fredk

An alternative to having spread contact glue over large-ish areas, consider spray glue. We can get tins of spray adhesive in the £ shop

I used to use those type. Used to get them 6 for £1 but now their price has rocketed up to £1.25 each! If I need a brush I buy and use children's chunky paint brushes, 4 for £1 or less if I buy more

No pictures I think there are more than just two originals surviving. I can think of three museums which have 18th C military equipment, including cartridge pouches

Could be a branding. Is it burnt in? or done with a laser? I've seen cattle branded fore and aft, on the same animal In a previous life I used to spend one or two days a week at livestock sales/shows, to photograph the show winners or high priced animals with their owners for the local farming papers so I got seeing a lot of cattle. In N.I. and I guess the UK we don't have farm or herd branding in the US way. Cattle have ear tags but some farmers also brand on the hind quarters and/or the opposite fore-quarter. Its easy for the rustler* to remove the ear tag but not the branding (* yes, we have livestock rustling in the UK, tens of thousands of animals are stolen every year ) Some countries, notably the Scandinavian ones, do not brand nor use barbed wire so their cattle hides are free of scars. Especially liked by Rolls Royce and Jaguar for their leather interiors. I just checked by random choice 3 pieces of my leather One has; stamped in white ink 7 1/2, with a square next to it, which I know was the square footage of the original piece. This is what I usually see on leather from Le Prevo but. . . No.2 has 23,75 stamped in ink in the same style as your numbers. I know this to be the square footage. This piece came from Le Prevo. The use of the comma betwixt numbers indicates to me that this piece originated in mainland Europe or South America No.3 has a paper label with the bar code, stock number and square footage on it. This piece came from Tandy just 10 days ago. Can you see a comma or stop between any of the numbers on your example? If it has then it might be the square footage, if not then it might be the batch number

afaik that is the Batch number from the tannery. The underscores just tell which way up the numbers are

I can only say for Le Prevo - always VAT added at the bottom of the invoice after even the delivery charge added. Prices on their website are minus VAT. When ordering from Le Prevo I always tell them the maximum and minimum square footage I want or the approx, eg I'll tell them I need at least 15 but no more that about 18, or I need about 16 or 17. They've always come through for me

Most excellent All this talk on strap cutters, I decided to do some up-grading that I've long wanted to do on my strap cutter. I wanted to change the thumb screw to a knob and that lead to changing several other parts My strap cutter, bought from Le Prevo about 21 years ago I changed the thumb screw bolt to a knob But on doing so I had to change the captive nut to the knob's bolt M8 thread. But the original captive nut is a poor one and I reckon it was not far short of needing replaced anyways. Its on the left and the better replacement on the right The blade clamping bolts and their nuts were showing corrosion and the screwdriver slots were a bit churned up so they got replaced with M4 Allen key flanged head bolts and brass nuts and, I glued on the top of the bars a steel ruler If I can find a suitable replacement I'll change the thumb screw bolt on the bars as well

yes, it can happen. Has done to me on several occasions, in distant past when I worked more on vehicles. Fires were contained and dealt with quickly Has happened to me. Also magazines ink. Its not so common now though. Printers use a more fast ink than they used to but I don't take the chance. Brown wrapping paper or odd rolls of wall paper can be bought cheaply. Use the back of the wall paper.

For contact glue out of tin I use a 1 inch wide metal paint scraper/wall paper scraper. I also use a lot of UHU glue in a tube on small areas, it doesn't need any spreading around

I'm now going to bore the pants off you cos I'm going to tell you how I do it, in detail, 1. I'm most likely not making even close to what you are making but I reckon the technique still holds good 2. equipment; a deep metal tray, two or three pairs of latex gloves, a selection of bits of stiff wire bent into a long S shape with the bottom of the S turned at right-angle to the top, a wood or metal bar sticking out somewhere, diluted dye 3. put on two or three pairs of latex gloves. I find that with only one pair the dye can still get on my fingers, two pair is better, and three pair even better to keep fingers clean 4. pour diluted dye into tray 5. start feeding leather items into the tray of dye. How many items depends on the depth of the dye 6. shuffle the items in the dye, first in comes to the top, after a few moments the next one at the bottom comes to the top. Do this a few times. Takes about 2 to 4 minutes 7. start lifting dyed items out. First out should be the one first in. 8. using a hole in the item, a hole for a rivet or snap or sewing, hook on to the bottom of one of the pieces of S shaped wire. As I do so I use my fingers as a squeegee 9. Hang dyed item up on the bar sticking out of somewhere. I usually have that bar above my dye tray so any dye that drips will be caught in it 10. Allow to dry 11. if necessary repeat steps 5 to 10 I find (afair) I can dip-dye about 10 items in under 10 minutes, not counting set up time. Recently I had just one small coin purse to do and it took four dying sessions each of 4 minutes with a sponge application to get the dye right through and even

