JohnBarton

This one was done after the customer sent me a 14 page letter detailing what he wanted. Twice. By real mail. And twice by email to be sure. Followed up with tons more email and phone calls. Making "custom" cases is work. I'd rather be an artist who creates for me first and then sells rather than spending so much time selling and then creating. But I digress, the case turned out nicely I think. The idea here was to allow the tooling to wander around the case kind of like the clinging vines that travel up the walls. Although the tooling is slightly off-balance from what I had in my head when sketching it out I like the end result for it's asymmetry. I guess this is one of the side-effects of building leather goods in a shop with many folks involved in the process. Were it just me then this case would have turned out differently as I would have imposed my Obsessive disorder on it. With Zhen Hai's interpretation of my sketch I think he injected a little randomness to it that works well. Anyway, that's my thoughts on it. Here it is for you to decide. More pictures here http://www.jbcases.com/elements.html

Got it Kevin, corrected to Missouri. Damn....now you and Rusty will hook up and it's over for JB Cases. :-) You don't need any pointers from me. I actually don't see anything about this case that I don't like. That strap looks SUPER comfortable. All the stress points seem to be well done and strong, roomy pocket, lid looks tight. It's all good. Like I said your talent as a leather worker is amazing.

Dear Kevin, I am very sorry to hear about your father. I still hate you though for your insane talent. You have built a cue case that I would want to own. In fact it is now a mission in my life to own a Kevin King cue case and I will not rest until that happens. Your father would be proud of what you have done here and I am certain he was very proud of your amazing work. I am humbled and blown away and sincerely hope that you do not plan to continue making cue cases, except for the one you will make for me. Best to you, John Barton, forever your apprentice. PS: In the vein of it supposedly being better to ask for forgiveness instead of permission I posted this to my blog - John's Blog If you don't want it there then let me know and I will take it down.

Someone else already said it, "guns don't kill people, people kill people". Guns exist and preventing people from legally owning them only makes it so that the criminals have guns. The way it should be is that if you are caught with a gun that you are not legally registered for then you go away for life. Make the penalty so severe that it's a major deterrent. I personally don't like guns or any other weapons where people can kill me from a safe distance away. But I am foolish to deny their existence. The right to bear arms is enshrined in the American culture precisely because the British made it illegal to own guns (actually they outlawed militias) in order to control the population. So our founding fathers wrote it into our constitution that each state could have militias and the federal government could not ever take away that right. Subsequent to that is to maintain a ready militia each citizen should keep arms at the ready should they be called to serve the militia. So the right to bear arms in the USA is in fact for our own defense against any government which seeks to overstep the governance that that is allowed to it by the people themselves. Nothing against Australia but I can certainly understand a country which was colonized by criminals would end up with a ban on guns. I can certainly see that having a ban on guns would diminish the amount of crimes of passion involving guns significantly. It's a lot harder to murder someone with a gun when you don't have one or easy access to one. That alone is a deterrent. We do have a gun problem in the USA but it's not with the law abiding people who own guns. As for knives? Come one Leatheroo, a person from Australia can't be against knives :-)

Somehow I just imagined a commercial where the camera pans into a large country house. A woman is sobbing in the background and on the phone. A soothing voice assures her that it will be alright. The next scene shows a man tending to his horses, getting them all settled in with care and then he grabs a box that we only get a glimpse of and gets into his immaculately restored classic Ford truck. Winding country roads later the truck pulls up to the large house and the man gets out and goes in. The distraught lady thanks him for coming to her aid in this emergency. He asks to see the patient. The camera pans across an expansive mahogany table with ornate chairs. Comes up on the main chair with it's intricately carved leather inlay and it's got a large tear and stain right in the center, where a man's heart would be. "Can you repair this?" pleads the woman. The leather master now sets his ornate tool box on the table and the camera slowly caresses it while moving towards the latches. The box is opened and the last words spoken are a soft and confident, "I can". The camera fades out to and elegantly carved logo that reads "Bearman Leather" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This setup is so amazing that it has now replaced my daughter as my desktop wallpaper. As a case guy I am humbly bowing to you for this incredibly functional and beautiful work of art. Masters like you give hacks like me mountains to climb. Thank you!

