, I don't know anything about walnuts as a leather stain, but I CAN tell you that walnut husks will totally wreck the finish on a car!

If you need an out of the ordinary color that is not available otherwise, then veg tan is your best bet. That said, there are a LOT of colors of leather available, and certainly all common ones in pre-dyed leather. 2/3 oz is about as thin as veg tan gets for purchase, but other types are are available a bit thinner. Many of them can be a bit stretchy, tho. A laser engraver could put your logo as well as cutting out the shape, but that's a pretty expensive option. If you end up using veg-tan, an arbor press and a stamp with your logo could work nicely. Otherwise, heat embossing is likely more cost effective, and can be done on many types of leather. Check here: http://lwleathers.com/products/leather-embossing A clicker press is more or less a big fancy squeezing machine to apply pressure over a large area. Assuming that your patch is pretty small, you need a little not-so-fancy squeezing machine to apply pressure over a not-so-large area. I can't say for sure, but an arbor press with a few modifications might do the job. Somebody that knows more about dies might be able to help with that. The above-mentioned LW leathers also make dies, so that might be a good starting point. Veg tan would need a finish, particularly if dyed. Garment leathers and some other types do not necessarily need any further finish (although some could benefit). Many vendors are wiling to provide for free or for a reasonable price, sample packs. Check some of the vendors' banner ads on this website. They are also a good resource to ask for info about any leather specifics. If you want bigger ( but not too big ) pieces of leather to experiment with, Springfield leather will sell many of their leather in small quantities. http://springfieldleather.com/ Another option that might be cost-effective for you is having the pieces made and ready to use. That would eliminate your capital and labor expenses for those parts. Springfield offers that sort of thing on a limited basis, so it could be worth asking! http://springfieldleather.com/9/Manufacturing-Shop/ Hope that helps Bill

Sewing machines do generally make a smaller hole than we use in hand sewing leather, and can use a fairly wide range or needle / thread sizes. As for tearing, the GoodsJapan guy is right .. To an extent. You have to consider how big the holes are in relation to the leather between the holes, and also the direction in which the line of stichting will be stressed, and how much that stress will be. Consider something like a saddle stirrup strap where it will sometimes hold a lot of weight: It mostly only gets stressed along its length when the rider is standing in the stirrup. Therefore, stitching all along it's length would not be a problem, as there is still a lot of leather intact to take that weight. Stitching across the width of the strap, on the other hand, leaves a much smaller percentage of the leather intact and could leave the rider in the dirt. Something like a bag handle that might need to take a lot of weight in relation to the strap size could end up in a bad way. Consider a belt for your pants: Again, sewing down the edges of the belt is no problem at all. Sewing across the belt may or may not be a problem. If the holes are a larger percentage of the area than leather is, just maybe somebody that is really strong might tear along the dotted line. The same would be true of a watch band. That said, I have bought a commercially made watch band that after a lot of wear had an edge zip off like a piece of paper towel .. but then it was a crap band to begin with. Somewhere between no stitching across a strap and a straight line across is a curved or angled line of stitches. The stress does not spread the same hole to hole, so tearing is less likely than with the straight line. It's not as strong as no line of stitches, tho. Food for thought Bill

There are a number of good videos on youtube for carving and tooling. Search for Bruce Cheaney and Keith Valley - Cowboy Saddlery .. And there are others as well. Hope that helps Bill

The Dixon / Blanchard (and others) type pricking irons are designed mostly to mark the location and orientation of the holes for you to open up with an awl, however they can be used to go all the way through. The type shown above are probably more properly known as strap punches, and are designed to put a hole all the way through, however with a lighter tap they can be used just to mark location and orientation for your awl to pierce. Hope that helps more than confuses Bill

