Sheilajeanne

Wow, now that's an eye-opener!! Fortunately, I've only ever rented from reputable rental places like U-Haul or Enterprise Rent-a-Car! Worst thing that happened to me was when I was driving in Scotland (my first time driving on the 'wrong' side of the road) and didn't allow enough clearance between the left side of the car and the rear of a bus. I lost the passenger side mirror. Fortunately, the bus didn't notice , and what the rental car place charged for the damage was less than I'd expected!

I went fishing this morning, but after a short time, I ran out of worms. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a cottonmouth with a frog in his mouth. "Frogs are good bass bait," I thought to myself. Knowing the snake couldn't bite me with the frog in his mouth, I grabbed him right behind the head, took the frog, and put it in my bait bucket. Just then, I realized I had a problem, how was I going to release the snake without getting bit? So, I grabbed my bottle of Jack Daniel's and poured a little whiskey in its mouth. The snakes eyes rolled back and he went limp. I released him into the lake without incident and carried on fishing using the frog. A little later, I felt a nudge at my foot. There was that same snake with two more frogs in his mouth. Life is good in the South.

Yes, pretty sure I still have it. Will double check in a bit when I go downstairs to my craftroom. Like I said, it does not make a good impression, but if you are skilled with a dremel grinder, you may be able to deepen the pattern, and make it into a decent tool.

The man who owned the shop had been taught harness making by a Mennonite craftsperson, Isaac Baker. At one time, he had a business making harnesses for draft horses. I remember coming into his shop, and seeing an employee busy hand sewing a decorative scotch top that sits on top of the collar. (Have a look at the Budweiser Clydesdales if you're not sure what I'm talking about.) As time went by, I guess he decided there wasn't enough demand for this sort of work, so he changed his business to cater to English and western riders, selling everything from tack to books on horses. Repairs were still a sideline, though, and he did them very cheaply. He loved to talk, and I remember getting into a very long conversation with him about people we knew. When I finally turned to leave the shop, I realized I hadn't paid, and asked him how much I owed. He shrugged, and said, "Throw a couple of bucks into that jar. It's my kid's pony fund." Well, when you sell saddles that begin at $2,600, the money you get for fiixing a broken rein or halter is really not that important!

Very nice, Tom! As a (retired) horse person, I got a laugh out of you sig: horses: fixing stuff they break! During my time as a horse owner, i developed a very good relationship with the local tack shop, which also did repairs!

One of these days I'm going to do a bag with the triqueta on it. I already did a prototype on a piece of scrap: I've also seen it used as a religious symbol, especially for churches with Celtic roots, as it can represent the Trinity. I used to attend St Patrick's Anglican Church, and they used it as their logo.

Sometimes I've found a pattern needs a ridiculous number of stamps, most of which I have. But especially if there's just ONE stamp I don't have, I will see if I can use the closest match in my collection that I do have. Of course, I'd test it out on a piece of scrap to see if it was going to work first!

Sheridan is a style of carving, not a type of tool. You can do Sheridan style tooling with just about any type of leather tool. The only thing that makes sense to me re. modifying a Tandy tool would be to make the patterns deeper as some of them are so shallow that they don't make a good enough impression. This can be corrected by using an engraving tool (dremel) to deepen the pattern.

Um, what is a patch cutter? Nice work, Chuck!

I really will have to clean up my shop, and post a photo at some point. I now have an area that's at least 10x the size of what I started with, which was this: About the only thing that's the same is the chair, the small black 2 drawer organizer on my bench, the 6 drawer organizer beside the chair, plus, of course, my tools. The closet I have for storing leather takes up nearly a full wall at the end of the room, with lots of additional storage space under my HUGE workbench. The workbench and the cupboards and drawers beneath it were at one time a kitchen counter which the previous owner of the house used in HER craftroom for working with fabrics. My neighbour across the road, who was friends with her told me she had FIVE sewing machines! None of which, of course, would have been usable for leatherwork... Things I like about my NEW shop - the space, the SPACE!! Things I DON'T like: it's in the basement, down 13 stairs, and there's NO WINDOWS!

Heck, I have tools on my bench older than that!! On taking a closer look at that saddlebag, the conchos on it probably cost more than $20! Lovely piece of work! The angriest I've ever been at a 'customer' was when i was selling off my mom's posessions at a yard sale. My mom's main joy in life was knitting and crocheting. I had this beautiful hand-crocheted Queen bedspread in a box inside the garage. I had not put it in the sale as I hadn't decided what to do with it. It was crocheted from rather fine thread, not yarn, and would have been a ton of work to make. A woman came by in the afternoon, and noticed it, and asked me what I wanted for it. She was a knitter/craftsperson herself, so she had a good idea of how much work a piece that size would have taken. I told her I had no idea, and anyway, it wasn't really for sale. She came back late in the day, just as I was ready to close up shop. Lowballers at yard sales routinely do this, hoping you'll be ready to GIVE your stuff away to get rid of it. She still wanted the bedspread. She offered me $20 for it! I had a very hard time being civil to her. I have a black cat that sleeps on my bed. The spread was off-white, so not a good fit for me. I also have a beautiful hand-made quilt on my bed that was a wedding gift from an aunt, and really didn't want to replace it with the one my mom had crocheted. I also, regrettably, don't have any kids to pass things on to. I wound up giving the bedspread away to a cousin who had known my mom quite well.

Sooo...wonder how many other people on this board are going to be thinking of tidying up their shops now? Gotta make 'em look good for the camera!

Fred, that was Petula Clark!

