Sheilajeanne

Latigo, in the town I grew up in, this: https://www.toronto.com/dealer-profile/cruickshankford/ started out as THIS! http://www.cruikshank.ca/The Cruickshank Descendants.htm Sadly, the car dealership recently gave up the Cruikshank name, and is now Weston Ford. They also donate an old Cruikshank carriage and two sleighs to the Weston Historical Society, which uses them in special events:

Those 'before' photos make me wonder how you managed to salvage anything at all! So, yes, would be interested in seeing a more detailed description of the rebuild. Incredible work! I imagine there are very, very few people in N. America capable of doing what you did!

Wow, what did you do ... run away and join the circus?? That's going to make it REALLY difficult! It would help if people knew your location. Maybe there's someone out there willing to mentor you! Edit: okay, just saw you are in Dublin...

Gorgeous! Did the flesh side of the leather always look that nice, or did you do something to it to make it that way? What type (brand) of hide is it?

So much detail! Awesome work!

Been too long since I saw that movie, obviously!

That would take a lot of intricate tooling! Well done! Now can you please explain to me why you are calling it a 6 foot turkey, when it's obviously a dinosaur or lizard of some sort??

Wow...just WOW!! Shaking my head at what we've lost, due to the outsourcing of these industries. But OTOH, garment shops in N. America were low-paying sweatshops. A friend of mine found work in a sock factory in the Garment District of Toronto, way back in the 1960's, when we were both in High School, and reached age 16, meaning we could legally work. She told me how badly the work conditions sucked, and how the factory was infested with cockroaches. She said she would NEVER buy this particular brand of socks, due to the horrible conditions under which they were manufactured. This particular brand of sock is no longer produced, and most of the companies in the Garment District have disappeared. I don't need to tell you where - or why - they went.

Fred, they're not very strict about fining people who cross the line here, especially if it's due to a slow moving vehicle. I am sure if you were speeding and passing dangerously, it would be a different story. I have a letter aligning frame I bought from Tandy, but have never found much use for it. It's too fiddly - even a slight touch can knock it out of alignment! I prefer to use a leather marking pen for positioning the letters.

Chuck, yeah, that's sad we've become a throwaway society. Fortunately, I've got enough skills to be able to fix most things on a bike myself. Not sure I'd want to tackle a tire, though - the are tricky, and it's so easy to puncture the innertube when putting it back on the rim! EXACTLY what I do!

Huh? I know the Raptors are Toronto's basketball team, and the Bucks are a baseball team out of Milwaukee, but what the heck is ECF? I have been known to root for the Toronto Argonauts (CFL football) but don't have much interest in baseball (Blue Jays). As for hockey, I was a Maple Leaf fan in the 60's and 70's, but when your team goes more than 50 years without winning the Cup, well, your interest kind of fades. My all--time favourite Leaf will always be Johnny Bower. He lived just the next street over from us when I was in High School, and he was SUCH a nice man! My dad taught his daughter, Cindy, in Grade 6. I do billet hockey players for a local Junior 'A' team, though. It's ...interesting... to see the lack of 'adulting' skills in these 18 to 20 year old kids.

Nice bit of country, Frodo! Here's what a traffic jam looks like in my neck of the woods - yours too, I'm sure! Ummm...what was the topic again??

Yes, it gets cheaper. And you also need to have a larger lot, to make room for your septic system. I'm in a small town only an hour from Toronto, and there is no sewage system here, though we do have municipal water. The real estate sales slowed dramatically during the lockdown, but now that it's eased, sales in the Toronto area are breaking records. Seems that prices went down during the lockdown, which has fueled the buying frenzy. Toronto real estate prices were insane before, and I can guarantee they will soon get back to their previous level with the way things are going. I am so glad to be living in a small town that surrounded by mostly farms and patches of forest.

Well, most of Europe doesn't need room to store snowmobiles! I've noticed, the farther north you go in Canada, the larger the garages get. You need room for your SUV, snowmobile, ATV, canoe, riding mower and patio set. That's a great idea, re. recycling salvageable stuff from the dump. Here you are not allowed to take stuff, though I've done it on occasion, and I've also seen dump employees do it, too. One day I pointed out a set of dishes that had been dumped, and told one of the employees how there was a family in town who'd lost everything in a house fire who would be very glad to have those dishes. She agreed with me, and removed them from the tip area before they could get broken. I scored a nice teapot and sugar bowl with a silver spoon in it from that set of dishes!