What Dwight was talking about in point 4 is a good principal to know all around in leather work and other design as well. When you have a "valley" in a piece of relatively thin material, any pulling apart of the two "legs" will put ALL of the stress right at the very point of the "V". If that is re-designed as a "U" that same stress will be spread over a much wider area so that it is less likely to tear. It's exactly the same principal that is in action when you make credit card slits in a wallet and place a round punch at the ends. The very same principal is used in sheet metal work and any number of other disciplines. Hope that helps Bill

It's so darned convenient having our own resident anthropologist/archaeologist. The things you learn! Bill

A nice smooth flat concrete surface might work. It wouldn't be terribly expensive to find out! However, a granite or marble piece from a countertop place, or from a grave marker place might be cheaper ( if not free ), and would certainly work. Once in awhile grave marker makers mess up a headstone and can't make other use of the thing and just want rid of it. I got my marble from a kitchen that was being remodeled and it works great. Bill

OMG. You're right, that's hysterically funny! Clearly the software is NOT geared up for a UK accent. LOL!!

Hmmm... Just a thought, but why not make the pouch as a totally separate piece (you can sew it inside out then) and attach it to the bigger bag with heavy snaps, or some other secure means that will leave it removable. That way when the user wants to carry just the clutch, they can just take it off. Bill

I paint a lot of letters for the mug wraps that I make. It's not all that hard to do, but does take some practice and a moderately steady hand (don't be well caffeinated when doing fine paintwork). You can use leather dyes or acrylic paint. Limit the amount of paint or dye on your brush by wiping it on a piece of paper or better a piece of scrap leather. This will help to avoid dyes spreading too much to areas where you don't want it, and in the case of paint keeps the coat relatively thin with less spillover to where you don't want paint. Paint will give you more vibrant colors than dyes will, and in the case of white and gray the dyes are about useless. Some paint colors will look better if you first put on a ground coat of white paint, others not so much. I like to use a #3 filbert style brush for 3/4" letters, with a #00 round brush for those really tight corners. Leather acrylics work best. I've used Tandy Cova Color, but others swear by Angelus paint. I have also used Liquitex art acrylics, but they are a bit trickier. For my stuff, after I've painted and allowed stuff to dry well, I then paint a couple of layers of dye resist on the paintwork, and allow that to thoroughly dry. Over all dye is applied at this point if desired, trying to avoid painted areas as much as possible. Then a coat of finish such as resolene or leather sheen over the entire piece and allow that to dry. Then, an antique paste is worked in well so that it settles down into the impressions in the letters, etc. Excess antique is removed, and allowed to dry, then a couple of coats of finish. As an aside, another interesting option for letters and other impressions is gilding. It's not easy, but the result can be really cool! Here are a few pieces that I've made recently. This one has silver gilded letters and tree, with green dye amongst the celtic knots top and bottom, and acrylic paint on the beard pullers. In this case, I didn't protect the gilding well enough and some rubbed off when I applied the antique, but I decided that I like the worn look and kept it! Hope that helps! Bill

Really nice work! And certainly nicer than the piece of cardboard that I taped to my arm when Mom wouldn't pay $10.00 for a proper arm-guard when I was a kid! Bill

T-bones on the grill?? I'll be right over!

Thanks for posting both videos! I love seeing "pure" mechanical things at work, so I'm a big fan of steam engines, big round aircraft engines and such, particularly when they have style and grace that modern machinery lacks. I have a 1940's or 1950's vintage Singer 221- that belonged to my mom and grandmother. It's a tiny little machine, but it still works and I still use it from time to time despite having a recent machine. There's just something cool about that old machine. I'm still willing to bet the Campbell legal department makes them include a legal disclaimer sheet the size of a book .. And after watching the video I'm wiling to bet that one of the items in it is "Hearing protection MUST be worn". LOL Bill

LOL. Croc or gator, it looks great either way. Bill

It's always amazing to see how sturdy-made and beautifully decorated some of these old machines are. And also how dangersous! LOL. Can you imagine any manufacturer today building a machine with so many exposed moving parts? Somebody would find a way to put a hand where it didn't belong and sue within a week of the first machine being installed. I guess the world changes. Bill