Fantastic work. Very elegant and powerful. Makes me want to have one just to let people know I mean business! I bet the silver was nuts to work with. I use a very little in some logos and it's a pain there. I can imagine doing it over a large area as you did. You have some major patience. Did you do the tats or is that all work that's on you? Jay Paranich - Tattoosbyjay on here did me a nice one earlier this year that I still need to pay for - (I will hook you up Jay!!!) Regarding the mess with sanding - get a shop vac or some other vacuum cleaner and make yourself a wide nozzle to place near where you are sanding and it will eliminate a lot of the mess. The other day I did not turn ours on and after three minutes I was covered in leather snow flakes. You should find the quietest vacuum you can though.

Ok, well since you asked....... :-) A few years ago I had a conversation with Jim Murnak who is a leather worker in New York. Jim said something that stuck with me and which I have tried to follow ever since. He said that one should not fill up a space with as much carving as possible and let it ramble because then it's not any different than wallpaper or printed fabric. He said that the art in carving leather lies in planning to fill the space just for that space. The more I thought about it the more sense it made. So I started looking at carving differently and really began to appreciate the carvers so much more who obviously drew their patterns just for an exact space. They filled the space with care and detail with no parts summarily cut off, nothing distorted to fit etc..... To me that shows major care and love. Then the subject of symmetry and asymmetry. A lot of what we do is asymmetrical in that it won't be a mirror image on both sides but will have a theme throughout that ties in. I believe heavily in achieving balance in the piece when it comes to design. I don't like to have any elements covering any other elements without there being some blending. So what does this mean for your piece? Well as mentioned above I wouldn't allow the florals to be cut off. To me that looks like someone just cropped a picture. You piece is asymmetrical which is fine but I would have tried to balance the body and the lid more by tying in the design or even doing the lid in a completely different way. For example one idea that springs to mind would be to do the whole lid in the basketweave with your initials in the center and then focus on the body florals making them fit inside the space with the larger flowers visible when the lid is closed and then when the lid comes off it reveals a really cool vine pattern going around the piece. So in essence a surprise for the person taking the lid off. This type of case lends itself wonderfully to whatever type of expression you want to do with it. So my advice on the decoration is to work on filling the space creatively with a lot of care and detail rather than overlaying the pattern and cutting it off when you run out of space. Not that I want you to be like me but you can see how I approach this by looking at some of our more heavily tooled pieces. You will see some of our work violates the "rules" I stated above but most of those were done prior to my awakening so to speak. And please don't think that I somehow hold myself as better than anyone else when it comes to decorating leather. I have a folder called "exceptional tooling" which is full of pictures of just that. I frequently go to browse these pictures and dream of someday creating items that begin to approach those in beauty and execution. For a great example of balance and symmetry look here: Peter Main Now Peter has an advantage in that he is an artist and he worked with the Stohlmans and he's been doing this since God first made leather. But to me he is the gold standard for fine elegant work. Again not saying everyone has to copy Peter's style. Just saying that in leather work paying attention to working the space carefully pays off. I will truly enjoy following your progress. To steal a line from one of my favorite movies and butcher it with a paraphrase, 'you're gonna be one of the great ones'. Now, you can return the favor and tell me how to take better pictures because yours ROCK.

