DJole

That's a nice introductory story! Welcome to the forum; lots of friendly people with lots of leather experience hang out here, and perhaps you can learn better techniques than cussing at the leather!

Where did you get this from? a place like Harbor Freight? I've seen leather tools there before, and they are worth less than what one would pay for them there.

you might give Inkscape a try. It's free: https://inkscape.org/ Inkscape is professional quality vector graphics software which runs on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows desktop computers.

dog collars?

I enjoyed watching the time lapse video, paying attention to each step, then pausing the video and thinking about which tools and which techniques had just been used. The end result is a very nice piece of artwork.

Cheese...I think they are made out of cheese! They do indeed have genuine leather, but it's just a thin cosmetic layer to hide the cheese.

Good call with the bone folder!

Nice work for the first project! You might need to polish your chisels to help them slide through the leather better. I did this to my Tandy diamond chisels and it did make a difference. My JapanGoods stitching chisels don't need it.

Check out Ian Atkinson's videos-- he does a great job of addressing this question: Beginners’ Videos Top 25 Recommended Leatherwork Tools (45 mins) The Tools You Need for Leatherwork (15 mins) The Hardware You Need for Leatherwork (30 mins) Information About Dyeing Leather (45 mins) Choosing the right type, weight and quality of leather for your projects (35 mins) Hand Stitching Leather (1 hour 35 mins) Videos here===> <http://ianatkinson.net/leather/videos.htm> Now, if you're looking at learning tooling, that's a different set of skills.

What YinTx wrote-- ditto for me. Also, use cheaper leather for learning and practicing things. Once you have a technique down, you are less likely to ruin a more expensive piece.

If you are making a lot of them, then getting a cutting die made is the way to go. If you are making a few of them, then make a durable template for this (out of heavy cardstock, or plastic). Then you lay it on the leather and trace around it to get that same shape over and over.

Keep the build-in-progress reports coming-- you never know when somebody else will want to do the same thing and find your experiences valuable. Let's see the coolness happen, step by step!

Oh, that's a great piece! That's a real eye-catching (pun intended) design in so many ways! I bet you could sell a bunch of those.

Ah, the puzzle becomes clearer now! First thing that comes to my mind is the decorative designs on the armor -- it seems to me that to get that same effect on actual leather, they would not be tooled on the surface, either with a pear shader tool or with a beveller tool. I think that modeling those lines from behind in an embossing effect, perhaps even wet-forming them over some kind of rigid mold, is the way to get those deep ridges. As for the black (which is your original question) -- hopefully some color and finish experts (not me!) can help you out here.

On a Facebook group, somebody posted this video of a person making his own stitching pony out of wood. The maker creates an ingenious cam mechanism using a wooden cylinder.

Hey, it's another Tacoma member! Welcome to the forum. As for the desired effect, if you can put a clearer picture up, then that will help viewers figure out what look you are trying to replicate.

Angelus makes a Lt. Rose colored dye which I have used. It's quite pink! (See their online color chart: https://angelusdirect.com/pages/color-chart) You could also dilute it with their Neutral (colorless) dye if you desire.

Condolences on the passing of your father-- may your leatherwork be a memorial to his life. Here are some names to go with the tool numbers posted above, as found on Tandy's current website. b197 = smooth beveler p206 = pear shader v407 = veiner c431 = camouflage s722 = seeder The following chart may help you figure out which tools you have (https://www.tandyleather.com/media/downloads/CraftoolConversionChart.pdf): 100 = background seeder (?) 429 = camouflage Some of your tool numbers I can't locate on the catalog or the chart, but now we've got a good start on what you have. You currently have a good starting set to learn the basics of traditional western floral style, except that you seem to be missing a background tool (see the A series in the PDF chart above-- A104, A114, A118). Recommending further tools depends on just what you plan on doing with them. (Like checkered backgrounders, mulefoot tools, border stamps, figure bevelers, etc.) Do you have a swivel knife and a way to sharpen it?

Vegan leather is leather made out of vegans.... Right?

What's on the inside of that? the visible edges are a tease. ;-)

Your work is stunning-- such precision and elegance! I'd be proud to own a wallet like that! And maybe someday I can do so, if I keep practicing.

This ought to be a sticky, so that in the future this information can be easily referenced (especially for beginner queries.)

I don't know anything about sewing machines, but I know a bit about Gwynedd -- I spent a summer in Wales back in 1988, learning Welsh down in Lampeter. I took a bank holiday to visit up north (Caernarvon, Bangor, Snowdonia, a bit of Ynys Mon as well) -- a lovely place! Hope some of the machine gurus here can help your blue beauty work again. Pob lwc!

Brennen, the SCA is the Society for Creative Anachronism, which is people who do medieval re-creation for fun, including making armor and wearing it in combat. If you live the Seattle area (I live in Tacoma, by the way), there are three large groups in the area, and there are probably a few people near you who have made leather armor. That simplifies things quite a bit, since you don't actually have to get it hard enough to withstand actual blows. That means that you can probably get by with just wet forming.

Brennen, where are you located in Washington? There may be an SCA group near you, which likely has somebody who has experience with leather armor. Armor for your joints (elbows, knees) is going to be different from other parts (say chest, or leg), so do you have a specific armor piece (or online photograph) in mind? And is this dress armor or armor that you intend to use? Give us a better idea about what you are looking at making (bazubands? breastplates? greaves?) and then we can help you better. Hardening the leather to actually become usable armor is difficult to get right -- no two hides are going to be exactly the same. I've played around with it some, but I don't really like the results. Leather is expensive-- plus, if the hardening process doesn't work out, you have to throw the leather away; it's not good for anything else. If you just want it to look pretty, that simplifies the process.