Sheilajeanne

A 104 is my favourite backgrounding tool, too. I also use it sometimes to bevel tight corners! Very useful tool!

LOL!!

Nice work! How do you manage to get the background looking like fabric? Do you use a bar grounder, or another matting tool?

Mike, so the only thing keeping that clam on your work table is the weight of the antique iron?? How well does that work?

"Western floral style" You will usually see this called 'Sheridan style". Excellent work! So, the Chinese like this style, and this what they prefer to buy? Would also like to see some Chinese patterns. Maybe North Americans and Europeans will buy those! I think dragons would look good on leather - you could maybe combine the two styles!

Me neither! Most of what I was trying to sell was china and other breakables, so I didn't want to risk shipping it. I did make an exception when one lady asked for ONE teacup to be shipped within the province. She must have really wanted it as shipping was nearly as much as I was asking for the cup and saucer! You're lucky if you do decide to ship - leather working tools are pretty much unbreakable!

I was wondering what that was! Very cute! Hope you're planning to make a purse or other item out of it so the dog shows on both front and back! The mandala is wonderful, too! The tooling is so very crisp. Great work!

Chuck is correct. Here's how I resize my photos. If you are running Windows, it will include Windows Paint. Open the photo in Paint, and look at the top menu. There will be an option to resize the photo. Click on that, and it will give you a choice of pixels or percentage. I usually go with pixels, and select somewhere around 500 to 600 pixels. If you resize the height of the photo, the length will resize automatically to keep the photo in proportion. If you want to keep the original photo, make sure you select 'save as' and give the resized photo a new name! P.S. - no need to post multiple times about this issue. New posts pop up on the right side of the page, where everyone will see them. If no one responds right away, it's because we're busy, or don't have an answer. Be patient - we do love to help newcomers, if we can! Oh, yeah, that cat portrait of yours is incredible! Looking forward to seeing how you did it!

Facebook Buy and Sell buyers will try to get you to give away the tools for a fraction of their value. I am speaking from experience with other items I've tried to sell there. The best place to advertise is on leatherworking sites, or maybe e-Bay. [keeps muttering to self: You do NOT need more tools, you do NOT need more tools....]

Can't argue with that, Chuck. Management ain't going to work if it's not being enforced. What state is this? And is it public or private land, or both?

Chuck, first the wholesale slaughter had to be stopped. Velma's fight began during the 1950's, and she was fighting some very powerful interests. Management came after laws were passed to protect them. Of course, the population needs to be managed.

LOL< thanks, enjoyed that Frodo!

[agrees with oltoot] The reason wild horses had to be protected was because ranchers felt they were competing with cattle and other livestock for grazing, so they were rounding them up and sending them to slaughter, or sometimes just shooting them, or even poisoning their waterholes. Never mind that the mustangs were on the land for generations before ranchers came with their cattle. Read Margeurite Henry's book about Wild Horse Annie* if you want the full story about the fight to protect them. Annie got involved after she noticed a livestock truck rolling down the highway with blood leaking out of it. She followed it to the slaughterhouse, and found it was crammed full of mustangs, many of them injured. The movie, The Misfits, wasn't an exaggeration - the methods used to round the horses up were incredibly cruel. *Mustangs: Wild Spirit of the West, by Margeurite Henry Velma Johnston, aka WIld Horse Annie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velma_Bronn_Johnston

LOL! Just came across the cartoon today. Amazing how popular the roadrunner still is after all these years!

The lady that runs PETA is a certifiable nutcase. When she dies, I believe she has it in her will that her friends will hold a BBQ in her memory, and she will be the meat course. She also wants her skin to be tanned and made into something useful... She thinks all domestic animals should be allowed to run free, where nature would determine who lives and who dies. How she has managed to keep her agenda from her celebrity supporters, I have no idea, but many of them would freak out if they found out she wants their beloved lapdogs turned loose to either eat other animals, or starve to death. The downside of trying to protect a species is how the protection sometimes backfires. Horse lovers have succeeded in getting the slaughter of horses banned in the U.S.A. That means the unwanted, elderly and infirm are now shipped long distances to meet their deaths in Mexico or Canada, or even shipped overseas. Many are injured or even die during shipping. Horses are also being abandoned and left to starve rather than being shipped. If there's a law to protect an animal, someone will find a way to get around it. This article about CITES and the illegal ivory trade makes very interesting reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_trade The corruption of the countries involved in the ivory trade made it easy for them to get around the rules, as they had already stockpiled huge hoards of ivory. When the trading of ivory to foreign countries was banned by CITES, several countries strongly opposed the ban, claiming they needed money from the sale of ivory to fund conservation work. Investigations into these claims proved they were false: money was either going into the government's coffers or being used to fund the arms trade. Organized crime syndicates are very much involved in the trading of ivory and animal parts such as rhino horns. Despite the ban, Hong Kong, the largest market for ivory, still manages to import ivory, as do many other markets in China, The Phillipines, Thailand, China and Japan. CITES has not stopped the trade - it's merely been driven underground. Yes, we aren't talking hides here, but still there's no way I would ever use elephant hide. Phew. Sorry for the rant - they are such intelligent animals, and have such strong family bonds. If a female is killed, her calf will not survive unless it can bond with either a human or another female elephant. It isn't just about getting nourishment, either. Without the touch and comfort of another animal, these babies will die, just as human babies die without nurture. And the bonds are life-long. Elephants that have been raised by humans still recognize their caregivers 30 years later. I come from a family of farmers on my dad's side, so have no problem with anything that's been raised for food. I feel introduced species like pythons in Florida are also fair game. I also recently found a source for deer and moose hides that relies solely on hides from animals shot by indigenous hunters for food. (Tribal Spirit, in Quebec). They sell the hides much more cheaply that other sources I've come across, and there's no import duties for this Canuck!