I reckon dip dyeing is the way to go I've not found it to be wasteful and it certainly gets the dye well into the leather

I just remembered that I have these cutters. Belt tip shapes. There are ten, from about 15mm to 38mm. I've not used them but other cutters I have I use under the ram on my press They cost about £10 a set, off ebay. PS, I didn't buy these, they were sent to me in error instead of what I wanted

I agree , it looks like a leaky bottle of something, such as alcohol based after-shave. Treat that panel by washing it down with alcohol or lacquer cleaner and try re-dyeing just that panel very carefully. It'll probably end up a different shade though

Might I suggest something? If you want tubes, go to your local carpet shop. They'll have the card tube cores from carpets. A. they are very robust and b. are about 12 to 13 ft long, so you can cut them down to size. I used them for a while. The carpet shop was very happy to give me a load of tubes just to be rid of them

Currently I keep my stiff leathers rolled up in large plastic boxes designed for storing re-useable Christmas trees. The boxes are about 5 ft long and and about 1 foot x 1 foot. The boxes are stackable. For my thin lining leathers, they are folded up and stored in a large-ish plastic box (actually x 2 of them). The long boxes are stored in my apartment's crossway hall and the back hall.

Not papyrus but birch and alder wood 'post cards' - the Vindolanda Tablets, or Letters. Thousands of them

Look for books by Olaf Goubitz. Especially Stepping Through Time. Archaeological footwear from prehistoric times until 1800 ( https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9789089320025/Stepping-Time-Archaeological-Footwear-Prehistoric-9089320024/plp )and Op lage schoenen in de kou Also, From the Museum of London; Shoes and Pattens Medieval finds from excavations in London ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shoes-Pattens-Medieval-Excavations-London/dp/1843832380/ref=pd_lpo_3?pd_rd_i=1843832380&psc=1 ) I have the first and last books on my book shelf and they have what you seek I have this book in PDF form. Its about 388 pages in PDF. Hard copy of the full book costs about £300. Smaller 'section' books cost about £25 each Leather and Leatherworking in Anglo-Scandinavian and Medieval York It was partly that and that the items were in a garbage dump that the Romans tried to burn. The outside burnt and sealed off the interior

I find that Resolene is no longer a good sealant. I prefer to use a certain 'floor polish' which is actually a water thin acrylic varnish. In your area it might be called 'Mop & Glo'. Thin the M&G with water and dip the collars into it. Dip, drip dry to almost dry, do this about 3 or 4 times and the collars should be well sealed

Just quoting to get your attention; How many, what size and what colour of snap / popper do you need? If its only a couple or few, I may be able to sort out some from my stock, with rivet caps to match and send them to you. FOC

They've held up very well indeed. If you fit the rivet cap down tight there is no stress on the glued joint. Even if you try to get the rivet cap off you need to wreck the popper. btw, I used super-glue gel which fills gaps better On this shield guige strap the poppers are on the tan part. I hid the base with rivet heads. I did this on all the shields I made and nary a one ever came off even though those shields were used in 'battle'

I've just finished 8 of these Christmas tree hangers. I took the notion to make them this afternoon and set-to earlier this evening. All put together with double-sided tape and glue. They're about 3 & 3/4 inches long by 2 & 3/4 inches wide at heel to toe. Showing both sides. All are red on one side and green on the other. I'll give them to my ladies tomorrow afternoon

I've never found any of what you want. What I've done is to super-glue the cap part of a ready-rivet on to the popper back plate. The short stem of the rivet cap fits well into the hole on the popper base

I have few hammers to choose from; a brass head, a tacking, a cobblers, a car-body plus a rubber & plastic head mallet, two different poly mallets. I use which ever come to hand when I reach into the tool box. Don't be paranoid about the smoothness of the hammer face. As long as there isn't a big chunk sticking out, slight dinges in a hammer or mallet face aren't going to transfer to your leather if you are just lightly tapping the stitching or glue joint. Its not a 6 inch nail you are trying to put through oak so you only need to go lightly

On skiving the area for a belt buckle I find slicing at an angle works best. On doing edges I use it at a slight angle

When I started in this leather crafting lark I used the 'folded card' method for shaping the ends of belts. Later I bought one large 'English' belt tip punch. That one large size does all the smaller one too. I've also bought a set of belt templates in acrylic, like these uns, (below) they cost me under £5 for the set but are dearer now, With them you have the two most common ends https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/265264220814?hash=item3dc2faca8e:g:~VIAAOSwq1VhFIl5