Dwight

Success is always good, . . . no matter how you get there. Make sure we see the final piece. Pictures are great things you know.............. May God bless, Dwight

Fred, . . . If you are planning on allowing a buckle to go into the belt with beadwork nearby, . . . you most likely are asking for a lot of returned goods. The stress at the buckle will not work with the beads. Make your belt a two layer belt, . . . the top (outside) layer being about 7/8 oz, . . . and the inside layer at least a 5/6 oz. make your beading 1/4 inch narrower on both sides (total 1/2 inch) than the outside dimension of the belt, . . . cut a window in the outside layer for the beading such as you see in the image below. Contact cement the beading into the area of the window, . . . cement it to the inside piece of the belt. Contact cement the outside piece over top of the beading and the strings on which you did the beading. Sew the edges at 1/8 inch all around the belt, . . . then assemble the buckle etc. May God bless, Dwight

My stitch gouge is set +/- at 1/8 inch, . . . everything I do gets that treatment, . . . have never had a complaint. My gouge allows my stitches to lay flat, . . . tried the divider trick, . . . just looks shabby in my opinion, . . . stitches lay up on top of the work. May Got bless, Dwight

Contact cement the welt to one side of the sheath, . . . take it to a belt sander, . . . Least that is what I would do. Wish I had $5 for every one I've done for my holsters. AND, . . . that is one GOOD LOOKING knife there. Gonna build me one of those some day IF . . . IF I live long enough (lol), . . . I want a Jim Bowie that altogether will top out somewhere between 18 and 24 inches. May God bless, Dwight

Well, my friend, . . . I also am beginning to think you are trying to produce a product that will never age, never wear out, etc. Leather products are by design, . . . going to wear, . . . and the harder the work, . . . the more the wear: ie shoe soles as an example, . . . one year is a long life for leather shoe soles. And 20 meters from the shop, . . . they will look worn and the finish will start coming off. Your dog collars, . . . unless they are only put on for dog shows, . . . or walking the dog up and down the street, . . . they are going to show wear and scratches, etc, . . . especially if there are other dogs that interact with him/her. May God bless, Dwight

Vovi, . . . I see three problems, . . . which contribute to an overall process that needs to be scrapped, . . . or severely changed. 1) the paint definitely needs to be thinned, . . . and if you would first use a swivel knife to outline the area you want to paint, . . . you could use dye in that area, . . . which would penetrate and not ever flake off like paint will ALWAYS DO. Paint and leather simply are not made for each other, . . . but like driving a convertible car in Iceland, . . . under certain conditions it is OK. 2) resolene must first be thinned, . . . I do a 1 to 1 thinning, equal parts of both resolene and thinner. It also must be put on in thin coats. Thick coats of resolene will produce a top coat that will crack, break, flake and be generally not acceptable. AND 2 or 3 at the most, . . . THIN coats is more than adequate to protect the leather. 3) beeswax conditioner put on after the resolene is a total waste of a good product. The resolene will prevent the conditioner from doing anything but laying on top of the surface, actually only giving you an added bit of shine that you can get from a much cheaper and better product: shoe polish. May God bless, Dwight

That is some pretty cool thinking, . . . Like the execution too, . . . looks really good. I doubt if any of my wait staff needs them though, . . . not much of a market at White Castle and Burger King. May God bless, Dwight

I think I would just personalize the thing, . . . cut a piece of matching leather, . . . stamp your name into it, . . . attach it, covering the blemish. Only you would then know the circumstances. May God bless, Dwight

That is one opinion, . . . not necessarily a well informed opinion, . . . The spindle sander of which he speaks also sits on my work bench, . . . mostly gathering dust, . . . as it does a terrible job on anything not curved, . . . and if you are not careful it can totally ruin a curved piece. And that says nothing about not being able to use the whole sanding sleeve, . . . even with flipping it end for end. The middle part is still basically "unused" when I toss the sleeve, . . . which is becoming less frequent as we go along, . . . The belt sander IS THE WAY to go, . . . or at least has been in my years of service to the leather industry. For tight curves, . . . a Dremel tool is much, much, much better than the spindle sander. May God bless, Dwight

Hey, "Pardner", . . . chinks and chaps are not that hard to make, . . . believe me. I'm about 120 miles southeast of you, . . . down by Marion, Ohio, . . . and I have the patterns for basically both here. They may have to be modified for your height and/or weight, . . . but I'm sure we could make something work. OR, . . . if you want to mosey this way, . . . we can set up an afternoon or evening of leather cutting, . . . get you something you can use. Do you have a machine that will sew 12 to 14 oz leather?? May God bless, Dwight

This will sound silly, . . . but I finally whipped that exact problem with a plastic peanut butter jar. Actually does not "fully, . . . 100%" end the problem, . . . but sure makes it a whole lot less of a problem. AND, . . . I only use Weldwood brand, . . . which can be lightly diluted with Acetone (I believe it is part of the original formula). Anyway, . . . it works. May God bless, Dwight

For just a pair of yokes, . . . hand stitching or lacing shouldn't be all that long or hard. Use contact cement first, . . . buckstitch em, . . . they will be beautiful, and will hold up till all the cows come home. May God bless, Dwight

