Dan1378

Thank you for your input everyone really appreciate it. Big Sioux Saddlery I agree completely the hand work involved is reliable but very time consuming and not gentle on your hands, also the pinning is degrading my former. The same as you mention, I am hoping to develop a way to reproduce this form more efficiently. Thanks for the tip about the soap. Electrathon. The former i'm using is made out of mdf with vac formed plastic over the top to: One, protect the wood from moisture and swelling, Two, it stops the pattern from transferring to the leather... coincidentally the smooth surface of the plastic leaves the felt side of the leather nicely pressed smooth as well. This gave me the idea of doing future tests to see what sort of patterns I can get to transfer to the leather during the forming process (two birds one stone) but we'll see. TinkerTailer. Vac forming has come up during my research but i've never looked further, I don;t suppose you have any links to a good tutorial or info page do you? because like you say i'm a little concerned about marring the leather with the female mould. I'm goin to have a little play with the moulding process so i'll make sure to take some photos and post what results I get from them. Thanks again every one All the best

Hello every one I'm new to the site and forums in general. Firstly i'd like to say thank you, as I found a lot of useful advice on this site when I was at university, helping me achieve a cracking grade and succeed. Secondly I want to mention that I am from the UK so apologise for using metric, because imperial is just beyond me. I am looking for some advice on how to press a form so that I can reliably reproduce the same shape. I was wondering if it would be possible to use ply with a hole in the same shape as the form + the thickness of the leather and use this to press the leather and former through? previously I have soaked leather in warmish water until the bubbles slow down, then layed the leather over my former and pinned it down into the shape. I hope i've made sense in this if i haven't please ask I've attched some pictures of the product, former and my original method. Thank you Dan