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fredk

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Everything posted by fredk

  1. Minimum order from Le Prevo is £10, before vat & postage
  2. fredk

    Tooling question.

    Quartz. marble, granite are solid, they have no compression. Even the hardest of woods and plastics will compress a bit when a a thin tool is whacked by a large mallet on it. For sharper and better impressions of stamps the harder the surface the better. For hole punching with single punches I use a block of wood with the end grain as the surface - hard enough to allow the punch to make a hole, the end grain doesn't compress and it doesn't damage the hole punch cutting edge,. For general cutting etcetera a self-healing cutting mat is good
  3. Tandy; https://www.tandyleather.eu/en/product/squeeze-frame or try on your ebay. I got 10 from a chinese seller for slightly more than one from Tandy
  4. Very nice apron, both in looks and in the making
  5. With a piece of denim or linen in your fingers you can rub the wax right into the leather, into any pattern you have engraved. Heat from the friction on the cloth and from your fingers will keep that wax soft and help to get it right into the depths of the leather. Afair bees' wax melts at about 65 degrees C, so friction heat melts it well. Using wax cold, with a cold burnisher the wax will just stay on the surface and be reduced to very little first time its buffed up. I use bees'wax & neetsfoot oil mix on the flesh side, rubbing it in with a bit of linen cloth, then its bees' wax on its own on the grain side. Heating it with a hairdryer if necessary. After a day or so I buff up both sides using a soft cloth and a soft shoe polish brush Its not so much that wax/nfo on the front/grain side is bad, if you use it on the flesh side you'll not need it on the front, without the nfo you can use much more wax without fear of using too much nfo. Too much nfo is not nice in a project, it leaches out onto everything it touches. If your pieces were for display or modest use; eg outside part of a handbag or a briefcase, then sanding and waxing the surface would not be much of a problem but you said so extra needs to be taken to make sure your piece is fit for purpose
  6. Leather has a grain, it has fibres. The fibres run everywhich way. At the hair side they are compacted together and get looser as you get into the flesh side. The strength of the leather relies on that tight fibre network. If you sand away the hair side, the grain side, you start to remove that strength; thats why when we need to reduce the leather thickness we skive off from the flesh side. A little bit of sanding might not show any reduction in the strength, but sand as much a 0.5mm and you weaken the integrity. The inner loose fibres no longer have the tighter packed fibres protecting and re-enforcing them. It may not show for months but it will eventually. If you sand away too much of the top grain you are making suede. Ask a saddler if he/she would make a stirrup strap from suede or top grain leather You have bees'wax and neetsfoot oil mix; thats fine for feeding the leather and smoothing the flesh side. To smooth the front grain side after sanding use plenty of bees' wax* on its own. Heat the wax, heat the leather, rub the soft wax into the leather, rub it well in and burnish up with a piece of denim or linen one the wax has cooled >>* not with NFO as you don't want too much in the leather OOAK = One Of A Kind = any hand made article
  7. Unlike wood, once you break through that tight grain of the hair side of leather its impossible to get it smooth and like its surrounds again. It will always stand out and be noticeable. It won't take dye and finishers like the rest of the surface Basically; yes, if a mistake is bad enough the piece is scrap - a reminder to take more care. When carving leather we take extra care, extra time. A small mistake can be ignored, [eg; a line not straight, a letter not equal to the others, ] a bit bigger it can become part of the work, or a feature in its own right. Small mistakes are a feature of OOAK works. Some buyers look for the imperfections which says; this is hand made
  8. Use large headed - at least 11mm - ready rivets. Make a piece of metal U shaped with a L tang at the bottom of the U, make it about 0.5 to 1mm thick. Place the U over the hole, whack the ready rivet to set it, but not absolutely tight. Pull U out and the rivet is loose. Discover which way the pieces need to move relative to each other; one piece can have a round hole for the rivet and its match needs to be an oval hole You could also lace the sections together
  9. ach durn, I'm washing my hair that weekend
  10. Good suggestion there bikermutt. I can't think of anywhere better
  11. also: it might be the Tandy leather. Last week I went to one in England and was shocked to discover how dry and brittle their veg tan leather is compared to what my usual supplier sends me. I did not buy any of it.
