DJole

I have an electronic alarm key-card I use at work. I decided to tool a nice case for it, with my initials, using scrap leather and some cheap, ugly fluorescent yellow polyester thread (hey, it was cheap, on sale at Tandy!). I put my locker key on it, also. I've had it for a couple of years now, riding nicely in my pocket. This last week, I somehow lost it -- I could not figure out where it went. Not in my house, or car, or at work. Where could it have gone? I got a new card issued to me in the meantime. This morning, after 4 or 5 days or so, a woman rang our doorbell and handed me my card holder, with card! She had found it on the side of the street (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 mile away) in some beauty bark. I figure that somehow I had left it on top of my car, and it had managed to stay there for a ways until falling off into the street, where for a few days it was lying in the street, getting run over and run over and so on. So, down below, are pictures. You can see that the leather is in suprisingly good shape, both the tooled side and the smooth leather side! The leather has been bent a bit (look at the D), but there are very few scratches and no tears. The thread has been scuffed a bit on the keyring end, but still intact. The rivet holding the keyring loop is scratched and battered. But the smooth leather here seems untouched. I am quite surprised. The split ring -- it is mangled, hard! I am baffled at just how badly it got bent. The key is battered too -- the plastic cracked on one side, but it still opens my lock just fine. Luckily, it hasn't rained in the last two weeks, or things might be different! Here's a shot of the whole thing in its glory:

I have a new project, a wallet with a Buddhist design scheme. So I want to put a lotus blossom and an 8 spoked Dharma wheel onto the leather. The design looks...well, okay, when I trace it onto the tracing film. However, I really want a lot more precision in the straight lines and curves. Kind of like...well, a stamp! So, I came up with this idea to make a light stamp: 1) print the design onto paper, at correct size. 2) cut out design, glue onto light cardboard (like a cereal box carton, or something similar). Let dry. 3) using micro-tip scissors, carefully cut the design out. 4) Spray design with art fixative (waterproofing, basically.) Let dry. 5) Case leather, to same dampening for tooling. 6) Carefully place design onto leather. 7) Use mallet to tap design, stamping it onto the leather. And here are the results! I show the stamp itself, and down below it is the image it created. Now I can start tooling, knowing the design is clean and sharp, meaning one less thing I can mess up! And I can reuse the stamp, if I want to. Another bonus!

I bet you could sell a bunch of those. That's lovely work!

That's a pretty broad request -- can you narrow it down to what kinds of patterns (i.e. a specific culture), so we don't send Aztec, or Chinese, or Art Nouveau, when what you really wanted was Floral Western?

What are you going to carry in this bag? That may help people point you in the right direction.

Nicely done! With a sheath as good looking as that, you almost don't want to take it out into the woods to get dirty and muddy!

Maybe https://laughingcrowe.com/ has what you are looking for.

There are LOTS of discussions about these Chinese cobbler machines on this forum, usually from people who bought one and then realize that they can't get it to work well, and ask for help.

A bunch of those metal tools on the left seem to be tools used for classic Western floral styles (veiners, camouflagers, etc.) Are you interested in learning that style of leather tooling? If so, you can find a LOT of expertise on this message board to help you learn those skills. There appears to be one three pronged Tandy "diamond" stitching chisel there. If you want to learn hand stitching, that's okay for learning and practicing, but it leaves BIG holes in leather, which might not be what you want in some projects. So you will likely be adding some other sort of pricking iron or stitching chisel set to your tool set. (If you want to learn the differences between those tools, and the variations between various manufacturers, YouTube will help you a lot.) Your swivel knife there will probably need sharpening and stropping. You may also find that it doesn't fit well in your hand, but this one is non-adjustable in height, like other models are. You may find you'll need another after trying this one out. What are those 4 tools on the far right? A couple seem to be only handles with no tools. A stitching pony is an excellent help for quality hand stitching.

Nice work for beginning the craft! I don't really do floral, but you have had great instructors who've given you a firm foundation for the basics of leather tooling. Feathers and animal hair--- definitely out of my expertise! Hopefully an expert will chime in. Do a search for "feathers" on this forum and you'll see some posts and pictures of feather carving.

You are welcome to copy the extra pockets design. Just make sure you post it so we can admire your work!

That is a beautiful piece of work, with a bold color scheme!

So your dog loves eating plastic and not leather, eh? ;-)

Okay, here's a Christmas project I did: http://djole.altervista.org/djole/Publications/Leather/NativityPix/LeatherNativity.htm

Here's the inside. Very thin leather for the inside pockets! Traditional Japanese motif in the middle there. There are 6 pockets in this thing! That's a fair number of cards... Inside edges (a three layer sandwich!) sanded then painted with Fiebing's black EdgeKote. I have this on my desk at the moment, and I keep looking at it and thinking, "Hey, that's a pretty decent job! Looks nice!"