This is really nice. As a construction fanatic I am always far more interested in how things are made rather than how they are decorated. So I was very pleased to see what you did on the seam. I think that seamless or flush-seamed closed shapes are one of the holy grails of leather working. I don't really see anything that I would say you should do "better" - a couple things here and there where it still has a tiny bit of being not quite straight, not quite "tight" yet but overall a nice piece. I am sure that if you keep doing these the ones you do a year from now will be as near to "perfect" as humanly possible. To me as a constructionist I have the feeling when I am looking at this that you were figuring out what you wanted to do on the fly as you were building it. I don't know if that's how you work but it's how I work when I get going. I have other comments relating to the layout and symmetry but as I said I see this as a practice piece so I doubt highly that you were too concerned about that aspect at this point.

Here is a case that we have started to do more of. It's called a Butterfly case because the whole thing unzips all the way around to lay out like a butterfly. The one is called the Double Dragon2 - (kinda like those kung fu movies) - we did a Double Dragon case three years ago and this one is using all that we have learned since then (you know like when the hero get's his butt kicked then goes off to train and comes back to defeat his enemies.) :-) The font is Made in China :-) The Chinese symbol here is the one for Dragon (long) - so having two in a row is kind of a play on words (long long) The Chinese have a symbol for Double Happiness so I thought it would be funny to make one for Double Dragons For the border we made our own stamp from Delrin so that we could do the infinity pattern. I drew it and it's geometrically perfect. The pattern itself is thousands of years old. Imagine when artisans 3000 years ago used to put these onto objects without the ability to have computers and lasers to make stamps. Aspiring cue case makers take note - the stress points are the handles and straps. So make sure that they well reinforced - on these case all those points are metal to metal and hidden with a decorative cover. The pockets are inside on this case and are removable. We use goat skin for the piping and dye it to match for each case. I chose images from several dynasties and social classes. And that's a little bit of what we have been up to. Coming soon is a revision to the box pocket tutorial with what we have learned in the interim. We are now doing that pocket standard on all cases with box pockets.

The beast must be fed. Once you increase your overhead then you will be increasingly dependent on getting more and more business to pay those expenses. I started three years ago in my apartment with one bedroom converted to an office, one room converted to storage and the living room used as the workspace. I had three employees. Three years later I have a 500 square meter shop with 7 sewing machines, a huge laser, and 13 employees. I have $20,000 tied up in leather and other supplies. I FEEL it every month when the bills come due. My advice is to wait until you really cannot stand it anymore and then go another six months beyond that. Do everything you can to optimize the space you are in. I will never forget the time I was in Amsterdam and we went to a shop owned by friends of my father. Two guys who specialized in fetish and bondage gear. I walked down a flight of steps into a basement shop that was one little room in front and a larger room in the back - that's it. In the larger room they had on big cutting and work table - sewing machne on the wall and UP the walls they had hundreds of drawers full of every conceivable metal part known to man. Above that was leather storage. VERY efficient operation. I was a claustrophobic in there but impressed at the same time. My advice is to stay put and horde your money - don't invest in expansion until you really must. On top of the expense comes the time in transit going to and from work. Of course if it's critical now then do it. I love my shop but I HATE the 1 hour commute every day to get here and another hour to go home. (don't ask) I'd much rather be five minutes away at best.

I know a lot about it - we use a laser engraver in our shop. The thing you need to know is that the laser is a super versatile tool but it's not as easy as throw it in an burn it. In order to get really GREAT markings on your leather you will need to learn a lot about what the laser can do and how it interacts with various materials. Not all leather is easy to cut and mark. The place for you to start is www.sawmillcreek.org which is a board for woodworkers. They have a very good section on laser engraving. If you call Universal Laser Systems they will tell you who the nearest ULS dealer is and you should be able to go to them and take your material and see if it will do what you want. The rep can explain what you need to learn and how the laser works. I recoomend the ULS lasers HIGHLY. Their software is amazing for controlling the laser and in some ways it's almost as easy as using a printer. (ALMOST). www.ulsinc.com If you go through my website - www.jbcases.com you will see lots of cases where we used the laser. Mainly wherever you see a case with funky curves and odd parts then it's 99% that we used the laser to make those shapes. We make our own stamps using the laser, we make tap-offs, we laser fine lines which will be tooled later, we make tool-placement templates - this is so that we don't need to scribe lines to keep a row of stamping straight - we make jigs and molds, and and and....... When our laser goes down for a few day we feel the pain because it's such a great tool in our shop. When you combine laser engraving and hand-tooling you can make some amazing pieces. But it's also good to remember something. The laser can't do everything - it's only as good as your input. I once spent two days trying to get a Medical Combat Badge to come out looking good when done by laser. I spent a good ten hours working with this image and playing with the lines and power settings on the laser until finally I just handed it to my tooler and said you try it. He tooled up the badge in a few hours and it looked better than anything I could have ever achieved with the laser in my opinion. The laser is just a tool. Whether you make boring stuff or inspiring art is all on you. If you have specific questions feel free to contact me.

