kiwican

When I was in we used kiwi shoe polish and water. Built up the layers to fill in the scratches.

Love this story

I used edge kote once..once. for dying edges I use my dye of choice and let that dry. Slick until I'm happy then run bees wax over the that and slick again. I've never had issue with that and some if my gear is all weather all the time

Great job

Wow. Impressive

Love the carving !

Ditto on the frog. Reminds me of the ones I had as a kid

That's real nice. Yup. Real nice

Great job!

You could also try a V gouge then and carve a small trench out where the hardware will be.?

Those look super cool. Have you considered skiving down the areas around the hardware to thin it out some?

Nice job !

Those look awesome ! Great job

I use this a lot on my stuff. Including a wrist brace I've worn for almost two years. It's tooled and stamped and I've never had any issues with It. That's stuff is one of my go to products

Very cool. Jerimah Johnson would be proud to carry that!

Wow. Insanely impressive

And so they should ask. It's a great piece of kit

I'm not sure I see where you are going wrong

Clean and simple.! Great job

Certainly better than my first attempt! I find that keeping the same tension when pulling the threads closed can really help the look of things.

Great Father and Son project. Well done!

Very nice

Thanks for the update !. I went ahead and made 2. One for me which is just a plain seat. Dyed. No tooling. I use it everyday and love it. The second one a made for my boy. Bigger seat. Oak legs and a tooled Tongan turtle as a reflection of his heritage....I should have taken pics.... I used the tri bolts from Tandy. About 15.00 bucks a pop up my way. The bolts can handle up to 198 pounds according to Tandy. I went with saddle stitching vs rivets and didn't include the strap as I think I'd use a different leather other than veg for a truly folding stool.

Just to add my 2 cents here. I think it's a mistake to confuse craftsmanship with marketing and spin. Many many fine and skilled people don't do well in any number of fields simply because they are not spin doctors or skilled in marketing. I love to go to fairs and such like. I was at one this winter and a lady was selling her father's hand made belts. Starting at about 120.00 for the plain ones and drifting north of 200.00 for the tooled ones. These belts were shocking. Uneven unfinished rough as guts. I asked how long the maker had been in business and was told he had been doing it for 39 years. I'm not skilled at leather work but the first belt I ever made was considerably better than these. These belts were selling like hot cakes too. Spin matters. Words matter. Seems that skill often takes a back seat

Very impressive