DJole

Are you looking at learning decorative tooling, specifically? You can make wallets without that kind of tooling, so it's unclear exactly what you are looking for. There will be some overlap in the tool set, but if you aren't interested in learning tooling then there are many tools you don't need to get. If you are just starting, you might find Ian Atkinson's YouTube channel is like having a personal teacher right there in your home. Look here for a list (including wallet making videos):https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=leodis+leather+wallet

Hey, a personalized gift from her dad -- that's a nice touch regardless of your critical eye! Good on you for not feeling intimidated by some of the amazing craftspeople on this site and posting your work.

That looks like a nice beginner project, if they tool the base.

You do really good work-- technique and designs make actual championship belts! As for different designs or stamps or techniques, I wonder if you have enough money and demand to justify purchasing and using large stamping plates?

Yes, you are right -- your leather may indeed have been too wet when you tried to use the beveller on it. There are a lot of threads on this forum about casing leather and figuring out when it's right for tooling. You should experiment with different cut depths, depending on the thickness (the weight) of the leather and the design, to see what works best. Cova color is an acrylic paint, which is water based. What you were talking about earlier is a water based dye (the Eco-Flo yellow). A dye permeates the material underneath its surface. The water or alcohol or oil (depending on the dye type) seeps into the leather, and then the liquid evaporates, leaving the pigment behind, below the surface of the leather, where it can't rub off. Paint merely adheres to the surface of the leather. When acrylic paint is applied, the water evaporates, leaving the plastic pigment on the surface of the leather, where it can be rubbed off over time. So to answer your question, acrylic paint is water based, and coats the surface of your leather. You put a few coats of paint on the leather (letting them dry in between) until you get the color strength you want, and then you use some sort of finish to protect the paint. Cova acrylic should work just fine. And if it rubs off over time, you can re-paint it.

Looking at the bottom right star, I think you are holding your bevel at too sharp of an angle. It looks like you are just widening the cut line, with not much of a bevel. Instead, the beveling tool should be flatter, so it creates a more gradual slope away from the cut, giving the star a "raised" appearance. If you have a modeling spoon, you can smooth those cut edges, and you can use it to smooth the beveled surface as well.

Very many people on this board dislike the Eco-flo (water-based) dyes. Those water-based dyes don't hold their color like the spirit dyes do. You should definitely use your tooling test scraps to also test dyes. I wonder if perhaps you wouldn't rather use yellow acrylic paint instead of yellow dye, to get a brighter yellow?

That needs a HazMat team for disposal... Poor cowhide...;-(

I used an xacto blade when I was first starting. It worked okay, but the swivel knife is the right tool for the job. It makes better curves since it's easier to control (it's short and built to swivel, whereas my xacto knife is long and doesn't pivot the same way). Line depth is a lot more problematic with the xacto, also. The swivel knife does make wider lines, which certainly makes some modeling techniques work better, as others have mentioned here. So,yeah, you can "get by" with the xacto, but if you really want to see improvement, get a good swivel knife, learn to sharpen and strop it, case your leather properly, and then learn to cut those swoopy, curvy lines they are so good for. Some day I might even decide to spend the money to get a really nice one. A modeling tool is a good idea, too, as fredk mentioned above. The one I have used for years mostly is a "spoon" on one end and a pointy stick on the other. I rarely use a ball end, although I have one. Here is what mine looks like-- it's the top one of the three pictured below. :

That's looking so much better! You're getting the idea of the tools and how they work. It's too bad that you started out with the wrong kind of leather. It must have been incredibly frustrating trying to figure out why it wasn't working right. Now it's just the "easy" matter of mastering the knife to create the smooth curved lines you want. That takes time, and a good knife with a sharp blade. It can be frustrating to know what you want, but not be able to get that look yet.

Welcome, Jools! I see that another person has succumbed to the siren call of leatherwork -- today, a swivel knife...tomorrow....400 tools all over the workshop and 4 different hides, and a stitching machine! Don't give in! Be strong!

