HeatherAthebyne

I made a precise cutout all the way through the leather, glued a piece of 1oz blue leather to the back of the piece over the hole I cut, and glued the stone to the backing leather. The hole keeps it pretty snug in the thicker leather.

Yep -- hard to see in the pics, but it's there.

Here's a little something for my little sister for Christmas. She picked out a cute little knife (Toferner brand), about three inches long, which came with a leather sheath and cord so one can wear it like a necklace. I couldn't let the opportunity to upgrade the sheath pass, however... I've never made a sheath before, so I traced the existing one and replicated it in shape. The original was a little crooked, so mine is too (ignore the stitch counts ), but oh well. To set the labradorite I cut a hole completely through the leather, glued a ~1oz blue liner to the inside, and glued the stone in. The blue liner boosts the color of the translucent labradorite. I'm pretty proud of this one!

I've got some dark brown Badalassi Carlo Minerva for the exterior and lightweight caramel-colored calf for the interior. It'll be an everyday purse for me (in the smaller size). I haven't got so far as to start to think about straps, but I agree that it may be good to consider an alteration there. I'll see how I feel about it closer to that point in the process. I might not make any significant progress on it until after Christmas, depending on how a separate non-trivial gift project goes.

Good luck! I'm about to embark on a build of that one myself.

I like the weight of your thinner leather for assembling wallet interiors.

Re: cement fumes, pick out something in the Renia Aquilim line. Good stuff, no fumes. I wear a mask when I am actually taking sandpaper to leather, but nothing else is making enough dust for me to be concerned about.

Rocky Mountain Leather has a listing for it, but it's currently sold out; you might get in touch and see when they anticipate new stock. https://www.rmleathersupply.com/collections/horween-usa/products/horween-nfl-football-veg-tanned-leather

Sheesh, and here I was getting out the tiny brushes. I like your way much more.

I recently used a Fantastix pen (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013JN8DI/) to good effect for detailed dye work.

I've used denatured alcohol to dilute Angelus dyes before. Does anyone know whether that's a viable option for Fiebing's as well?

Fiebing's has a method which uses NFO and their standard dyes at https://www.fiebing.com/tips/mixing-fiebings-leather-dye-and-prime-neatsfoot-oil-compound/ I'd swap the compound for straight NFO, of course, but I'd imagine it would have a penetrating effect.

Great idea! I've wanted to design one of those for a while now. My Kyoshin-Elle chisels have round handles, so that complicates things a bit I love how the poly board presses down on the work. It sounds like that helps a lot to counteract the chisel sticking in the work.

Just reproduced in FF 67.0.4 and Chromium 75.0.3770.100 on openSUSE Tumbleweed. Steps to reproduce: Clear cookies for a nice clean slate. Visit https://www.springfieldleather.com and observe that you are not logged in. Log in. Open up a product page. I think sitting at the homepage would have the same effect. Wait >30 minutes. I don't think it matters whether I leave the tab open or closed; I left mine open. Close the tab, and open a new tab going to https://www.springfieldleather.com . Observe that you are redirected to the login page under https://checkout.springfieldleather.com . Observe that the top right still displays your name ("Welcome Heather") and the number of items in your cart. I have also seen this happen if I have been idle for a while, and try to open a new product page. I can usually open a category and see the product listing, but when I try to visit the page itself it redirects me to the login page. Curiously, after a redirect event I pick up a full set of cookies for both checkout.springfieldleather.com and www.springfieldleather.com , including a duplicate JSESSIONID. I seem to remember noting that JSESSIONID for www.springfieldleather.com changed right before the redirect, but I was not looking for that specifically at the time. JSESSIONID is different between checkout and www.

Me too. If I clear my cookies and don't log in, I don't have any issues, suggesting that this isn't visible to Pat D. User who doesn't have an account. I've noted that session expiration when I do log in is ridiculously short, so if I'm idle for ~30 minutes it'll log me right back out again. Tagging @TonySFLDLTHR in case he isn't watching this thread.

I'm not the only one who constructs bags that way! I was beginning to think I was all alone Anything fancy going on in the interior?

Likely relevant: @Gullex's https://medium.com/@jasontimmermans/a-comparative-study-of-leather-hardening-techniques-16-methods-tested-and-novel-approaches-8574e571f619

I'm not sure whether this is more or less confusing, but Horween has a nice chart of their tannages and properties at https://www.horween.com/tannages/ . None of which helps with SLC's offerings, but I've found it useful, particularly when browsing Maverick's Horween selection.

Beeswax is also helpful with getting the chisels out.

Most of the tooling leather you see around for sale is undyed and unfinished, but there is certainly pre-dyed tooling leather out there. Springfield Leather has brown and black Hermann Oak, and there are other sources for other colors which escape me at the moment. That said, the piece you posted is probably tooled and hand dyed, then painted with acrylics, then given another coat of an antiquing stain. Learning to dye by hand is fun as long as you're open to getting a nice and completely unexpected result for your first attempts. For LARP armor, I'd definitely try it! When you try to dye a piece, then add a couple more coats to try to even it out, then add a darker layer because you're so frustrated by the unevenness, then finally embrace the variation and sponge on a few more blobs just to pretend you meant to do that, you will get a lovely texture and depth of shade which will kick your outfit up several notches. Not that, ah, I know anything about failing to apply an even dye job.

That sounds like custom fabrication/casting territory. Depending on your resources in that area, you might want to consider repurposing a commercial finding and getting creative with your method of attachment. Do you have a project in mind for the rivets? Also, please share pictures of your stones! I'm an aspiring (but time-poor) lapidary and love seeing what others are up to.

Anything is a leatherworking tool given enough creativity... It doesn't look like any kind of fiber arts tool I've seen, having done just about everything but felting. It first struck me as something for culinary use. Huh, the number of teeth alternate (4-2-4-2-4).

What results do you get from an awl that you don't get from the chisels?

I'd never heard of needing to leave a mounting open in the back for "breathing". A quick search suggests it's just a term for using an open-back mounting to 1. protect the culet (pointy end) of a faceted stone from being knocked against the back of the mounting and 2. allowing the gem to sparkle on its own instead of having stray yellowish gold reflections coming back out of a white diamond. (Third reason: uses less gold.) As far as specific stones' atmospheric preferences, opals and pearls like humidity, but that's about it. I don't know of any particular concerns with adhesive on the back of untreated turquoise, though you might have trouble if you ever wanted to remove it. The GIA suggests that it's susceptible to discoloration from chemicals and skin oils, which may also include whatever's used to tan the leather. The absolute safest bet would be a tall metal bezel to protect the stone from scratches and eliminate the need to use any adhesive against the stone. The metal bezel approach would also be safe for any dye or stabilization treatments the turquoise might have received. If it were me I'd either do a metal bezel of some sort (perhaps wire wrapped with copper) or a veg-tan bezel for minimum reactivity.

I use office supply store rubber fingertip protectors. They get sweaty after a while but the improved grip is worth it. I have a pair of silicone index finger/thumb tips, too, but haven't had a chance to try them out much yet.