Sheilajeanne

Very nice! Love the Angry Birds! My one concern would be the O rings on the straps eventually eating through the leather. I would have gone with D rings or buckles instead. Hey, if it happens, you can always replace them with D rings...

Heh...from looking at the photo, I thought it would be the second method! Thanks, Cyberwolfe! Nice looking wallet!

I bought a granite floor tile from a building supply store, and it has worked very well for me. It only cost $10, while to buy a granite slab from Tandy is about $40. So, if mine ever breaks, I can replace it 4 times for what a Tandy slab would cost!

Thanks, Cyberwolfe! Excellent video!

Okay, I want to add some card pockets to my Celtic bag. I want to have two rows of them, the way it's done in this wallet: http://www.lzpattern.com/Leather-wallet-patterns/leathercraft-patterns-PDF-CCD-33-long-wallet-pattern Would this be done using a double T-slot, to reduce the leather thickness? It would be a bit trickier to cut out than a single T, but I imagine once you got your template just right, things would likely go pretty smoothly.

Have you seen this? https://www.tandyleather.com/en/leather-buying-guide.html There's a lot of information out there for free on the net! Leatherworking videos can be a huge help to someone who lives too far away too attend classes. Here's a couple of examples: Learnleather.com (Mike is a member here. You can subscribe to his videos, but some of them, such as the celtic video below are available for free.) https://vimeo.com/276945563 https://www.tandyleather.ca/en/leather-craft-abcs.html

If you buy a beginner's kit from Tandy, it comes with 8 weeks of free lessons! That's how I got my start, and our instructor was top-notch. I was firmly hooked by the time the 8 weeks were up!

Stetson, is there anything on your canvas other than a bit of water?

levinus, sent you a PM.

Mike, what beveler do you use to swivel bevel?

So, what did you make the mock-up bag out of? Looks like leather? (But obviously a cheap sort.)

CD, did you put any sort of a clasp on the bag?

Oh yeah, sewing the bottom of the bag was Not Fun! Then I found out I'd lined the pockets instead of the inside of the bag, and I wanted to tear my hair out! Solved the problem by gluing the lining overtop of that seam. It's at the bottom of the bag...no one will ever notice if the liner doesn't stick very well! When reading the instructions for sewing the gussets in place, they wanted me to measure out 18 FEET of thread! I just laughed, and sewed each side of the gusset with a separate piece of thread. I mean, REALLY? Do the people who write these instructions actually try to FOLLOW them? Imagine trying to keep 18 ft. of thread from tying itself in knots, or wrapping itself around everything as you try to sew!

Wow! That`s a lot of advice to absorb! Thank you! Looking forward to part II. Ferg, just so you know, a lot of this does not apply as both these projects were Tandy kits which I added my own carving design to. All seams were hand-stitched. Yes, I have a few calluses I didn`t have before... HOWEVER, I am planning to do both bags AGAIN, using leather I prepare myself. (Needless to say, some of it's going to be MUCH better quality! ) Actually the belt bag is already a WIP, and is the one that got the dye rubbed off it by the saddle soap. I have put a Tudor rose design on the front of it. The second messenger bag will have a triskelion on it, the same as the one on Thor`s hammer in the movie! So, I can use your advice on these bags. Oh, yeah...former equestrian here. Neatsfoot oil and I go waaaaay back...

It looks like this might be the book, as it shows only 6 tools on the cover: https://www.tandyleather.ca/en/category/leathercraft-books-patterns/2 There are several other basic leathercraft books, though, including the one jru mentioned above. Contact your nearest Tandy store. They can tell you which one will meet your needs.

Alpha, it's about as organized as it's ever going to be, until I get a larger workspace! The dyes all have their own spot in a nearby cupboard, carefully put away inside plastic tote boxes. Some tend to leak more than others, and THEY are inside individual ziplock bags. But yeah, we all get careless from time to time... I usually try to recap dyes as quickly as possible after using them, and when dyeing, I use a syringe to transfer the dye to a glass shot glass with a heavy bottom, to help prevent spills, and make sure the spill is fairly small if the glass does tip over. This time I didn't recap the dye bottle soon enough! Just curious to know if anyone else ever had a problem with Fiebing's saddle soap removing dye! That was a real shocker!

The links on the first page no longer work, so reposting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGuiha5S2oE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ue3zBg0bdA

I will certainly give it a try! It is not the method Hidepounder (Bob Parks) uses and has posted on the "How Do I Do That?" forum, but as they say, many roads lead to Rome! So, of course, being something of a perfectionist, I just couldn't leave those edges alone... I decided I had to touch them up with some dye. This led to one of the worst 'Oh crap!!' moments I've ever had. I somehow managed to spill most of what was left of a bottle of Fiebing's Saddle Tan all over my work table, some shelves and other stuff sitting underneath it, and of course, the floor! Thank God, no projects got damaged by the spill. The bottle of dye was only about 1/4 full. The dye mostly missed me and my clothing, though my shoes have a few splashes. Things I learned during the cleanup: No matter how panicked you are, take time to put on some gloves. Paper towels and denatured alcohol are your two best friends during a cleanup. LOTS of paper towels and lots of alcohol. You may want to apply some of the other sort of alcohol internally once you're finally done... It's amazing just how well alcohol does at cleaning up dye. This is probably who Fiebings has switched almost completely to alcohol base dyes as opposed to oil dyes. (Also there's the VOC factor - the oil based dyes are much less environmentally friendly.) You would never know I spilled anything on the floor, and even my work table and cutting mat, which got the worst of it. have only very faint stains! WHEW!! Going to go play outside with the dogs for awhile to get the alcohol fumes out of my brain!