Bitcoin?? Um...no thanks! Love this response to lowballers:

Funny how things are different here. One of the first things I learned as a community nurse was how to care for a PICC line, how to do a positive pressure flush, and how to do a sterile dressing change on it. I saw a LOT of PICC lines in the commnity as we had a large percentage of cancer patients. It stands for peripherally inserted central catheter, and it's a long catheter that's inserted in the arm and ends in a big vein just above the heart. It's use for medications that will damage smaller veins (chemotherapy drugs) or for people who need really long-term IV therapy, and the nurses are running out of veins in the person's arms and hands, and can no longer find a place to stick the needle. Wound vacs were a new tech that came along when I was already doing community nursing, and we had to attend a special seminar to learn how to manage them. Not all the nurses were qualified to do this. Doing wound care is a HUGE part of community nursing, as you get the surgical cases that went wrong when the person got a postop wound infection. We also got the diabetics with chronic ulcers and pressure sores, and the people with new colostomies that are still healing, and the person is still learning how to cope with changing the bag. You get used to seeing a lot of really ugly, gnarly stuff. I found for the most part it didn't bother me, because it was attached to a living breathing patient that I was trying to help. Then we had to attend a day long seminar on advanced wound care. Seeing all these wounds on a projector screen, isolated from a live patient was a different story. I began to wonder if I was the only one finding them hard to look at. I glanced around the room. A number of nurses were staring off into space, obviously avoiding looking at the screen. A tough-looking male nurse had his head down on his desk, as if he were trying not to faint... I though, oookay, at least I'm not the only one! Glad you have the family's help , Chuck. That's a tough spot to be in. And listen to the nurses - most community nurses know more than your average doctor about wound care! One of the most 'golly-gee!' moments I had as a nurse was when the patient's family doctor asked me what he should write as a wound care order for a patient with an infected incision following heart bypass surgery. He said, "You obviously know more about this than I do." God bless him - most doctors don't have the humility to say those words!

Ah, yeah, am familiar with all of those! I had a PICC line during my chemo, and was responsible for managing them for my patients who were on chemo. We sometimes used the little medicine balls for giving chemo, though it was more commonly given in the hospital, and antibiotics were given via CADD pump. Wound vacs are not fun to manage - the suction often develops leaks and sets off the alarm. A friend of mine from church had a temporary ostomy, and as she was elderly and widowed, another close friend learned to help with the management of the bag. I remember her being very upset about this, as she found it a real challenge, and felt it should be the nurse's responsibility. I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, "Hey, be glad the ostomy isn't PERMANENT!" What a lot for you to deal with, Chuck! And, of course, your daughter, too! Does she have children to look after as well?

Wow! When I was a community nurse, we taught families to do basic wound care, and empty JP drains, but packing wounds was strictly a job for the nurse! Patients and their families were also taught to manage those little portable infusion pumps that fit in a waist pouch (CADD pumps) and change the bag every 24 hours, but the nurse still came every 3 days to change the pump tubing and reposition the IV if necessary. And the pole mounted pumps were only operated by nurses, as the system could easily get air bubbles in the line. Good for you, Chuck!

Ok, Dwight, the Tandy journal isn't suitable for what I'm wanting to do. The pages have to be laced between the covers. Going to go to the nearest office supply store and see what I can find there! Will get back to you when I've made my mind up.

And the cloth yard was the distance from the end of Edward's nose to the tip of his thumb, when he was standing with his arm stretched out perpendicular to the ground and at a right angle to his body! I remember that from grade school! Edit: okay it was King Henry I , not Edward: https://www.splashlearn.com/math-vocabulary/measurements/yard#:~:text=A yard was originally the,yards between the goal lines.

Yeah, but finding them ain't fun! It's called The Good Shepherd pattern pack #2641. Or if you PM me your e-mail, I can send it to you. Stohlman provides lengthy notes on how to tool something like this, along with the pattern. Actually, you can upload PDF's to this site, but this one exceeds the site maximum.

Dwight, will send you a PM with the info once I have a look. Actually, it's an old Tandy kit, but there's no point in shipping you the leather, with the cost of shipping between Canada and U.S. being so ridiculous these days. But I will get all the deets from the kit a little later today. My craft room is right next to my tenant's bedroom and I don't want to wake her as she works nights. Thank you so much for offering! I'm hoping to design the cover so that the journal can be refilled, so if that looks like it will work, I will use the leather from the kit to try tooling the pattern myself.Yeah, I do have a bit of artistic talent, so we'll see how I get on. There is a ton of info out there from Stohlman, et. al. on how to do pictures and portraits. Jane

Wow, so that's probably one of the reasons you haven't been around here much, Chuck - you've had far more important things on your mind! You have my prayers for your daughter! Glad she is back home now! We've had some freaky weather here today. There were TWO tornado warnings, plus severe thunderstorm and hail warnings. Fortunately, my part of the country missed the worst of it. Haven't found out yet about the rest of S. Ontario. It's been the hottest it's been so far this year, and of course, VERY humid and sticky. I don't know what the high was - probably low 80's, but felt worse due to the humidity.

Dwight, if you are successful with the laser, I will gladly pay you for the picture! I want it to go on a journal cover so it hast to be a specific size though. Mablung, if all else fails, I will try doing that. There is a nice Tandy pattern out there that shows Jesus walking with some sheep, and gives the tools used. I can use that to help guide me for the tooling. Unfortunately, it's a PDF, so I can't upload it here, It's in the leathercraft library, though. Edit: if you search the net, you can find clearer examples of it like this one: https://cedarhouse.co/the-lost-sheep-painting-by-alfred-usher-soord-canvas-print-12-x-18/

This is a very famous religious painting by Alfred Soord, and I vaguely seem to recall seeing it somewhere as a leather working pattern. I've checked the patterns I have saved to my computer, but it's not there. Can anyone direct me to a source?