JohnBarton

When you say sketched into the leather do you mean laser engraved? Looks like the black parts are lasered and then the coloring is applied. If so then my compliments on a very very nicely done and creative way to use the laser. If not then even more compliments on the method! Very nice looking work.

You best bet is to to use plumbing and electrical tubes. 1.25" for the butt of the cue and .75 for the shafts. Run the liner through them, tape it on both ends and then tape the tubes together securely. Build your case around that. If you don't need rigid tubes then you can make divided interiors out of woven cardboard and fabric. I won't provide you with the exact patterns for those as it's our trade secret but with a little tinkering your should be able to figure it out.

Open the files, it's at full size. Look at my website - or google Instroke and you can find thousands of pictures.

If you use a VERY VERY little bit then you can just do it on the area with the glue and the oil will dissipate quickly. What I like to do with olive oil is to put a little bit on a washcloth. Then I dab that on a piece of cardboard and THEN I rub my finger lightly on the washcloth and use my finger to gently remove the glue. That seems to work most of the time.

You can use a light oil sometimes. I use olive oil or even facial oil (eeeeewww) to remove glue residue.

This is one of the best and strongest "natural" closure methods around. It's a very old technique and the closures done this way last forever. The only problem I have with it is that it is a bit cumbersome and doesn't fit every design. I love it though.

Here are some examples of leather latches we make http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=29656

I wanted to mention as well that if the latch is not load bearing then you don't need to do the extra work on the backside to make it stronger. For a purse it would be enough to sew the male part to the body.

For me it's matter of how easy is it to fix it and what does downtime cost? If the $4000 machine has a great reputation for never going down then that's a strong case for getting that. A machine may look another machine bit that doesn't mean that it works the same. I have a 6k Chinese laser enngraver/cutter. It's nowhere close to the 25k ULS laser we have in our shop in the USA. Had I the 25k then I would have bought it instead of this one. However this one was local and comes with support. With Alibaba you have to be careful as some of the people you are dealing with are brokers and not manufacturers. I had one customer get a container full of junk after they spent 40k buying billiard supplies through a contact on Alibaba.

Think of a leather couch, that's nappa leather. What you need to do, based on what I see in the picture, is to glue the leather up and then pull-stretch it into place. For this you should have a pair of pliers with two flat edges on them flat edge on them These are called canvas pliers - http://www.johnannes...nvasPliers.html You want something like these. You can find flat edge pliers at the hardware store. You will use these to stretch and crimp the leather so that it forms tight to the handle body. This requires some patience to massage the leather into place. With the pliers you will flatten the leather close to the body so that you can sew it. Then you will trim off the excess close to the seam and you're done. That's how we do it if we make this type of handle. I actually don't make this type of handle for our own cases because I don't like them. But we have done them on prototype cases for customer requests. Watch the video on this page to see how Dunhill does it. http://www.luxuo.com...hill-movie.html There you go.

The JB Cases Puzzle Latch. Are you tired of fighting with hardware? Getting crappy hardware? Latches that break? - I was and so I developed a way to do latches myself that works. These latches have been field tested on actual customers for more than a year and they are holding up great so far. The premise here is to create a closure that is unlikely to ever break and which can support a lot of weight. I make cue cases and frequently the weight gets to be anywhere from 5-15lbs and people like to hold them by the lid with all the weight on the latch. I have a few styles; One is called the Puzzle Twist because it relies on a twist tab to secure it. The other is called the Magnetic Puzzle because is has no moving parts and works with magnets. Instead of a true how to with step-by-step instructions I will just show you examples that we have done. The basic way to do it will be fairly self-explanatory but I will give you the gist of it here. Essentially the base of the latch is the male part and the flap has the female part. One part fits over the other like a puzzle. The base has to be riveted and sewn to the body of the case. The way we do it is typically we take two layers of leather and glue them up and rivet that to the body with a bit of sheet metal underneath. The sheet metal is drilled and glued in such a way that it cannot get loose and cannot touch the thread. Then we take the last layer and glue it to the top of the male part and sew all that together through the sheet metal with another thin layer of leather on the other side. Give up yet? :-) Yes it's a lot of work to make a latch like this but the result is worth it. The important part is to burnish all the edges until they are rock hard. We use super glue to harden the edges and make sure they won't fray. You want the male and female parts to fit together snugly but not so tight that you can't get the latch open. We use a dremel and a hand file to give both sides the right amount of bevel to make them easy to close and easy to open. For the magnetic latches we use the neodymium (rare earth) type. We buy these in various sizes and pack them around the male and female parts for the cases because of the weight. We probably do it a little on the overkill side but I am a bit fanatical about the latches not coming apart with $10,000 pool cues in the cases. Here is a video demonstration of the latch in action So here are the pictures, if you have questions feel free to ask me; Notice on this one that the male part has four layers. This is because this is a larger case and the weight is about 12lbs empty. So I wanted the male part to protrude slightly to give it just a little extra purchase. Also here is a variation which we do for the pockets - we also call this a puzzle latch. And another pocket variation: Double sided magnetic Puzzle Latches with a flip top lid: My favorite that we have done so far is this one: So I hope that gives enough to go on to make your own Puzzle Latches. If you have questions then please ask them and I will respond in this thread.