I would leave the buckle as is, . . . and take off the necessary from the other end. The "new" end will not look exactly as the other one did, . . . but carefully cutting in the circle ending in the two dots between the eyes, . . . proper beveling and burnishing and very few folks would ever look twice at it. May God bless, Dwight

TxLeather2, . . . thank you for the suggestion. I'm going to play around with some beads doing an insert like your first one. May God bless, Dwight

Duty belts for policemen who carry all sorts of junk on their belts are seldom over 1/4 inch thick, . . . which is two 8 oz pieces glued together, . . . flesh side to flesh side. Don't use "glue", . . . use Weldwood contact cement, . . . or a very similar product. This will also allow you to use a pretty standard buckle, . . . Tandy sells any number that will work for this belt. Alternate about every 2 inches with rivets, . . . top, bottom, top, bottom, . . . about 3/8 inch from the edge. You will have a belt you can be proud of. May God bless, Dwight

I never was too much in the line of laced holsters, . . . but yours looks really good. AND, . . . your stamping looks at least 3 times better than mine. I keep telling myself PATIENCE, . . . PATIENCE, . . . PATIENCE, . . . then I get just enough in a hurry to mess up the stamping, . . . so I more or less forgo any stamping. I'm only 74, . . . maybe when I get a bit older I'll slow down. In the meantime, . . . have fun with that, . . . you earned it. May God bless, Dwight

I use 120 grit on everything, . . . as Dikman said, . . . a light touch is necessary. I've actually got 2 of em, . . . switch burned up on one, . . . didn't have time to fix it, so I went and got another one, . . . oldest is about 10 years old, . . . both are a bit noisy, . . . but they work great. RockyAussie also mentioned the dust, . . . I use a 5 gallon shop vac, . . . have it connected to the sander and running outside my shop so I don't have to listen to the noisy little rascal, . . . but it keeps the dust down pretty well. I used to do all my sanding outside even in the winter, . . . but with the vac, I don't have to any more. I especially like the edge I get on my belts, . . . and my customers seem to as well. Plus this particular model the sanding belts are fairly inexpensive. I also have a Dremel like Halitech mentioned, . . . but it does not do as good a job on my holsters and belts, . . . so I just use it in the tight places. I started to build a 2 x 72 belt sander for some other work, . . . also wanted to use it in the leather work, . . . decided it would be too aggressive. Hope this helps, may God bless, Dwight

I use this one for all my leather working needs, . . . it has a hose connection for a sweeper, . . . I really like that I use it for sheaths, belts, wallets, badge cases, holsters, key fobs, . . . all of it. Harbor freight, . . . originally about 40 bucks, . . . about twice that now. May God bless, Dwight

My guess is that the spring steel will make his pocket stand out, . . . let him try it without the steel, . . . I always make mine with the rough side out, . . . like you are doing The double stitched piece up front will hit the top of the pocket, . . . strips off the holster, . . . works perfect every time. Do a light molding of the gun, . . . then after it dries, . . . wiggle it hard back and forth to loosen it up, . . . May God bless, Dwight

Welcome from the Ohio portion of the US, . . . we have fun here, . . . stick around and join us. Are you working on a project at the moment?? May God bless, Dwight

Personally I would cut a piece of suede, . . . shape it to fit the hole. Attach the pin(s) to the suede, . . . contact cement the suede to the bottom of the hole. May God bless, Dwight

Yep, . . . Josh hit this one, . . . I should have mentioned about the oiling that goes with Feibings dyes. I had a bunch of aggravation with their saddle tan, . . . until I got in the habit of oiling before I dyed the leather. I take a cheap bristle brush and lay on a light coat on the flesh side of what ever I'm getting ready to dye, . . . give it 24 to 36 hours in a warm room to dissipate out into the leather uniformly, . . . then give her the old dip dye treatment. My saddle tan problems went away when I started that, . . . so now it is just about universal as doing it that way. I think it was Katsass who mentioned it one time, . . . and I tried it. May God bless, Dwight

Don't know as I've ever ran into that except an occasional light wrinkling effect on the inside layer of some double layer belts I've made. Just every now and then after the thing is done, I see some slight wrinkles but nothing that is harmful, . . . and it is not on the outside where they can be seen. The worst one was one I attributed to an extra heavy application of Resolene, . . . and it was one of the thicker belts I've made. But FYI I also do use all Feibings oil stains, . . . got a bottle of black water base I need to take out to the trash some day. May God bless, Dwight

Not to be hard nosed, . . . but it looks like you really got cheap on the welts for those knife sheaths, . . . or you didn't put any in. A welt for a knife sheath is kinda like a steering wheel for a car. Might get along without it for a while, . . . but in the end you'll sure wish you had it. Thin welts allow the knife to cut to one side of them, . . . eventually cutting the threads, . . . a thicker welt, . . . especially the top 1/3 or so, . . . nearest the finger guard, . . . is mandatory if you want to not cut up your leather work. AND, . . . nix on the rivets, . . . it is always the hallmark of a cheap sheath, . . . May God bless, Dwight

You really have about 2 good options: Leave it as it is, . . . Trash it and start over, . . . You already figured out what happens if you start punching more holes in there, . . . unless of course you add enough to make it look like you are decorating the belt with extra holes every 1/2 inch or so. May God bless, Dwight