venator

Gorgeous, I'm jealous of your edges. If it's not vegetan my edges are. . .well not that good. An hour north of Toronto? I'm in Bolton/Caledon. We should do lunch and talk leather one of these days.

Yup, just saw something I liked and made one. I made a few changes like the top corners because I liked them. Hardware was also Tandy yes.

It's a 3/4 oz chrome tanned top grain I scored from Tandy a long time back.

My lovely other half (well realistically she's my other third. . . she's tiny and I'm not) made this lovely belt pouch for her son. Our first go at wet molding and we're both super happy with how it turned out. The hardest part was the sewing machine clearance.

Thanks folks I appreciate the advice. I did this last week with a four strand around a core and it turned out fairly well.

So I can 4 strand around a core no problem but the moment I go to 6 strands it all goes to hell. My front side looks awesome and tight but my backside looks horrific. I'm a total rookie and I haven't been able to search out any answers so I'd appreciate any help you can offer.

I agree, particularely around a thicker core but since I'm using roo lace the cost is already huge. Adding two more strips really increases that.

I just used a piece of nylon rope. However in the future I'd like to make them with a larger diameter so I think I'll have to move up to a 4 or 6 plait braid. The 4 plait gets a little thin when my lace is only 5mm.

I made a biker whip today, my first real try braiding around a core.

My first real attempt at braiding around a core actually, I think it turned out decently.

Thanks

Been doing a lot of totes lately it seems. This one has folded handles and a construction I saw on an Italian bag that I liked. I didn't bother lining it since the leather had such a nice suede on the flesh side.

I'm looking for a source for decent quality leather liners for wallets. Does anyone have a source for this? Thanks.

People love this thing, I have to admit when I made it i spent half an hour just playing with it.

I'll pass along the compliments. You can see the full build process (pics) here. http://vkleathers.com/2017/03/27/project-86-leather-and-fabric-tote/

I've been working on my braiding but I'm not up to this yet. This is gorgeous.

There's no stiffener, we wanted it to be a very soft bag. With the zipper that closes it at the top it shouldn't be an issue. It's easy to shorten something, not so much to lengthen. So I figured I'd make them a bit long and if I wasn't happy I'd either make newer shorter ones or cut these. I'm inclined to agree though, I thought when the bag was full it would take up more strap but I appear to have been a bit optimistic. Still, it's a good first run, the second bag would fix any of these errors. Part of the joy of prototyping.

You actually don't have to undo the buckles, the stars you see on the flap are snaps which allow you to get in super quick. They don't pop open easily because of the zipper on the liner and the direction of pull on the straps.

My girlfriend had an idea to make this so we spent the last two days working on this project, the idea was 100% hers, I just helped with hardware and some order of operations but she did most of the work.

I just made one of these, it's awesome. Really quite simple, though I didn't bother to line it and I machine stitched it (which needs improvement but the second one would rock I'm sure). Great idea! Thank you so much for sharing!

It's great that it takes you 25 minutes, if it took me that long it might work but as I said for me hand stitching this is a 3 hour jobs with all the breaks I have to take since I can't feel my hands. . .

The wallet I tried yesterday was a non-turned edge and it didn't go well either. However they always look so messy. . .

The challenge for me is every person who asks for a wallet (and I've had quite a few) all need to carry 10 or more cards and unfortunately that's a lot of business to have to keep sayin no to. Plus honestly the wallets I do while they're well finished and look good look like "leatherworker" wallets not like something someone who actually has money would purchase and that drives me nuts. And with regards to thinning things they can only be made so thin. I can get vegetan down to around 1oz, sometimes 3/4 oz with my splitter, the skiver usually won't go below 1oz before it eats it. Hell with this wallet I threw out about 3x as much leather as I used because the splitter kept eating it because I wanted it so thin.

No, If I can't run it through the machine it's not worth doing. Hand sewing takes far too long and would result in me needing to up my prices. Plus my hands go numb quickly, I'd have to take probably 3 hours to hand sew a wallet if not more.

I've done plenty of these and have zero issues. Unfortunately they're not saleable.