Ok, so I haven't been here for a while to bug you with more of my "issues" that are probably better worked out with a head doctor. The latest one is a real sense of depression (jealously?) over the prices others get for work that is not as hard to do or in my opinion not commensurate with the market in general for other leather goods. So I know something is only worth what someone else will pay for it, yada yada. I know that certain brands and reputations can command higher prices. I am not a novice in this field since I am in the game for 20 years. Still I do get depressed when I see a Gucci bag for $1500 and I know that more effort goes into my stuff than that and I feel guilty asking $500. I get depressed when a competitor gets $3500 for a case that isn't even half as good but it looks good. But as always I have a real point and a real question. Question 1. - In leather working which things are hardest to make and bring the least reward (financially)? Question 2. - you are a saddle maker who gets $3500 for a fully tooled trophy saddle and you do a little work for someone else and tool two small parts for their bags, assume that you get about $500 for this work on the small pieces. They then are able to sell their bags based on your tooling for $3500 each (kudos to them for being able to get that price). Would you feel a little depressed that you only get $3500 for the whole saddle while they get the same amount for building something which takes a lot less effort and relies on your tooling for the wow effect? Thoughts?

we just use plain white paper and trace it using a ball point pen with no ink. Works pretty good for us. Most of our patterns are one-offs drawn for just that customer and space so we don't worry too much about ever using them again.

You know what I like as well? In addition to the elegance of the piece I am amazed at the fact that this was done on a 40 year old piece of leather. Think about that when it comes to the current trend of everyone "going green". Leather is such a durable material. You have the gift!

Boy are you in for some headaches :-) I like the general idea. I think though that you need some more description of what each step entails - not a tutorial per se but something that lets people know that between step 1 and 2 is a lot of hours of patient hand work. I'd also like to see a little more about you, your experience motivation, life etc.... Saddle making looks HARD. I just protect pool cues, you have to protect the horse and the rider's ass :-) So like I said, it's a good start and my only thing is that I didn't get to know YOU I only saw some pictures of a saddle in various stages of completion. A tip for your pictures is to put them on the web somewhere where you can find them and refer to them. I don't recommend using blogger's storage. If you can get a cheapy web hosting account and use that to store everything. I put tons of pictures online so that whenever the need arises I can draw on them. This is my main library, www.jbcases.com/cases when you click on this link then this should open a directory where you can see a bunch of folders. I use a add-on in Firefox called Unlinker to make the links show up as pictures. Then whenever I want to put a picture in my blog, or on here, or in an email I can just copy the location and paste it into the place I want to show it. This is called hotlinking and it just means that you are telling the browser where the picture is. If you do this then you have complete control over where your pictures are. I have been using HostGator for three years now and they are the best host I have ever used. What you get for $5 a month is incredible. Here is an example: This is the location of the image. http://www.jbcases.c...ter-a-front.jpg And here it is displayed I find that if I do this then I can quickly find just the right example to show a customer when I need to and it's on the web waiting to be shown. I don't have to hunt for a picture and then attach it and hope that they get it ok on their end. All the pictures are uploaded via FTP. You can also do the same with an online gallery: www.jbcases.com/gallery But sometimes some places won't accept the link that that a gallery provides. Depending on the gallery type you might have to look a little harder for the type of link that is acceptable. So the blog is a good thing - but keep in mind that it's sort of meant to be an ongoing news outlet rather than a good way for people to browse your products. You will need to think about the structure of the blog if you intend it to be a product showcase because blogs are generally not very good at letting people find things in them. So set up your categories and pay attention to your titles. I don't use blogger but I assume that you can assign a category to each post. So if you want to have it be where customers could browse all your saddles you might have a Saddles category. Then under that Category your first post might be something called Saddle Types. In this one you would explain to the customers what each type of saddle is. Then each subsequent post would be titled something like this English Riding: Super Floral High Crest etc... (obviously I am completely ignorant of saddles) The point is that it pays to think of how you want to structure it so that people coming to your blog can find their way around easily AND so that you can also find your way around easily when you need to refer back to your blog's content. Well alright then, that's a long winded way of saying welcome to the world of blogging! Nice job so far.