Footnote on the sizing: When buying footwear these days, I usually need a women's size 9. But when I measured my foot, the OESH site told me to order a size 7!! Heck, even in my younger days, before old age caused my feet to swell, I took a 7 1/2 shoe! Tandy got the size right when I checked their sizing chart against my measurement.

So, Tandy has started selling something similar, only their soles are white, not black, and they are charging $80 Canadian for the kit. Since I prefer the black soles, I figured out my size (I think the Tandy sizing chart is MUCH more accurate than the one on OESH) and filled in the blanks to order. Their soles are $59.00 but with shipping, it comes to $82.00. Shipping from their location in Virginia is $23.00!! Sigh. Going to think on this for a bit - what if the sole I've picked doesn't fit? And the last time I shipped something to the U.S., it took almost THREE MONTHS to get where it was going... Meanwhile, I think I'll start working on that pair of moccasins I've been wanting to make!

Yeah, and then you still need all the other stuff they list - leather, eyelets, laces, sewing awl, thread, etc. I have everything but the eyelets and eyelet setter. Seriously thinking about this, but would buy the kit from somewhere other than Tandy as I don't like the look of the white soles.

Yes, they sure do! Great job! I just looked this kit up on the Tandy website. It shows the sole as only coming in white. How did you wind up with a black sole?

I know there are a lot of horse people on this forum, and I found this very interesting! This horse was so very lame the owners were considering euthanasia. Then the blacksmith found a huge hole in the sole of the horse's foot. (I think they need to find a new vet! The vet should have been the first to find the problem!) He actually forged a special bar shoe to help protect the foot while it healed. If you're a horse person you will know how rare it is these days to forge a shoe from scratch, instead of using a ready-made shoe! This video show the whole process, including the farrier finding the abscess: https://www.facebook.com/100922664744563/videos/934916520667857

Well, I don't use it much anymore since the handle got burned. I am afraid it will fall apart. I made the handle because I was doing a lot of whittling/wood carving during those years, and got sick of doctoring the blisters the standard jack knife handles raised on my fingers! The blade is a very good one - German Solingen (sp?) steel!

I first got interested in leather work when I was in Junior High. I would have been about 12 years old. I made a number of different items, using home-made tools I cobbled together from nails and bits of scrap metal. I still have one of them, a knife sheath. We had a Radio Shack/Tandy store at a mall not to far from our home, My parents tried to encourage my interest, but had no idea how to go about it. They bought me a piece of chrome tanned leather, but there were no tools to go with it, and no instructions. I had no idea what to do with it. It was too small to make a pair of moccasins, and too thick for a wallet or change purse. Eventually I gave it away. Around 2010, I started working with dogs in a big way, and decided I wanted to know how to make dog leashes and collars. An employee at the local Tandy's showed me a beginner's kit, and told me about their 8 weeks of free classes. It was instant love. My biggest regret is that my parents hadn't bought me that beginners kit. I would have gotten involved in the hobby at a time when Al Stohlman was still alive, and probably actually met him in person. I've heard he was an excellent teacher, and a great inspiration to many people. Leatherworking might have become a career rather than a hobby for my retirement years! Here's that knife sheath! I still remember how sore my fingers got trying to do a saddle stitch with hand sewing needles! I think I did have an awl, which helped a bit. I also made the knife handle, but some idjit left it sitting on top of a red-hot woodstove, and it got burned.

I managed a half-decent job of them on that phone case, but believe me, I was sweating bullets! Not going to show you my first efforts which were on a wallet...

Six basic strokes does it all? Um, yeah how do you do those tight curves that so often show up in Sheridan carving? You know, like the ones on this cell phone case? If anyone's got some tips on how to do these smoothly, I'm all ears! I found I've had the best luck with keeping the knife more or less stationary, and turning the leather.

maxdaddy I posted something similar, but from a different source, earlier last week: As Rahere says, it would work fine, but only if your foot was a good fit for the outsole that comes with the kit. https://leatherworker.net/forum/topic/96539-making-shoes/