Thank you, you did just fine explaining that!

AB, I did not apply tragacanth to it, nor do I hammer my edges. I am trying to understand just how this would help. I did skive my edges, though maybe I should have done more to make them thinner? But then if the edge is skived too much, I might have trouble getting the pigskin liner to stick due to the slope? Does tragacanth help to make the edges stiffer and less floppy, therefore easier to burnish? And what would the hammering do, other than flattening knots and stitching? Thank you for the advice! I just want to understand how it would help make things better.

Re: the edges: The heavier leather took the glycerin and paraffin quite nicely, and with more practice, I am sure my edges will improve. The crappy thin, floppy, fuzzy milled leather was a total pain to try to burnish. It was pretty much impossible to get it looking nice. The top of one of the inner pockets is laced rather than sewn. You may wonder why. Well, my rotary cutter got away from me while i was trimming the liner, and this was the best way of hiding the resulting cut! You have to look really hard to see it...

My two Celtic themed bags! I hated the leather button in the middle of the small one, so found a nice Celtic one at Tandy. The larger bag is definitely the most complicated project I've done to date. Except for the flap, and the heavier weight pieces, the leather was horrible. The straps were SO BAD that I seriously considered replacing them. They fought me every step of the way. The did not take dye well. They looked like something had been chewing on the hide. I tried 4 times to dye the edges and finally gave up. I covered the ugliness on the backside by dyeing them then using Atom wax leather balm to make sure the dye wouldn't rub off on clothing. I dealt with the ugly fuzziness of the inside of the bag by lining it with pigskin. Thereby hangs a tale... When I started to sew the bag together, I realized the parts I had lined were the pockets, not the interior of the bag. Darn it! That was the part I most wanted to hide. But I'd already sewn together the 4 layers of the bag at the bottom, which was one of the most difficult sewing jobs I've ever had to do. Well, I decided, I'll just rip out the other stitching, and line overtop of the bottom stitching. FIrst, I tried Heat n'Bond to get the liner to stick to the inside. I could only find the Lite version, and it did not work at all. Oh, it worked very well on the fuzzy interior of the bag, but did not bond the pigskin liner!. I could not peel the stuff off the inside of the bag. I had to SAND it off!! And even then, some of it remained behind, especially along the edges, which is probably why the edges didn't want to stick together when I glued them. In spite of re-gluing numerous spots in the edges several times, I still got some major separation of the lining as I was sewing the gussets to the bag. This was the first time I tried using Hidepounder's method of finishing edges. That didn't go very well either, as you'll see from the photo. The glycerin soap worked well. Then, I tried applying the Fiebings saddle soap. It was a DISASTER! Hey, did you know Fiebing's paste saddle soap makes a GREAT dye remover?? Yup. And it also sometimes leaves an ugly dark line along the top and bottom edges of your project. I found out about the dye when I tried to burnish the edges on my second Windsor bag project. The flap wound up with a nasty dark mark along the right side. I thought maybe I could remove it by rubbing the flap with the saddle soap and a soft cloth. Suddenly I noticed the white rose in the center of the flap turning GREEN!! WFT?? I looked at my cloth, and found It was covered with green dye! And this flap had already been buffed and treated with Satin Sheen! I grabbed a paper towel, and rubbed the dye off. As soon as the saddle soap was gone, no more dye came off. But enough dye had been removed that I had to redo the flap. And of course, I forgot the dye was not straight green, but had been mixed 50/50 with yellow to make it more of an olive green. [sigh!] Despite several coats of dye, I was unable to restore the original colour. Anyway, it's done. The last thing I added was the toggle tie at the front. I decided it really did need something to keep it closed, but I wanted it to be as minimal as possible, so as not to take away from the Celtic horse carving. I also wanted it to look antique and not modern. So, the leather lace and toggle button seemed like the best way to go!

A few from my most recent project: There are a thousand ways to do something wrong, and you will try quite a few of them when learning this hobby. Rotary cutters are hellish sharp. I hardly felt the cut, but boy, did it bleed! Fortunately it was very shallow. Dyes never seem to look quite the way you want them to. If you leave a project sitting for a couple of weeks, you will forget what colour of dye you were using, with predictable results if you want to touch something up. Adding extra layers of the correct dye will not necessarily return the project to the correct colour. When doing a project that needs an extra layer added to it part way through the stitching, tack the layer to the project in the appropriate spot. It saves you having to pull a bunch of stitches out when you FORGET to add it in and stitch a good 10" past it!

It's often possible to buy precut strips from Tandy. They frequently have these strips on sale, and they can be either plain veg tan leather, or latigo. Sometimes they sell them in bulk, with a package of 10 or so strips. This would be a much cheaper way of getting straps than buying a side of leather, where a good portion of the hide wouldn't be the thickness you need, or would be too stretchy. I use these strips to make leashes and belts, and they are quite heavy weight, especially the latigo strips. The veg tan strips not so much - check the thickness before buying to be sure they are okay.