That is spectacular work! Only one problem -- WE NEED CLOSEUPS of the awesomeness! ;-) A great design with a high level of skill in execution, nice colors-- masterful work.

Nice work! The floral style isn't my thing, but that's a pretty good job there.

You say that like it's a bad thing! ;-)

I had a watch strap spring pin disappear this past weekend, so I need to replace it. I discovered that Amazon had a humongous assortment, about 500 times more pins than I actually needed, for about the same price I could actually purchase the needed pins: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CFVUASS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 With that many pins in hand, I might have to start making a bunch of watch straps! I can have a new strap for every day of the month! Maybe others will find this information timely and useful.

That's a very clever design, working the straps in like that! I think that if you did another one of these, you might consider changing the design a bit. In the gears which have cut-outs, you beveled the edges of the cut-out spaces. I took your original graphic and marked the areas I mean with gray circles (since a picture's worth 1000 words, in this case) in the graphic below. I think you should flatten the whole space, rather than merely bevel the edges. That would "sell" the 3-D gears a bit more.

This is a pattern of a typical welted sheath design, borrowed quickly from Google, which uses a strip of leather between the front and the back to protect the stitching from the sharp blade edge: From what you say, that's what you're doing, which is pretty standard procedure. Adds a layer of difficulty to the stitching, but makes the sheath last longer. I can't say that using a straight pricking iron as a chisel is a no-no. It's probably an aesthetic thing in this case. My (limited) understanding is that the angled stitch is less likely to tear through the leather, since it grabs more leather or something. But on a knife sheath, with heavy leather like this, it's probably a matter of how much time you want to spend stitching (or what the patron wants) rather than wear and tear on the stitched line.

Well, it only took you 5 until you got one you liked! imagine what it would have been like without the help of the friendly holster experts here! It looks pretty good, but how did the surface of the leather over the gun portion get banged up like that (scratched, dented and marked)? Some people might find that less than appealing visually, which might cost you a sale if you wanted to sell them. Perhaps some people with experience can help you around that.

My heart goes pitter-pat for pattern welded steel (I have a pattern-welded dagger blade blank up in my closet that SOMEDAY I will actually turn into the actual thing. But enough about that, this is a leatherworking forum! Okay.. the sheath...stop looking at that blade... That's a pretty clean job. Nice even stamping, with a pretty nice design. I can't tell if this is a welted sheath or not (2 layers or 3 layers-- top and bottom with a welted strip?) The edges are hard to see at that angle-- did you slick them down? The stitching looks fine -- you seem to be using a straight stitch rather than an angled stitch. Nice job with the contrasting/ alternating thread colors. That's an unusual mounting -- I can't quite get how the sheath part is attached to that round part. I'm curious to know why you decided to do it that way. But that's a nice blade,too!

For the inside of the chef's hat, rather than merely cut it away, use a matte backgrounding tool. Typical backgrounding tool:: Creates this effect:

Nice work up there, for sure! That dragon armor looks really good -- was that ever entered in an Arts and Sciences competition?

Well done! Apparently the judges thought so, too!

Hmm...that's a toughie. I looked at Buckle Guy's catalog and this one didn't pop up...but maybe there's a specific name for this buckle which would help. Perhaps you could contact Buckle Guy himself and see if he can help you out:

I can tell you that Angelus Light Blue is not very light, straight from the bottle. It's not really a bright blue, or a Navy blue, but like this: To get a nice baby blue, I'm not sure what proportion of dye reducer to blue would work. I use that method to try making a lighter blue on a different project, but it's certainly not baby blue: I have to wonder if it's even possible, since the leather behind the dye is not really white enough to make the pastel baby blue work. Perhaps some experts here have the solution.

*whistles in admiration* That is some lovely floor work there. The only flooring I have ever done is install tongue-and-groove flooring in my living room, and that of course is nothing like this! Those bog-oak pens are gorgeous. I love beautiful wood, and beautiful woodwork as well. I can well understand why you'd want a beautiful case for them. Good materials and craftsmanship are a delight to the touch and the eye.