A commemorative gift for my nephew, as he starts medical school this fall. I mixed Angelus blue and purple to get this color, and that's a rare appearance of Fiebing's white dye in the reverse carved design. The design is from the flag of Sendai, Japan (near where he lived for a couple years.) The thread is burgundy Tiger (.6 thickness) using 3mm stitching chisels. I used my pebble backgrounder (Craftool M 892) to add texture, except just around the design. The outside leather here is about 2-3 mm thick. Inside leather is 1 mm. Edges burnished with black Tokonole.

Fiebing's USMC Black certainly does require buffing. Is there a particular reason that you are not using leather which has been dyed black at the factory, rather than dying it yourself? That could solve a lot of your problems right there.

hey, I can help you with your addiction -- if you can't leave Tandy without spending 100 bucks, just bring no credit cards and only 50 dollars cash! That'll fix your problem, right there!

That's so nicely done! A lovely design, well executed!

I can't see the plate... time to get a video review of the play? ;-)

I can't tell what the design is. You'll have to get a photo with more contrast.

I suspect the half moon knife is not your friend yet, since (although I don't have one) I understand that they need to be well sharpened and well stropped to work well, and then there's a learning curve after that. A box cutter (i.e. the break-off hobby knife) will do just fine, as long as you match the blade size to the leather thickness, and use a FRESH blade for each project. Are you using a metal straight edge when you cut? Are you keeping the knife snug up against the straight edge? Are you holding the knife consistently straight up and down? Those things will greatly affect your cuts. When stitching, using the pricking irons or diamond tools or whatever you have (you didn't specify clearly), there are some things to consider: 1) Leather thickness -- thick layers don't play well with most of those stitching tools, especially if you are trying to do two layers at once. You'll have to do each layer on its own, or else take the time to learn to use a stitching awl correctly. 2) Polished chisels (which make holes, rather than pricking irons, which are meant to just mark the leather) -- if the teeth aren't polished, they don't pull out well, and your leather will stretch and bend, thus ruining your straight line. 3) Learning to hold that chisel STRAIGHT up and down when you strike it, EVERY TIME. This is a big one, which takes patience and time to learn. Go slowly! Turn your leather so you are looking along the line (as if it points away from you) rather than across the line will help you determine if it is straight up and down before striking. Developing consistency is a big step here. Many of us rush this, because it seems so simple! But you have to carefully place the tool, the same way each time, along that stitching line. If on one strike the center of the teeth is along that line, and in the next, the tool is slightly misaligned so the teeth are not centered, the line will meander. Add this to the "not perfectly vertical" problem, and you get crooked lines. 4) There are different opinions about using a groover vs. merely using a line made with wing dividers. The main school of thought for making a stitching groove is that the threads wear less, since they are below the surface of the leather. I can't vouch for this being accurate or not, but what I can say is that I haven't used my groover for a few years now, much preferring the wing divider line. But in either case, you must have STRAIGHT EDGES to run the tool along, or else you'll get curvy, wobbly stitching lines. Again, don't rush -- take the time to sand the edges flat before using the tool on them. This advice certainly helped me!

Maybe this page, by Ian Atkinson of Leodis Leather in the UK, will help you out: https://www.ianatkinson.net/leather/leatherguide.htm Look for the "Stitch Sizes" subheading about 6/8 of the way down the webpage.

I took a look at the Amazon kit you mentioned, and it appears that you have a set of diamond chisels, which make a diamond shaped hole in the leather. Pricking irons make an angled slit in the leather, rather than a hole. Pricking irons are meant to MARK the holes that you then pierce with a stitching awl. That's the traditional standard, and many people aspire to that. But the diamond chisels are much more forgiving, and easier to make good stitching lines with (since getting straight lines with the awl takes a lot of consistent practice). The stitching chisels should be strong enough to drive through two pieces of leather of the thickness you are using. If they are bending, then they are made of bad metal, or you're driving them into something hard. Good advice given above, to change the thing you're using underneath the leather when making the stitching lines. And if they keep bending, then the tools are bad, and you should look into replacements. I second the advice on using the wing dividers to make a stitching line (or a light, shallow stitching "groove"). I found that I can get a much better line with the wing dividers than with the groover I bought years ago. The groover sits alone, unused for a few years now. For choosing thread: take a look at some YouTube videos to help you match the thread (which will involve choosing the right size of needle and the size of stitching/pricking iron also) to the project. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc_4cZp9JDs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYT9Rc2YRAk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3BwpAkQlgg All that being said, that's pretty good work, and you've learned a lot! Keep it up!

You may not need specific brand name tools for much of your work when starting out (except for specialty things like tooling and stamping). Perhaps Ian Atkinson can help steer you in a useful direction. His YouTube channel has some excellent videos for beginners discussing what tools they actually need, most of which don't need to come from a leather supply store. Here is a partial playlist to his videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvoKYeh7ahyGB-numgnO3WxOVi3Sgkyzg