hivemind

Hilly, Parts is parts. As logn as you're replacing an ATA drive with an ATA drive (or a SATA drive with a SATA drive) they're interchangeable. Hell, they're all made in the same factories in China anyways. But your error messages are troubling, and sound to me like your hard drive is on it's last legs. On the other hand, it might just be a loose connection to the motherboard or something else equally mundane. If yo know a local TRUSTWORTHY computer repair place, you should take it there. DO NOT take it to BestBuy, etc.

Might be you're grabbing more of the website than you need to, that is, you're grabbing characters outside the text box you're actually interested in. Most websites these days aren't laid out in straight text like ten, or even five, years ago. Now everything is tables and CSS stylesheets and stuff like that. I have two suggestions: 1. Be very careful to just highlight the precise text you're after, don't try and grab entire web pages. or 2. You don't need a special program to take screen shots, just hit Alt+PrtScn then paste into a Word document.

Pity these aren't 12oz+, I can see a market for this stuff in the re-enactor and ren-fair types, many of whom are pretty crunchy-granola types.

Buy quarts of dye, pour into bowl, dip leather, pour back into bottle. That's how I do it.

I do this too.

As a drummer as well, I don't think I'd make the sides from tooling leather. Maybe a 6oz latigo or even a 5-6oz garment leather. Then it would compress fine.

All my backgrounders are a standard kind of cross-hatched pattern. What tool am I looking for to achieve the pebbly background I sometimes see people getting? Example: Big Papa's leather mousepad, on the top border:

Take a look through Rocky's gallery here: http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showuser=12905 His work is SUPER clean. I aspire to my sheaths looking like this.

So you're saying that my sharpened 1940's ice pick isn't the right tool for making stitching holes?

Sorry! Had no idea that a coupon would be "intellectual property" (that's actually pretty ######ing ridiculous and kinda pushes my buttons a little), thought it might help someone. I'm also definitely not a TLF employee...

In all honesty, if you're behind your own router, you don't need a software firewall. If your PC is plugged directly in to your cable modem or your DSL modem, then yeah, you should probably have a firewall. Check out Zone Alarm. But I'd really recommend you get a cheap router, if only to do NAT and get your PC off of a public IP address. You can grab one on NewEgg for $25-$30 now. Look for one with a good review rating and free shipping.

Saw this today, and some of what she's doing, seemingly effortlessly, would translate very well for someone trying to come up with new knotwork or "modern" patterns for carving. Check it out:

I've been using a 50 year old icepick that I sharpened up for an awl for a while now. Seems to work for me. I also do my stitching (what little I do) on a piece of 2" blue foam insulation board. If something gives me a hard time, I can just slam the butt of the awl with the palm of my hand and it drives right through and into the insulation.

I punch on a poundo board, but used scrap for years - a good sized piece of sole bend. I also had my father make my bench with an unfinished pine top, so if I do slip and drive something into it there's no damage to anything but the bench. Ten years on, it looks like hell, but I'm not after cosmetics in my basement shop.

You're in Denver, you should look up the Mordor chapter of Dagorhir. They're local and might throw you some business, and let you do some "fantasy" stuff. A lot of them play orks, chaos berserkers, goblins, etc.

Drilled two holes into the base of each horn, and used small wood screws to attach through the leather.

It's for the wife. She doesn't fight in the medieval/fantasy/combat re-enactment stuff I do, but there are often social events that go along with the battles: elaborate feasts and balls and such. Since I'm often attending these as a member of the Cairnhold Legion, which plays as an undead unit (we all wear leather skull masks), she wanted to match better. This is her, wearing it:

I removed the link. Intellectual property belonging to Tandy Leather Factory may not be posted on this site without permission from the bosses in Ft. Worth. They frown on employees hosting TLF material on personal sites, also, FYI. Johanna

Deerskin or fur-on hide? Deerskin's pretty soft, but not as soft as wool or rabbit fur. Fur-on deer hide isn't particularly soft, it feels like a shorthaired dog to me.

I was pretty sure I had answered this, did we have a database rollback? I don't have much call to harden stuff for what I make leather for. Usually water hardening is enough - but I do have a pot of beeswax and I'm not afraid to use it.

Leather doesn't bend well in three dimensions, so you're going to need to cut darts (little triangles) out of the cup area and sew them up to get a "cup" shape if you're using tooling leather. I'd suggest you line the cups with rabbit fur or sheepskin.

I measure them individually. Another option is to just make the straps long, and nip them down to the proper length when sold.

I generally just waterform things, which lends a good bit of hardness to them, but I also have a pot of beeswax which I occasionally use. For what I do, though, there's no need for serious hardening.

If it's made of Dag-legal armor leather (12oz or thicker) then all it takes is a little foam. I used 6mm and 2mm fun foam.