Thor

Currently working on this scabbard

Besides all the nice stuff, here is some critique you might want to look into. Please don't take it personal. It looks like a weebly site... I don't care too much for what you see in the front. I'm looking at your source code ... the ugly stuff. Put all your CSS in an extra file and have this linked. It can be on the page, but shouldn't. You've done that partially already. Same goes for the main scripting portion. In other words, there's a lot of stuff you don't want a search engine having to go through before it finds the important stuff. Your top banner starts a little slow which is caused by the not optimized graphical elements (pictures). Sizing the pictures to the banner will speed up this process as the script doesn't have to fit them in. For example: your using this picture http://www.phaselinedefense.com/uploads/3/2/2/2/32225077/5438774_orig.jpg which is 1085 * 534px. This picture is placed in here: <div id="bannerright" class="landing-banner-outer"> <div class="landing-banner-mid"> <div class="landing-banner-inner"> Looking at the specific portion of your CSS file #bannerright { width: 390px; height:240px; text-align:left; float:left; padding: 30px 40px 30px 30px; background:#333333; } #bannerright h2 { color: black; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 300; color:#bbb; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; } #bannerright div.paragraph { padding: 20px 0px; line-height: 140%; } #bannerright p { padding: 20px 0px; line-height: 140%; } you can see that this huge picture has to be placed in a small box, which doesn't change the actual size just the display. Therefore make the pictures you want to be displayed in your banner that individual size and your page will load a bit faster. Further, if you want to be found on Google (not on page 108 or further back) you should ad some text. Not only to your body, but also to the pictures. Search engines cannot see. All they do is read. However, it's a functional site. One of about 8 billions at this time. Therefore you want to stand out and use whatever you can and is allowed to stand out. Try to compare your source code to the one of leatherworker.net (the home page not the forum) and see what a difference a clean page makes. It may seem to be antiquated but keywords are still important and so is the "Alt Text" feature to pictures and so on. One more thing you might want to include is the Google webmaster stuff. Read up on it and you can optimize your site to your needs as you can see who's viewing your website for what reason and from which area and so on. Your site is a good start, just needs some improving. I hope my comments help.

Hello, after reading here for months and signing up for an account lately, I thought I should introduce myself a bit. My name is Thorsten and I'm currently living in Germany. Meaning I used to live in BC and still have a place out west and in Ontario between London and Windsor. That's why I'm moving around a lot. Keeps life interesting. The later one is where I got into leather crafts. Todd Bailey moved to the town and set up his saddlery. He's a second generation saddle maker master. Knowing him already from major horse events, I walked in the store, asked if I could look over his shoulder for a while and ended up helping out for about 2 weeks. I learned a lot about saddles I didn't know before and how they are made. I have to add that I'm a professional rider and thought I knew a lot about saddles and tack already - BS... Eager to learn something he offered to use his tools and showed me a few things. So this was the first lesson of using the swivel knife and the beveler. After that I wanted to bring something home and made this key fob. My head was still spinning while at home and I came up with my own design which I started on the next day in between tack repairs. The outcome was this: Of course I needed to have something for my wife as well and found a "Ladies Belt" in one of the old Stohlman books, Todd had in one of his many drawers... That kept me busy for a couple of days, as I only worked on it in between repairs and helping with making two show saddles he was working on. I liked it so much and the learning curve I had, that I decided to get the basic tools and more practice. A few month later I finished my first saddlebags. They were the best practice piece yet. Currently I'm working on a messenger bag and a scabbard. So I'm slowly working my way up to a saddle, which I'm planning to start some time this summer. I'm not so certain on what it should look like yet. Some kind of wade saddle with a bunch of tooling, bi-color, round skirt, equitation seat ... heated seat and a coffee maker as extras :-) Thus far I'm trying to learn as much as I can about leather, the tools, when, where and what to use and what to avoid. I'm always open for suggestions as I'm always eager to learn something new.

Excellent job! There isn't a lot I could say from a saddle maker's point of view, but let me make a suggestion from a professional rider's point. It is regarding the breast collar. I appreciate at least one keeper to avoid loose billet ends in my tack. These ones could even be shortened. Also maybe people would be interested to know where you got the parts from. The metal parts really look classy.

This Australien duster coat seems to be just right and isn't very expensive. Can be found herehttp://www.agelesspatterns.com/folkwear__4.htm. Hope it helps even though this post is pretty old.