This is another of our "Mason" cases based on the fly fishing tool case built by Arne Mason. It's called January because it was a January birthday gift from my customer to himself and we have a lot of January birthdays in our circle. For those that follow our work see if you can spot what's brand new on this one. I am particularly proud of this little change. See more here : http://www.jbcases.com/january.html

Leather jewelry.

If it's like the one in the picture then you will want to glue nappa leather around the plastic or wooden body and sew it by hand. Then trim off the excess and finish the edges and you're done. Pretty simple really if you have the original to work with.

I hate you Keven King. Most of your stuff is not even my style or what I like but I find myself wanting to start liking it just so I can get a Keven King wallet. Great video, well done. The sheer creativity blast in 3 minutes hurts my head. Thanks for sharing.

Sweet Jay. Probably more money in seats than in cases and from what I can see a much better way to show off your art. For everyone who doesn't know Jay he is a true artist and his walls are lined with his original art and my wife and I have some of it on our arms. This is a great piece, love the image, love the coloring.

Pool cues are described as being 58" long with a 13mm tip. We use both and have the added confusion of having a Chinese inch which is longer than a western inch. I had to ban all the rulers in my shop with Chinese inches. When I go to buy leather they charge me in feet but use one meter floor tiles to estimate how big the piece is. I stopped this by carrying my own tape measure and insisting that they measure accurately.

http://www.jri.org.u...imatechange.htm http://whyfiles.org/...ther-forecasts/ http://www.straightd...recast-accuracy It's funny that people love the "science" that is beneficial to them like the science behind what makes your computer work, the science that makes your lights work, the science that provides you with life saving medical equipment. All that is good science. But the science which says hey you are contributing to adverse climate change is "bogus"????/ Very interesting outlook on how the world works. FYI - I was a weather observer in the Air Force. We had to predict the weather to support a helicopter unit. Since I had to OBSERVE the weather I got to see first hand how accurate the forecasts were and by and large they were very accurate on a day to day basis. And by the way I didn't say that there is no God. I just get amused at all the people who profess to believe in God and say that God is infinitely wise and infintely powerful and all that will happen is already known by God and then they presume to tell everyone that they know what God is thinking or what God wants. I think that if there is a God then we are like an ant colony to him. I think that he created the world and threw in "science" just like poking a stick at ants to see them react. I think God is laughing at us if anything. By the same token above about people liking only the science that they find useful I get amused that there is some idea that science and God are opposed. Didn't God create the universe and everything and every thought we have comes from Him? Well that's about as deep as I can get - I am already in trouble for not being a "good" American. :-) I should stop now while I am behind.

We are a one hour flight from HK. The price of the flight is about $150. You're welcome any time!!

I love this thread. Especially the stories about not finding what you want and deciding to make your own. In 1990 I had a leather cue case and it was open and got knocked off the table and the cue shot out of it and got broken. While the cue was gone I decided that I was going to replace the interior of that case and make it more secure. I did that, crudely. When done I looked at the case and decided that I didn't really like it that much anyway and thought I could build my own in a style I liked. I actually started with vinyl because it was easier for me to get and cheaper. My first use of leather came when my girlfriend and I took a trip to the Camargue in France and to get there we had to go over the mountains. Well she had done a little research and to surprise me she took me to a tannery in the mountains. I bought about $1500 worth of leather. I didn't know anything about what I was buying, I just felt the weight and texture and bought what I liked. I didn't know anything about having to skive the edges or how to turn leather etc.... But I bought the leather and started making leather cases anyway. The rest is history and even today if you all were to give me a quiz on "working" leather I'd probably fail. But we sure have made quite a lot of nice leather cases over the years. I have said it before but this never gets old, you all are some amazing artists and crafts people. Thank you for being here.

