UKRay

Hi Loquai, you could do a lot worse than contacting one of the US’s most accommodating sewing machine guys. Steve at Cobra is both helpful and a genuinely nice guy. I’m based in the UK but he was even prepared to advise me on needles and sent exactly what I needed. I wish I was US based so I could take full advantage of Steve’s knowledge. Give him a call to discuss what kind of machine you need. He is always happy to chat and may have exactly what you want. Good luck fella! UK Ray

Thank you folks!

Ain't that the truth!

I'm told that Tandy supply metal hooks suitable for suspenders (braces) but can't find a reference number anywhere. (I've seen pictures!). Can anyone help please? It maybe because certain lines aren't available this side of the pond... in which case the reference number is essential in order to order them direct from Tandy US. Thanks for taking the time to red this - any maybe for some help! Ray

You make very nice stuff, Bob. I'm sure you are successful. I wish I had the 'brainspace' to explore Etsy more fully as it seems to have a lot on offer. However, it would be yet another thing thing to check on every day - which is why I stopped selling on Ebay. I've had luck with my website and it now provides me with enough work. At the outset I was concerned that it wouldn't justify the money I had spent or even pay for its existence (hosting fees, updates etc) - but I was soooo wrong! Accepted, I do have to work on it regularly - change stuff around and freshen up the front page occasionally; but it earns its keep. I'd recommend any leatherworker to have their own dedicated online shopfront. It won't be cheap if you do the job properly, but my experience is that it will pay for itself time and time again with regular business. To be honest, I'm glad I made the decision to sell online as this may well be the last season of shows for me, it is getting harder to shift all the stuff, put up marquees and generally deal with the public. My re-enactment customers are charming, polite and appreciative of the work we traders put into attending events - but there are always a few members of the public that cause grief! Frankly I'm wondering if I can be bothered with it. Time will tell...

This is a very early piece of work (from the early 1980s) that I was so pleased with I hung it on the wall in the shop rather than finish the pouch. I found it in a box when I moved house and hung it up again to remind me there is always room for improvement!

A retail storefront sounds like a great idea but it ties you down. With a mail order business like mine I can take a day off when things are quiet and nobody is upset that I'm not there to serve them. I had a few shops over the years and eventually drifted into the world of medieval re-enactment markets - Renaissance Fairs in the US I believe... With a dozen or more shows a year I find I can still get 'face to face' contact with my customers and still retain my independence (and hopefully still have time to go fishing!). Ive attached a picture of my booth at a few recent shows.

We are all creatures of habit... we like the familiar and mistrust the new. At least, most of us are! This weekend, I've been going down memory lane... sorting through 40 plus years worth of patterns, leatherworking books, CraftAids, tool catalogs and paperwork. I have a mountain of stuff still to go through but I was quite pleased to discover that the way I do leatherwork now is not so different from the way I worked back in the 60s and 70s. However, it got significantly easier as I invested in machinery to speed up the time consuming jobs. Nowadays I still make at least six patterns before making a new product (I've still got patterns dating back to the 60s when I was fifteen years old). I still hand-cut intricate designs and still hand tool much of my work. A 22 ton hydraulic clicking press has definitely helped speed up some of the processes and laser cut stamps have made a huge difference to the range of designs I can offer. I still do most of my best work on a big granite slab though! The big difference is sewing. My hands aren't what they were. Arthritis and the 'sands of time have taken their toll. Hand stitching is almost a thing of the past for me. I was quite worried when my hands started to go, I reckoned I would have to take up gardening or worse... Fortunately, a few years back I purchased a big harness stitcher and haven't looked back since. That machine has earned every penny I spent on it many hundreds of times over. Possibly the best investment I ever made. I used to hand write all my notes. Nowadays the computer takes the strain - in fact, I'm not sure I remember how to write with a pen! Sorry to ramble on folks, but this has been a weekend of memories and I wanted to share them. Ray

Truth be told, I'm having an 'interesting time' at present as I try to change the way I look at life and work. Putting aside the 'familiar' is hard. Coming 'home' early is actually a problem as I feel I ought to be in the shop pounding leather. I find any excuse to keep on pounding. This either means I'm a workaholic or I've got an overdeveloped work ethic - I'm not too sure which it is. Hey, I could just be stupid! Seriously, does anyone else work harder than they have to? I suspect most self-employed people have this problem. We try to do the best job we can for people and this means we work a lot harder and more hours than if we were employed. I calculated my hourly rate recently and was actually shocked at how low it is. Sometimes I wish I'd done an apprenticeship as a plumber and not as a harness maker! lol

The main issue is that carriers won't have the same respect for your work that you do. I use acid free tissue paper to protect the surface, bubble wrap to protect the item, put the whole lot in a black garbage bag to make sure it can't get wet and newspaper/styrene beads/whatever I've got to fill any gaps in the box. Obviously I'm shipping in the UK, but the packaging is about the same! Ray

