MADMAX22

Welcome to the forum. I also am up here in the great Norwet. Every starts out at some stage of "needing improvement" ecspecially when you start comparing your work to people that have been doing it for 20 or 40 yrs or more. This site if you read alot will help progress your work very quickly though and before you know it you will be turning out very much improved projects in no time. Enjoy.

Its a good dye. The feibings pro oil dye is also very good also and you can get it at Springfeild as well. I would try both of them out and see which you like the best. Also thanks for the compliments guys.

You can do alot of different things. You can make the neck portion of the strap wider then use a 1/8" thickness neoprene on it then cover that with suede (I do this with my rifle slings and it works very well). You can also take some type of chrome tan leather and fold it in to the middle. This makes a flat strap with rounded edges, then sew the the strap on top of this. Makes a nice thick smooth strap that I have scene used on purses and such. You can also make a larger padded area that has slits that the strap rides thru on top of it. the strap rides on top of this padded portion and you can move the padded portion around to get it in the right spot. Have a look around at hand bags, purses, slings, guitar straps ..... any of these things should give ya some ideas to start playing with. Also I would look into getting some nylon straps for the attachment points for the camera as these are usually pretty small little guys. Unless you can get some clips that hook to them with larger attachment points for the leather. Al Stohlmens books on case making have alot of good examples on making variouse straps as well.

Practice and read the forums as much as you can. Martin gave good advice on hole punching. Use a ruler or a wing divider to find the center of your strap and mark off your holes to be punched. Now when you mark them with a little prick of the divider make sure your hole punch lines up just to the edge of the mark. Dont try to cover the mark because you wont be able to always center the hole punch. This will help alot in getting your holes lined up. Get a few done then post up some pics if you can in the critique section and everyone here will be able to point you in the right direction on what needs improvement and what you may be doing right or wrong.

Thanks for the compliments everyone, much appreciated. I have not used the cova dyes yet. I like the pro oil dyes alot and will probably get some more for certain colors. The angelus dyes are pretty darn good though, once they go on you wont get much if any dye coming off when you buff the leather out. The dye seems to soak right in and stay there. Even the black is pretty good at this. They also seem very durable for the most part and I think alot of this is because it penetrates so well. The angelus dyes are definatly worth a try if you have not yet.

Well here is a simple wallet I made. Similer pattern that I used before and changed just a couple of things. No tooling just laced. Back is about 5oz, inside is kip or calf, lined with pigskin. Dyed saddle tan, oiled and sealed. Missed one of my holes somehow in the upper left corner, not sure how I did that lol. This is for a guy at work, just wanted a plain wallet with nothing on it so see if this will work. Oh and wanted to show a pic of my wallet that I made probably about 8 months or a year ago (cant remember) but I dyed it with angelus dye and wanted to show how well it wears. It is still almost the same color as when I made it. Seems to be holding pretty well IMO.

That turned out sweet, great job David.

Russ those are the clips that hook it to the guitar (or instrument). I forgot exactly what they are called but they are suppose to be pretty nice, they clip in I believe and you have to push the little button to release them vice having a hole in the leather that slips over the stud on the guitar.

Excellent work as usual Dave. Those are some good looking setups

That looks killer man. Any larger photos by chance.

Darn it your gonna make me order another set of mauls Ed. Great work on these and I think those new handle styles would work out very well. Oh and I must agree with ya on the white head mauls, they work very well.

Hey David I was wondering do you ever have any issues with the center of the seat rising on your seats that have a definite seat arch in them? I guess it may help to get the right tention on the leather when you put it on the seat. I know the cruiser seats Ive had to glue them down on top but those you gotta wet form to get the shape of the thicker foam padding and odd shape of the seats. With the seat pans for the choppers I could see not having to play with any of that but was wondering how well the leather lays on the seat.

Nicely done. I like that design, Im working on one similer right now but wasnt sure of the best way to have it attach to the belt in the back. Dave had thrown up some ideas and Ive looked at a couple more online but thats pretty cool. If you dont mind how do you attach the back portion to the sheath?

Nice looking belts.

Well since noone else has spoken up yet Ill throw my pennies out there. I glue the top seat portion. Atleast on my big cruiser style seats and Ive scene it done on many chopper style as well. In my experience this will help immensely when you do the wet forming of the seat as you stretch it around the seat pan. Since your not glueing the sides you can still wet them and do your forming as you get the leather wrapped around and staple or rivet it in place or however your doing it. Also it will help hold the leather in place atleast until it gets broken in properly.

That turned excellent. That border you used goes very well with the snake skin.

LOL this is like starting a "whats the best oil" thread on a motorcycle forum. You will hear about every opinion you can think of. Personally I like pc's but then again I assemble my own computers and install windows myself. I dont have any problems with windows. I had XP for a long time, changed over to vista 64bit which dispite the ill informed masses was actually a very good OS. Then I went to windows 7 64bit and like that even better (vista and w7 are basically the same OS, same kernal with minor tweaks and such). Macs are apparently pretty nice if all you do is listen to music, play around online, and do things like school work and such from what I understand. I never got into them because Im not gonna run a OS that I have to run another program to run the original program that I want to run. I would rather just install a OS that runs all my programs and games. I also like being able to not pay really high prices for equipment that only macs can use that is generally slower then regular pc parts that run for far less money. As for your question on can a mac get a virus or hacked or whatever, the answer is yes. Even linux can get virus's and be hacked its just hackers and such dont find a big drive to do so since most of the world is on windows type operating systems. Ive played with linux and its fun but I didnt grow up with it and find it hard to do things that I want to do easily. Its free though and can be ran on most pc's once you get the conflicts squared away. It has a long learning curve for most people though. I think it would be better to say what you want to do with the computer then more knowledgable people can help you find the right path to play with.

Thats a good start. I like that flame effect you did on the inside.

Thank you very much Terry. That is gonna come in very useful.

Excellent work, thats a cool helmet.

Really nice looking bags Josh. Definitely nice looking colors. The only thing I would be worried about is the gussets wearing out pretty quickly compared to the rest of the bags which should last a couple lifetimes.

Hey guys figured this was as good as any for these questions. Looking at different styles of belt loops for sheaths and such Ive started trying to change some things up with my work to have more options when I build stuff. So far Ive always used a strip of leather folded over and stitched at both ends like in the A.S. books. It works very well and seems to hold up to heavy use so far. I have also scene where the leather has to slits cut in it and then is lined or not, the belt slids thru these slits so its essentially the same piece of leather as the sheath. I recently started playing with this type as it seems to speed up the process a little bit even if I do end up lining the back part of the sheath. Now two things, which do you guys prefer for durability and strength? Also on the slit cut style I usually see one end cut shorter then the other, is this to facilitate putting the belt thru or is this so the sheath can be adjusted on the belt to slightly different angles? Thanks for your opinions and experience.

Thanks a bunch, that is exactly what this leather seems to have happened to it. Matches that description to the tee. Whinewine thanks also, Ill look into some of that stuff. Its primarily a sentimental value since it belonged to this guys grandfather and father and it will probably be somewhat of an ornament once it is restored, however that being said if we are gonna go thru all the work to get back to a good order I want it to be as functional or close to it as it was when the thing was inservice. Once again really appreciate the help this should get us well on our way.

I have another question. Does that reddish brown color come from the leather rotting or was it probably originally a dyed leather? Some of the old pictures I have scene almost seem to suggest a nice oiled natural vegtan without dye or a really light coloring. Seems maybe the leather darkens alot as it drys up and rotts but I dont have much experience in helping out with restoration work.

Have you tried the feibings pro oil dyes? In my experience they are far nicer then the feibings regular dyes.