What this video shows best is how a factory's resources can be used to make a custom one-off product. If you really think about it the only thing that they did differently to making a production shoe is meet with the person who is going to buy the shoe. Everything else is the same as if they were going to produce 10,000 shoes. One of my friends owns a factory making pool cues. Part of his factory is dedicated to making "custom" cues. Some of the work is done in the custom shop and the majority is done on the production lines. He is able to turn out very nice, very high end cues for a fraction of the cost of a little shop. I call this type of making "custom production." We do it all the time for the mass-production models we make prototypes for. I have two people dedicated to making protoypes of cases intended for mass production. I offer a service where we will make any production case as a custom case with the customer's modifications for just a little more than the case would cost if they bought a pre-made one off the shelf. It's win-win because I get the market research of having customers tell me what they want and be willing to pay for it and they get what they want without having to go broke paying for it. Looks like they do http://www.delcros.com/orthopedie/EN/delcros-orthopedie-produits.htm

I am sorry Ray but you are barred from my shop. Given your passion and willingness to do anything I fear that you would become a better case maker than us. LOL. Of course you are always welcome to come to our shop where I can show you some techniques we use that aren't found elsewhere when making pool cue cases. I nearly always learn something when I start down a path on the web looking at other people's leather work.

Well, I live in China and let me tell you that "God" did not design the world so that companies can dump waste into water sources making those water sources poisonous. God did not design the world so that large factories can burn off plastic waste downwind from a village. I live in Xiamen China. This is an island which is very clean and quiet. The view outside my office window right now is of a pretty lake sitting next to a beautiful bay. I am told that 20 years ago this lake was a giant cesspool full of trash and horrible to see and smell. I am told that the smell was so bad that people had to wear filtered masks to get through the day. About ten years ago the goverment decided to clean up Xiamen and in 2002 they won some global award for being a clean and environmentally friendly city. Unfortunately Xiamen is the exception rather than the rule. China is probably moving forward on getting "green" in a lot of areas faster than in the West. But at the same time they have a LOT of industrial and even personal pollution happening. The "carbon footprint" is not a crock. It's a valid concept that accurately measures the amount of CO2 produced when we consume energy by the creation of heat. I find it personally funny that someone would say that a carbon footprint is a crock while simultaneously telling me that I should believe that an invisible all-powerful entity created the world in 6 days. So forgo the things we know and can be proven for those which can't? You ever heard the joke about the guy who prayed to win the lottery? Dear God please allow me to win the lottery? This is asked every night for ten years. Finally an exasperated God speaks directly to the guy......."my son why don't you buy a ticket?" Did any of you who believe in God ever stop to consider that maybe God put climatologists on the Earth in order to help us to understand the Earth and nature and how to be better stewards of it? Reminds me of the coaches who only ask God to help their team win. Why not thanks God for allowing us to be able to play a game and we hope that everyone plays great and has a good time and no one get's hurt? Like Chis Rock said said, God Bless America and no one else. (said when satirizing a politician) Face it - leather is a "dirty" product in it's manufacturing. But it's a natural product and one of the most versatile, strongest and best for the widest variety of applications. It can be made by anyone without the need of large machines and complex processes. An individual cannot make vinyl easily if at all. And leather isn't going anywhere, as long as we are killing animals for food then we will find ways to profit off off their skins. One thing we don't waste a lot of is opportunities to make money. If it can be sold someone is selling it. Personally I look towards the leather industry "greening" itself up because at the end of the day saving money by using less energy and resources to obtain the same or better product just makes better business sense. And if they can charge more for it in the short term to offset the investment costs of retooling then more power to them. Because eventually the who industry will have to keep up with the Jones' and then prices will level off. And for those of you who don't believe that what we do affects the climate why don't you try a couple of homegrown experiments and tell us how they worked out. If you know a neighbor who has a well then go pee in it and see how they react. Do you have a nice lawn that you love? Go get yourself a vat of sulfur dioxide and rig it up so that it mixes with your sprinkler system and spray that on your prized lawn for a few weeks and tell us what happens. The fact is that scientists don't know everything about the biosphere we live on. But they know more now than 100 years ago and more than 50 years ago and more then 10 and more than last year. And each year that knowledge of what's really happening is increased tremendously due to the tools they have available and global collaboration. One thing is certain, the scientific community knows more about what makes the WORLD tick than you do and more than I do. Maybe George Carlin was right, maybe the planet will shake us off like a dog gets rid of fleas. Maybe to the planet we are just a surface irritation. For sure the planet will survive even if we make it uninhabitable for ourselves. But the fact is that this is not going to happen because we are going to all get "green" whether we want to and whether we believe we need to. It's going to happen because governments and corporations are going to force it to happen. Because being green is the new banner to stand under if you are a politician and it's the new way to make money if you are a company. Watch and see.

Jay, that came out looking great. Good choice to put the latch on the back and let the image flow on the front. I like that you put some nails in the end caps for extra security. It's great to see this piece finally done.