  12. You can now buy plastic boxes meant for small or dismantlable re-useable Christmas trees; they can be got in lengths of between 4 ft to 6ft 6 inches or so and about 1 foot square. Be careful of storing the leather under the bed; I stored a load of veg tan temporarily under mine and the smell and/or chemicals given off made me quite ill - nausea and headaches. Once removed to the afore mentioned plastic boxes the illness disappeared
  13. Line the inside and outside of the jaws with good heavy weight leather, put on flesh side out
  14. Welcome to the forum No question is stoopid, so ask what you want
  15. A/ you can never make real leather goods water-proof. You can only make them a little bit water resistant, light rain proof B/ much of the 'leather' goods sold in shops at the cheaper prices is made of PU Leather; an artificial leather mostly made of pvc type plastic which does not need aftercareeg the handbags sold in Tesco and ASDA. Quality leather goods do 'wear' and the outside does need regular feeding and treatment - examples; saddles, leather seats in quality cars [I've just been asked to refinish the seats of a few Series 6 BMWs as they are worn], briefcases, holsters...... C/ Any sort of finish for leather can be put over any sort of dye, once the dye is dry and buffed to removed surface excess. Choice of dye and finish is up to the personal experience or thought of the worker - we all have our favourites. Ask 10 of us and get 20 answers. Personally I use Fieblings acrylic dyes, followed by thin coats of Resolene to seal then a coat or two of a neetsfoot oil & beeswax mixture. Some on here prefer oil dies, some prefer Snow Proof or Aussie Conditioner over Resolene. Start with one type of dye, eg the acrylic dye, and say Resolene - get used to how they work together, if you can work with them keep with that, or change one at a time until you get results you are happy with. Being in England you might be near one of the Tandy shops, buy what they have; its repeatable stock so you can get the same time after time hth
  16. Once you've sewn over the glued part the pieces are attached to each other so you're not gonna be able to remove the glue. Contact adhesive is good, or double sided tape. There are thin double-sided tapes made for leather-work and regular cloth sewing. I prefer a contact adhesive. Here where I am there are two which come in tubes; UHU and Bostick. I prefer the UHU. I run a thin line of it along where I want it to stick, putting it on both parts, wait a few moments for the glue to dry a bit then I stick the parts together. The tube glue is handy as its nozzle allows just a thin line to be placed, easier than using a spatula and a big tin of glue Go to your local DIY or Hobby shop or even a $ store and you can get glues like my UHU brand.
  17. I've not used 'oil' tanned. By the look of your piece its very thin, and you say its 'stretchy' - that sort of leather is near impossible to edge burnish unlike thicker and stiffer veg tan. Your piece is not too much unlike the chrome tanned upholstery leather I use. For neat edges on it I skive the inside edge a bit using rough sand paper [a skiver just doesn't want to know] - I do about 2cm wide, then fold and glue that edge over, blattering it really flat with a rubber-head mallet. Not only does that give a really neat, tidy edge the double thickness is an advantage for the sewing or lacing Don't make the really silly mistake I made when I first used a rotary knife. I used it with my usual straight edge. I found the supposedly really good rotary knife had only partially cut through the thin leather. Tried a few more scrap pieces - same result. The centre button of the wheel blade was riding on the top of the straight-edge allowing the blade to just touch the leather!!
  18. I use a similar arrangement but I put the excess of the screw cramps under the bench so there is only a bit of the frame up top. It means the excess is not in my way and I can work over the cramp ends if necessary
  19. I stamp, dye, seal then use a gel ink pen, then seal again On poor back-up puter tonite; I'll put a photo up 2mrow thru my better puter
  20. Alcohol will remove acrylic paint. Dampen a cloth and go slowly and carefully; you should be able to remove the paint with minimum damage to any coating underneath. Keep turning the cloth so you always have a fresh clean part otherwise you'll start to rub the paint colour into the surface too much
  21. Here we have two quite similar tube contact adhesives; UHU and Bostick. They are both rather thick, the Bostick being more rubbery than the UHU. I usually use the UHU. I run a bead along the edge of parts to be joined, let dry for a few moments then stick together. It doesn't take much to make the join, not enough to seep thru the thickness, and if I get it right, none squeeezed out the join. Hows about using a glue like that along the edges but double sided tape on the inner part?
  22. Any liquid adhesive can seep thru or at the edges. As you are sewing the felt to the leather, hows about double sided adhesive tape? It can be bought 2 inches or more wide so only a couple or three strips put across will cover the size of the mat. Quick, easy, mess free.
  23. My two are a/ a bit of a sheep's rib & b/ a bit of antler
  24. Because they just started the scheme a few weeks ago thats why
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