Thor

Are you talking about the Fir plywood you get at Home Depot? That wouldn't work. None of the needle trees, except for larch and northern Fir would work. With Douglas Fir I'm not sure. It has to do with the length of the fibers. Any hardwood will work. In your area it would even be possible to use well aged Aspen. Comes cheap and once dried it has excellent features. Beech or Horn beam is only used here as it comes cheap and has excellent features for tools. The better tools have Ash handles. It's also a lot more expensive. I'd be very interested in the patterns as well as this is what I want to make next just along with a draw-down stand. I agree the hardware isn't too hard to make. Stainless steel will do the job and is easily available. Nothing to thank me for Tor. I've lived long enough in Canada to know what it's like if some information is missing. All the great work has been done by Simon anyways. I find it just amazing how helpful Walter is and the generous offer to share his templates etc. @Walter Walter hast du die Schablonen auf Papier, oder sind das Holzschablonen? Ich könnte die evtl. einscannen und weiterleiten. Die Hardware müsste man halt ausmessen. Sieht nach einem 10mm Vierkannt aus. Feder, Klemmbügel usw. Zur Not finden die aber auch sicher etwas bei LeeValley, das genauso gut als Klemmbügel funktioniert.

Wow!!!! That's calling for a tutorial. What an amazing job and definitely some of the best tooling I've seen thus far. Hats off!

Sorry but that's not right. It does apply to this particular page somehow but for different reasons than what you stated. If you only had 33500 visitors in the past nine years and you're barely having any visitors according to Alexa a day it means it's unimportant and has no value. The name really doesn't matter. One could name a website shittyleatherworks.com, but if you would have 10,000 visitors a day at 1% conversion rate it would be important. All the rest is SEO stuff most people don't even understand and this is what makes a website important and valuable. Further if someone wants to takeover the business and wants to have past customers still find him, he would want to have the domain just additionally to his new one and reroute the visitors to the new domain. Therefore there is a small marketing value, but that may not be of any interest to a prospective buyer. Something far more important is your customer list, if you have one. This is worth a lot. Don't know for the USA but it may be illegal to sell it to leads companies but the new owner is allowed to buy it. Therefore I'd make that a sales item.

Okay that translation lost a bit of the actual meaning, therefore I'd like to fix it, but be brief with it. Walter offers to provide the templates or give them to someone in the states so they can be passed on from one person to the next. My two cents... Forward them to tboyce or ask him if he'd be willing to make a digital pattern for everyone to download. One thing that should be mentioned is either where to get the hardware or how to make it. Besides Walter, your English is much better than most of these guys' German. @Walter Ich glaube es sollte noch erwähnt werden wo die Beschläge zu erhalten sind, oder wie man sie selbst macht. Solltest du Hilfe benötigen, um tboyce zu erklären was du möchtest, kannst gern schreiben.

No need trying to improve this translation Simon. This is pretty accurate. I guess everyone gets it. Centimeter converts to inch as follows 1" = 2.54 cm. Therefore 80 cm ~ 31.5", 85 cm ~ 33.5" and 5 cm ~ 2". With big ones, he refers to the actual stitching horse, not the pony. The chair kind. With plywood he refers not to just any kind of plywood. The appropriate German term is Multiplex, usually made from birch. This would be so called Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminated_veneer_lumber. Very durable material.

I would say it depends. Longer torso, steeper angle. Shorter torso, lower angle. Does that make sense? You could have him hold his current knife in convenient position and go from there. Won't get any more customized than that.

You're not supposed to have your fingers above the stitching hole... If it's tough leather you have to sew, you could get a sewing palm. Looks like this: All the rest is just practice. You might want to get a stitching pony in which you clamp your material.

How about just posting the link to it in the text? If someone wants to view it, he/she will just visit that link. Seems to be kinda odd. Or you'll grant someone remote access to your computer and let him fix it for you.

Saddle bags I can help with. I'm using 8/9 oz. of good quality leather. Now, I don't want to limit this to any kind of leather since I've seen them made from various types. I like the buffalo ones just as much as the cow hide ones...

Now they're the right direction. I'd say it's a roller. Too much in there speaking against hand tooling. There's no area which is uneven - meaning that it's all the same depth for the same object. If there is a guy around being able to do such a uniform background by hand, I'd like to go and learn of him. Looks a lot like this here. Or you just follow this link: https://www.etsy.com/listing/119178630/handcrafted-embossed-leather-eagles-belt where it says embossed.

OS = operating system. In your case windows 7. So just the same as Terry uses. In order to help you, you could post screenshots of what you see. Just attach them to the post.

Dummy proof. Well done Terry!

Welcome! If you browse the board you'll find lots of advice on tools. It just isn't all in one spot. So you'll have to search a bit.

Too bad the pictures aren't better.

I'm truly impressed.

You are probably using the wrong link. Photobucket gives you four options. Use the "Direct" one.

There should be a voting feature here. I'm with Andrew.

Sharing that info would be nice

Click the image icon and paste the URL for that picture. Only available if you click the "more reply options" and may not be available on a tablet or smartphone.

Sorry for being imprecise. I was talking about your blanket and cutting mat. The stone looks much better.

Using someone's logo in general is considered copyright infringement if a written permission isn't existing. Verbal agreements are hard to prove. A school's logo merely is the intellectual copyright of the school district. The school usually owns the copyright and asks the district for approval if it's being changed. Asking for written permission with the principal should be sufficient. However, there's a mistake in the process as you would need a copyright release for use (printing it on the product) and selling. Those are two different things. The easiest would be to make the products and sell them to the school as a retailer. This way a copyright release wouldn't needed as it would be made upon request of the school.

Amazing work.

I think it would look a lot nicer if you would dye the edges with that kind/color of leather. Also a different background would compliment your product. Other than that, good job!

Reading Stohlman's encyclopedia of saddle making would help

Thanks for the feedback Denise and Tosch. The Smithonian book is really worth reading and a great source of information.