DJole

The stem (or stems) are too thick for this design. If you are going for a naturalistic look, they are way too thick. If you are going for a more abstract look, then the flowers and leaves are wrong for that (since they are trying to be naturalistic.) So what you have there is two clashing design philosophies. Also, I think you tried to do flower buds, but they look like leaves unless you look at them very carefully. Again, it's a question of abstract or realistic. Your composition isn't bad here, but I think you have a lot more open space (especially on the left side) than most floral carving tends to have, so it looks "unfinished." Flowers are surprisingly difficult to do! That must be why I myself don't really do floral designs. (I've tried it only once, as a panel for a pair of decorated fencing gloves.)

Wow, that is stellar work. Those are lovely!

Wonderful story! And a nice bag, too. Love the "retro" design!

Ooh...purty. Is that some walnut I see there? What an interesting design. I'm sure you'll keep us posted about how much fun you're having working it all out!

Beautiful work! Too lovely to smack with a stick!

Welcome! If you're making bags, you should go spend some time viewing the video instructions at Leodis Leather, provided by Ian Atkinson over in the UK. He walks you through some of the processes and planning, and you might find it helpful! Here is his website: http://ianatkinson.net/leather/videos.htm (Make sure you look at the whole page, not just the top. His longer videos are near the bottom).

Oh, I am sorry -- I didn't realize you were not in the USA. Hopefully some of the European forum members can see your posting and have some answers for you.

Try asking Ohio Travel Bag; they have a LOT of hardware of this type. I have no connection with them other than buying some of their products a few times. Contact them here: Ohio Travel Bag6481 Davis Industrial ParkwaySolon, Ohio 44139 Phone: 800-800-1941 / 440-498-1955 Fax: 800-989-5559 / 440-498-9811 E-mail: info@ohiotravelbag.com Open: 8:00am-5:00pm Eastern Mon-Fri

Never seen that before. I look forward to finding out who has the scoop on this.

The secret to this might be leather articulation. Take a look at this article discussing a historical gorget (throat armor) and look at the picture noting the leather straps which link up the articulating plates: <http://www.ageofarmour.com/education/gorget.html> The plates are riveted to the straps in such a way that the plates can move, but not too far. This might be the solution. I have a back-of-the head protection piece on a fencing mask (used for nylon sword play, HEMA variety) which is made of leather, with lower lames articulated this way. They hang extended, suspended from the leather articulation straps, but they can also compress into nested lames, which is similar to what you want these to do here. Then again, it might be a LOT more simple to just make a coat of plates, using leather as the plates. Just Google search for "coat of Plates" or "corrazina armor" and see if that would work. I love the looks of the corrazina armors, myself.

Making your own baseball glove --- now that's an unusual project! I know nothing about them, so unfortunately I can't contribute anything to the conversation. It would certainly be interesting to see, though! Imagine the custom leather, the tooling, and so on. It would be quite the showpiece.

How exciting! Don't you love the smell and feel of those new tools? You just pick them up and immediately start looking around for a piece of leather to stick them into... ;-)

Try an image search for Holly with berries clipart, if you didn't already do that.

Showed up in my Facebook feed, for some reason-- From the Website (https://www.estatesales.net/TX/Schertz/78154/1729887): Lot of photos of walls and racks of tools inside those barns. I saw some metal shoe-repair lasts, a bunch of anvils, stirrups, bits (for reins). No smaller leather tools are clearly visible in the photos (like photo 17 of 36). For non-leather stuff: lots of saws and block planes, hammers, axes and mallets, ice tongs, ice saws, and who knows what else is there for antique tools.

Yes, they'll be beautiful for the wrist straps. My stitching chisels were a lovely Christmas gift.

I wonder if these angled chisels will do what you want them to. They lay stitches out in the traditional slanted stitch for two pieces of leather on top of each other. Does the baseball or exterior X stitch, which are basically edge to edge, work okay with those slanted stitch holes, or will it look strange?

Very good tips up there, Zuludog. I just wanted to add that it is possible to get 3 prong chisels. My Leathercraft.JP set (http://goodsjapan.com/pricking-irons--stitch-punches-30-c.asp) in 3 mm pitch contains a 3 prong chisel (among others).

Welcome to the forum! What was your old job?

Nicely done -- good stitches, evenly tooled design with good balance. It'll be hard for the next one to be better!

Ask the good folks at Ohio Travel Bag (who specialize in bag hardware): Website: https://ohiotravelbag.com/ Contact information: Ohio Travel Bag6481 Davis Industrial ParkwaySolon, Ohio 44139Phone: 800-800-1941 / 440-498-1955Fax: 800-989-5559 / 440-498-9811E-mail: info@ohiotravelbag.comOpen: 8:00am-5:00pm Eastern Mon-Fri

That's nice clean work for only a couple months of experience. Stop making it look so easy, will ya? ;-)

Nicely done! Good contrast with the dark backgrounder and the knot lines. It certainly takes concentration to keep the over-- under-- over -- under pattern going without any goofs! I have also used a fine-tip Sharpie marker to do lines like that (hey, it's just a spirit dye, after all, in an applicator with a fine sharp point.)

Do you know anybody who has a heavier hammer/mallet that you can borrow to test your theory? Gotta be some shade-tree mechanics around who have dead-blow poly mallets and the like.

I like the idea of the leather cap made of football pieces-- the pieces would already be lozenge shaped and could be trimmed to size.

All it needs is a rheostat to control the speed. I'm sure everybody's got one of those lying around, right? (ha ha!)