A few years back I spent a lot of time answering questions and hoping to help folk on this amazing forum. As my leatherworking business took off I was unable to spend as much time as I would have liked on here (I got busy) but still looked in whenever I could. Then I got VERY busy and my visits dwindled to almost nothing. I was spending every waking hour making leather stuff and had no time for enjoying life (and enjoying the company of like minded folk). What I'm trying to say is that the more you work, the less you are inclined to remember why you were working in the first place. In my case, I started leatherworking for pleasure at home. I had a good sized house and the space to set up a small workshop. It all looked perfect. In time, the business started to grow and I quickly found myself working far too hard just to make a sensible living. Space in which to work was a real issue. Noise (lets face it guys, we do make a noise) was a problem. Deliveries were a hassle and storage was a total pain in the posterior! My partner objected to living in a storeroom (I can't really blame her) In short, it wasn't much fun! I forgot about enjoying my leatherworking as it quickly became my ambition to move my business out of my home into a 1500 sq ft commercial unit to make things easier - which I did. The unit was very secure and didn't have windows. I got to work in the dark and left in the dark. I didn't see daylight from one week to the next. I was making a whole lot of product and had a superb work space but it wasn't making me happy. Especially when I realised I needed to work even harder to pay the rent on the unit. After two years of this, the penny dropped. My solution was to move to a much smaller house on a bigger plot of land and use the available cash to build my own fully insulated workshop and storage cabins in the yard. Which, after a lot of shenanigans I finally did. But I had to shift a lot of soil and build a road first... Net result: my outgoings (rent, heating, lighting, insurances, gasoline bill) dropped like a stone. I walk to work in the mornings (all 25 yards). I have an amazing view from the workshop windows and life is a lot more relaxed because I'm not constantly chasing the last dollar in every deal. My new workspace has everything I need - see pictures - and I'm a much happier man. My conclusion: Leatherworking is a great hobby, but those who go down the 'full time' route will doubtless agree that it is a tough way to make a living. Your workload is necessarily large because profits are relatively low; so you always seem to be firefighting with no time to cut any fire breaks. Make time by reducing your overheads guys - it worked for me. Right now, I've found time to redesign bits of my website, updating the SEO side of things and generally sorting out images and text. I haven't had time to do this in years. Each change and improvement is bringing in slightly more business which I'm regulating with my pricing. In short, I'm a happy man. I don't make a fortune but I have enough to live. If you are renting work premises then you may want to think hard about building your own work space on your own property. I can't say it was easy, but with the move completed I'm a changed man. For the first time in years, I am free of the need to work all the time. Hey, I've even dug out my fishing gear!

An interesting question... I have changed the way I make patterns. No more paper, I make the pattern directly onto flooring vinyl and cut it out. Vinyl behaves in a very similar way to leather; it folds, rivets and even stitches in the same way. Using vinyl means it is very easy to spot and correct design flaws before you even make a prototype. Hint: most flooring or DIY stores have sample books (vinyl pieces about 18" square). They throw these away when they go out of date. I blag one every time I go past the local flooring store!

Pick a range of stuff you like to make. Making things when you don't enjoy your work is misery! I won't do any more horse leather. Ever! Ray

7 months ago I made the big decision to move my leather workshop out of my home and into an industrial unit. My business was growing faster than I could handle and lack of space made working fast difficult. I found a small industrial space on an estate nearby and thought all my problems were over... Wrong! I arrived with a loaded van to find the unit I'd rented was full of someone else's junk. The managing agent was great and showed me another unit - 4 times the size and said "have this for the same price for a year'. I wasn't about to argue. But I hadn't realised what I was taking on. Not even slightly... lol! Too much space is almost (note: I said almost!) worse than not enough. I went home full of the joys of spring but suddenly realised just how much stuff I'd squirrelled away under benches, on shelves, behind cupboards and anywhere it would fit. It took me almost two weeks, working flat out, to build new benches and shelving units, shift the workshop and set up anew. Okay, everything was in the new place but I couldn't find a thing... All the while I was working at home I knew where everything was (okay that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I could find most stuff). Suddenly, I had no idea where to look. There was stuff everywhere. The problem is simple, I'm a hoarder of leather related stuff and collector of old leather working machinery. I have boxes that were packed almost twenty years ago and have never been opened since. My stock of leather has been growing since the early 1970s. Mostly, I'm too busy to sort it all out. I wished I'd had a plan. Oh boy, did I ever wish I had a plan! Now, 7 months on, I'm almost sure where most stuff is, but earlier this week I decided to tear everything apart again, restructure the work areas and rebuild it all again. It was a monumental task but today I'm finally reasonably happy with the result. Some lessons I learned: Label boxes as you pack them - trust me, it is essential! Know how you are going to heat (or cool) your new workspace before you move. Don't rely on anyone to help you move. Make sure you have three times as much money in your pocket than you think you might need to make the move. Get insurance before moving machinery (my machine movers dropped my clicking press from a Hi-Ab). Measure the space before you start and make a detailed plan of where everything is going to go. It speeds things up a lot. Get rid of junk you don't need rather than move it! There is more - much more - but it was worth all the hassle. I have attached some pictures so you can see what I'm talking about. Would I do it again? Definitely! Now, does anyone know where I put my sandwiches? Ray