No flap. The padded fabric keeps the cues well separated.

Well I don't think that he will ever have 8 cues done at one time to put in this case but it's the size he wanted so we built it. This one features the new JB Butterfly interior which is built so that the butts and shafts can easily be put in and and taken out just like using a tube case. No flaps to get in the way and no fumbling with the holes to open the fabric up enough to get the parts in. It's 5lbs empty and 16lbs full. We did a wide strap with an ergonomic grippy pad. We did an inlay on the back with Mike's logo and small business card holder for his cards on the front.

Hi, I promise I searched on this before asking. Several of my hides have developed nasty cases of mold while sitting on the shelf. I don't know if was here but I did see some discussion on how to get rid of it. So I could use any help or direction to solutions if you all have them. Thanks in advance from moldy John!

Done right it definitely helps. Done wrong it drives people away. One thing about a website is that you have to decide whether it's going to be a poster, a catalog, or a store. If it's a poster then you are simply going to put up a pretty sparse page with some examples of your work and invite people to contact you. If it's a catalog then you will need to have good presentation of your items with some good pictures, different views, and good descriptions. If it's a store then you will need to do all that you do with a catalog plus keep it up to date with what items are available, how to purchase, etc.... In other words it can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. BUT it's work to put it up and it does reflect on you and your work. To me a poor website brings down quality work. I have seen so many sites which are hard to read, terrible to navigate and have photos of the work that are tiny, poor quality and horrible. EVERYONE says that they do quality work. Everyone says that they are meticulous. Everyone says they will make your dreams comes true. The only thing that convinces people of that though is if they can see it and in my opinion it's all about the images on the web. Lots of good quality images and videos will do more to sell for you than all the copy in the world. People will read your copy and want to get in your head if you show them something that makes them want to stay. I have people who email me all the time and say that they just spent a couple hours browsing through all my cases and now they are ready to order. I have people who tell me they just like to go to my site once every couple weeks to see the new cases. WHICH brings me to the important point of maintaining your site with new stuff to keep bringing people back. I am WAY behind on this and currently have around 20-30 cases to put up on our website. It's tedious boring work which is why I avoid it. But it pays huge dividends because you have a ready portfolio of your work. I can't tell you the amount of times I use my website to reference something. When on the phone with a customer I will direct them to my site to show them various things, when answering emails I will insert pictures pulled from my website or post links to the relevant products, when posting to message boards I will use the pictures on my website. Check all my posts here and you will find that almost all of my pictures are coming from my website. When I post a case I don't upload my pictures to the LeatherWorker.net server I insert the image using a link from my own site. This way I have control over that image and if I decide to change it later then it changes EVERYWHERE that I have ever put in an instant. I don't have to worry that there are other versions out there. So yes, a website is a powerful powerful tool when done right. But you should teach yourself the basics and not depend on others to build it for you. This site is 100% built by my friend and he is arguably the most successful dealer of high end cues in the world www.indyq.com This site is almost entirely built by me - www.jbcases.com - I allow some people to work on it under my supervision. Good luck!

