MADMAX22

My only advice as I am still pretty much a beginner is read thru the forum adn related links alot. Get a couple of books if you can. I started out wanting to recover my motorcycle seat, well that was about a year ago and I still havent covered it. Made some pretty cool stuff and gotten alot of tools and such. It takes a little while to really get some of the stuff down but once you do youll start getting some good projects going. G/L

Yeah my girlfriend would be also more at the upper body portion. there just wanst alot there atleast while we were walking around.

Cool glad you made it and in and out without incident. We left at about 100pm and on the way out there was a accident on inbound side. Guess some crotchrocket was stuntin around and took out a goldwing. I think the wing rider didnt make it. Such a shame. That was the only inncident that I heard of so hopefully there werent any more bad stuff. Alot of bikes though lol.

Honestly there werent too many scantly clad females early in the morning. Oh and the girlfreind took 99% of the photos. I just kind of walked around with her and pointed while saying thats cool, or thats disgusting, or wow, and she took pictures. We left pretty early as we still had about 100miles to get home and a ferry ride, Im sure it got pretty wild once the sun went down.

Well went on a bike run and man there was a good turn out. Got pretty distracted so didnt get any real good leather shots. All in all there were a few good seats but really only saw a handful of nicely tooled or inlaid leather seats. Anyways heres about 75% of the photos from the run that I managed to get loaded up to photobucket. Real pain in the butt that was let me tell ya. Mostly just bike pron but hey everyone likes bikes right lol. Anyways enjoy. http://photobucket.com/anacortes1 http://photobucket.com/anacortes2 http://photobucket.com/anacortes3 http://photobucket.com/anacortes4

OOOOOH that is a nice ride ya got there. I love the flat black (forgot what harley calls it) with all the chrome. Really accents the chrome I think.

Thats really cool, great idea.

I can only add on a couple of things, contact cement wont hold like leather weld does. The contact cement is good for holding things while you sew them together. If you use leather weld properly it will hold leather like no tomorrow. On the lace I use what I can handle. Smaller projects I try to make it one piece but larger ones its not worth it trying to fight with that much lace. Another thing wax the lace, itll make it easier to lace up and also help keep it from fraying and looking bad on ya.

That is a good looking sheath. By chance do you have a pic of the knife outside of the case. That handle looks great also.

Thanks a bunch to everyone here including the TEAM and also the other members. When I first started I had the impression I was gonna redo my seat on my motorcycle I had just gotten. Well one thing led to another and the next thing you know I had found tandy and bought a whole bunch of stuff. Then I realized it was harder then I thought it was gonna be and found this place of knowledge. Well needless to say allmost a year later (maybe 9 months whatever) I still havnt made my seat but have learned tons about leather craft. Funny part is I still feel like a beginner and think I am just scratching the surface. Have so much more to learn and practice. Thanks, Corey

That looks great man, I love those red lettering with the designs in them, looks great.

Would you happen to know of a decent place to order shark online at. So far the only thing Ive gotten is stingray and that was on ebay. Was actually pretty good from what I can tell but never see any shark on there and would be kind of leary to tell the truth.

That is really nice work. Love the black one. Is that shark hard to sew or is it similer to cowhide. Ive heard that stuff will last just about forever.

Thanks Srigs, thats the girls gun actually, I have the standard MP40, love it. I want the MP45C just dont have the cash for it yet. May have to get a 40C for carry, the standard is just a little too big. Great guns though.

Nice looking bag and that does look really cool with the bat on there. Quick question, what kind of leather did you use? Predied or did you dye it yourself. Thanks

Ug I hate what the internet allows some of these Aholes to do sometimes. I ran into a problem similer but not totally while ordering a new camera. Ordered one from someplace that was somewhat of a good deal. Got it and it was the japanese version of the camera which wasnt suppose to be for sale here in the US. Ended up having to argue with them and was about to make a claim with my credit card company. Anyways finally got it settled (still had to pay the 15% restocking fee). Anyways when I looked into the person/persons they had about 10 websites, all electronics with good looking webpages and all that. All of them with extremely bad reviews on review.com I think it is. All having been reported to the BBB. Basically just scam artist that use the internet now. Makes me wish I was rich that way I could fly out to these peoples place of business and take care of business. Thanks for posting, maybe we could look up any affiliated websites and make a list of places to watch out for.

I jsut got done hand sewing my stingray inlay. It was a pain in spots and not bad in others. The strip or dot in the center that is white is composed of larger calcium deposits which are hard as bone or anything else that is pure calcium. The rest of it that is composed of smaller little dots are easier to work around. I used a awl and at times a scratch awl to push holes thru for hand sewing. The big deposits of calcium I had to work around. As for machine sewing I have heard of sewing from the back side. I have also heard of using a dremel to smooth out a stitch line.

Thats cool, should be interesting, Hey the weirder the better because it leads to other ideas we may not have thought of yet. On mine I first attempted to run the stingray strip all the way up to where it snaps. Thought that would be cool until I tried doing it. That first attempt was killed very quicky. This was the second inlay attempt and worked out much better for me. Would like to see some pics when you get it all done. Good luck

How is this stuff compared to the tandy selections. I noticed the pricing on average was onpar with the live oak selection from tandy. Is it about similer quality or better. Not bashing tandy in anyway here just trying to get a reference.

Thanks for the advice Dave. Worked out great (IMHO) for my first try. I actually did use the portion of 4oz leather for the backing of the stingray that I cut from the outside layer. Dont know if it really helped or not but it brings it out a little bit. No way to get a nice rounded effect at the edges like some of the other inlays look, the stingray is just too hard. Anyways great advice, helped immensly.

Thanks, actually I think it was Dave that helped many of us out on a thread I posted in the how too on doing inlays. His advice was the only reason it turned out the way it did, could have been far worse lol.

Great looking work. Did you make the pattern for the tooling work or did you get a pattern from somewhere. THat looks really good.

Well I posted it in critique my work but figured I would toss it down here also. My first holster and first inlay attempt and man didnt realize how hard a holster could be. The inlay was relatively easy once I got it going but the holster itself seemed to fight me till the end lol. Learned alot on this one. Got a long ways to go. It looks good from the front though, the back is pretty rough as I had a heck of a time lining up the stitching and such. Broke a few needles, cut the thread a couple of times. The gun fits very snug though and isnt going anywhere so thats a plus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_metal

Ill add that some needles seem to be more brittle then others. I still havent found all the best ones yet as it seems that hand sewing hard stuff no longer requires a good quality needle. If you need extra strength to pull thru the leather make darn sure you pull straight. Once you deflect in any direction you are gonna break your needles. If you use plyers make sure you arent bending or applying pressure at a bad angle on the needle which is the same effect as bending it when you pull it thru the leather. Just my experiences so far but Im still a amatuer.