I use pallet racking. Relatively cheap and you can get a heap of leather on the 8ft x 4ft shelves. Ray

This is a topic dear to my heart. I get far too many small bits of leather left over after projects. I use them in a number of ways but I'm always looking for more. Here are a few ideas: Key fobs (several patterns) Scout woggles (scarf rings) Archery tabs (finger guards) Longbow string keepers Price tickets for shows Belt loops Loops for the back of belt pouches Elbow patches for jackets Applique shapes for bracelets Reinforcement for the corners of bags Ray

I love the way you guys think I might have a process. lol!!! - I wish! What I want to do is to paint the tooled sections of my bags to add some colour. I'm currently hand dying the whole bag but I reckon a bit of 'bling' might sell well. I have heard that using a base coat of white helps to get a better colour. Anyone had any experience of this? Thanks for the help so far... Ray

Okay folks, I need to paint a few projects (mostly purses and bags) with acrylics but I'm not getting much success so far. The paint rapidly loses its 'brightness' and goes dull looking. I'm also concerned that it will flake off. Should I use a base coat? Do I need to apply a special 'finish' to seal the work? Can anyone give me advice on the best way to make a really good job? Any help gratefully received! Ray

This problem affects almost every leather worker I know. We are, generally, one person operations and barely have enough time to get the orders finished without adding data input to our workload. I run a busy 'one man and dog' workshop here in the UK. To give you an idea, I'm currently buying in around 12-1500 square foot of leather every month but have no way of keeping track of the amount I'm using other than by looking at the stock shelves and estimating the inventory. To be honest, I'm not sure a spreadsheet would actually help me as I don't have time to keep noting down what leather I'm using on individual jobs. The same goes for buckles and hardware. I buy the stuff in boxes and once a month (or thereabouts) I count what is left and order more accordingly. It would be incredibly useful to know what should be there, but where do I get the time from to write it all down in a spreadsheet or database? I tried developing a data sheet for each project with all the inventory information listed. That was an interesting exercise and after about three days of misery I went back to making stuff and enjoying life again... I have never found the time or enthusiasm to pick it up again. Short of employing someone (and that isn't going to happen!) to keep track of stuff, I'm going to continue to rely on Mk1 Eyball and a fading memory... Unless you have a better idea! Ray

I suspect the reason you have never heard anything on the forum about using chainmaile gloves is because they don't work. I read this post about a dozen times trying to work out if someone was having a joke, but it seems legit... I am still not sure! In order to cut leather precisely and accurately you need to take time and care with a very sharp knife. At the same time you need to keep your fingers away from the cutting edge. Most folk can manage this perfectly well. I have never heard of a single instance (in forty years of leatherworking) of someone losing a finger to a roundknife. I've seen and experienced a few nasty gashes, but if you work around exceedingly sharp tools then a slice or two is almost expected. Just be careful and remember that cutting with a very sharp knife doesn't need the sort of pressure that would cut off a finger. If you are stupid enough to work with a blunt knife then I guess chopping your fingers off is just a bolt-on talent. Chainmaile gloves are awkward to wear, damage the leather and, as I mentioned, I believe you you can't work in them. But I can't wait to hear how you get on! Lol. Ray

HI Josh, I regularly trim stuff after it has been wet moulded. In fact it is the only way to work if you are stretching leather over a wooden former and nailing it to a baseboard. Like Bob says, you risk water marks if you only re-wet a small area, so just put the whole thing back in the bucket of water and wet it evenly, do your final shaping and let it dry again. It works for me, fella! Enjoy. Ray

This is a perfect job for a small laser. I can't tell where you are in the world, but any laser operator can do this job for you at a relatively cost effective price - and much neater than you will, especially if you are using a hand tool. Alternatively, you may want to explore the clicking knife option although the tooling for this could be expensive - and you do need a clicking press. I have used a solid plate, set with 3mm punches to achieve this effect. It worked well and saved hours of boring, repetitive work. Hope this helps! Ray

I have a well used but extremely serviceable Singer 29k on a stand for sale. UK only folks, 'cos I'm not shipping this monkey overseas! It came along with a load of tools from a guy who was retiring. He used the machine everyday and it has been well oiled and maintained. It comes with a collection of spares, needles, bobbins and assorted stuff. It must be collected from Ludlow in Shropshire. Give me a call on 01584 873633 if you want to know more. Price is £300 or very near offer - however, I may trade for other machinery or tools. What have you got? Please address all enquiries to: ray@barefootleather.co.uk Ray

I haven't had any problems with OA. Just remember to rinse very thoroughly afterwards. I use the same mix as Randy. Yeah, it does eat sponges! lol. Ray