Tough call. On another board where my customers reside I am pretty relentless about being involved in every discussion possible about cue cases. To the point where it's definitely a turn off for some and I am obviously "that guy". For others though they welcome the frank comments and discussion about every aspect of cue cases and thank me for it. It's obviously not conducive to doing good business getting into any sorts of "wars" with your competition and certainly I know that doing so makes people almost feel obligated to choose sides. On the other hand I will not let my competition get away with hyping up their products and making out that their products have the better value if they don't. Nor will I allow it by proxy when a customer of theirs ignorantly proclaims their product to be better than our product. I just feel that things that need to be challenged and dissected because the problem I see is that the audience often looks at statements without challenge as truth. By the same token I also open myself and our products up to intense criticism. I welcome it and welcome side-by-side apples to apples comparisons because I know that we will come out on top in just about every metric governing value received for price paid. But this approach seems to really rub people the wrong way who think that business should be a big kumbaya festival where no one is allowed to challenge or "speak ill" of a competitor. I don't think that people should make a habit of just trashing a competitor even if they have the facts to back it up. But I do feel that it's a duty for a business to stand up for themselves and fight for customers by asserting themselves when they truly have a better offer or a better product. On these forums though I DO NOT think it is right for one competitor to do this in another's thread. So if I make sewing machines and I post a thread debuting a new model then I don't feel that another sewing machine maker should jump in with their own offerings. UNLESS the maker who is offering their machine is making outlandish claims. - fine line fine line fine line - - Now, in a general thread where someone ask what machine they should buy then by all means, compete and give that person your best pitch. How you present your product and how you handle yourself will make an impression on the potential customer and all the people reading. God knows I have been on the WRONG side of that line many times on the other forum. So I have plenty of experience doing it the wrong way. Hindsight being 20/20 I would have done things differently with more tact and less arrogance but with no less passion and conviction. SO I guess my point is that there is a right way to compete and it's not at the cost of alienating people and making others choose sides. The way to do it is to be firm, fact based, on topic, and polite. .

What do you do when you want to change the world but you are stuck? I currently have a style of case that I am working on and I have done 20 new versions of the interior and yesterday I scrapped all of them and am undecided as to which direction to go. I have committed to the project and committed the cardinal sin of cutting the leather and doing custom inlays on it - real ostrich, the expensive kind, before making the (supposed to be no brainer) interior. Now I am really stuck and don't know which way to go. I don't know if I should just go the conventional route which is what I was wanting to get away from because I feel that it's inefficient and taking the easy way out, or should I keep pursuing my vision of how to build this case even though the project is way overdue? The customer has shown incredible patience and I of course bragged about how I would do it so much better than the competition. :-) So now I don't want to have to eat crow and build it to be essentially similar to the competition (not a copy as everyone does it this way, including me on our lower end production models). Help?

That is so hot on so many levels. Always knocking them out of the park Kevin!!! Dammit - now I have even more Kevin King floating around inside my head as to what to do on a cue case........

I want to echo that the spot you chose and the angles really come across well for this piece. I don't agree that that nice photos correlate to a nice product as I have seen some pretty damn good photos of some crap product and the framing and lighting make the product look a thousand times better than it actually is. But in your case it's fairly easy to see that the product is as good, probably better than, the pictures show us. Really nice inspiring work. Maybe now I will get off my ass and finally make that computer bag I have wanted to make for so long.

Not bad for the first time doing this type of case. As usual your tooling is impeccable. I think you can see the things which are troublesome on this type of case. The important part is that you got it done and it looks great! How did you like getting all the glue off the tubes from the previous covering ;-)