Horse hair was commonly used to stuff things during that era - sofas as well as saddles! The had lots of it, so why not use it?

LOL! He has an average sized two car garage. He puts tarps over the bikes when it rains, and they are chained up when on display. I often wonder just what he does when he has to mow his grass! I imagine he rents storage somewhere for the winter time. Oh, and he has the EXACT bike I had as a kid, a CCM Rambler! https://bicycle-itis.com/used-bike/125-ccm-rambler No point in me buying it, because my legs were too long for it by the time I turned 14...

Nearly every time I go to the local dump, I see bicycles people have thrown away for scrap metal. It makes me very sad. There is a man in the nearest large town that fixes up and sells old bikes for a living. I wish there were more people who did that!

Thanks, Fred. Yeah, I got a PM saying basically the same thing. Seriously thinking about getting one now - need to read up on the threads here! Of course, I wouldn't try to do something so big and elaborate, but it's so much nicer looking than the clunky letter stamps I've been using up until now. I've free-handed a few sets of initials, but that has its limits, too, as there's only so small you can go, and still do a nice job of the tooling!

I know next to nothing about laser printing on leather. Was this notebook cover done with a laser? COULD something like this be done with a laser?

Where did you get that from, Frodo? That is NOT what the MSD sheet says! And I really wouldn't want someone substituting cow brains for my T-bone steak!

Have been looking at the Artisan Leather site you got your tools from. What ripoff artists! £49.50 for a poly maul from Ivan?? Gaahhh! https://www.artisanleather.co.uk/v-z-codes.html And the prices for their stamps are about what I'd pay in Canadian dollars! To buy a single tool at what they are charging would be about $17.00 Canadian, before shipping and taxes!

Frodo: YIKES! That sucks! I've heard of punches bending and breaking (usually Tandy) but have never had it happen to me. Only Tandy tool that was defective had a small burr on the face, and Tandy was quite willing to replace it for me. Affaltar, that's a good starting point for now. All of those tools are ones I use frequently, and most are in the the beginner kit I purchased when I started. Strongly recommend you get an undercut beveler, as mentioned above. It's used for lifting the edge of flower petals and leaves to add more of a 3 D effect to your carving.

Chuck was interested to see what popped up when you Googled...I got a completely different result! The page I was directed to had Jim Linnell, Barry King and other top toolmakers! What manufacturers did you see that you'd recommend staying away from? Interested to see comments from others who've used Ivan Taiwan tools. Ivan has profited by producing Tandy stamps that are no longer available, such as leaf and acorn stamps, but having never used these stamps, I don't know how their quality compares.

Oil tan is not burnish-able, Frodo. I think the best you can do is put Edge-kote on it.

Okay, in that case, going to add an undercut beveler to the list of tools you'll need. Tandy designates them with the letter 'U' and the most commonly used one, is, I think, U 851. Ivan follows Tandy tool numbers, I think. Anyone who is seriously into leather carving usually winds up with AT LEAST 100 stamps. It quickly becomes an obsession! I'm going to list the most basic ones by number, the ones included in a beginner's kit. That should be a good place for you to start. A104 backgrounder B701 beveler C 431 crescent shader P 207 pear shader S 706 seeder V 407 (not sure about this one, might have been a slightly smaller one.) To these I would add, based on my own experience, several different sizes of bevelers, both smooth and cross-hatched, several different pear shaders, smooth and cross-hatched, some flower center stamps, starting with the really small A102, and going up in size. Some people would recommend you get a bar grounder for doing backgrounds, but I don't like doing backgrounds that way - too time consuming! I'd get one of the larger A stamp backgrounders, also something like A98 for really tight spaces. There are a million different crescent shader stamps/sunburst stamps out there to choose from. They are good for borders, as well as decoration in Sheridan-type carving. Pick a couple you like, and bang away! Hope this helps! See??