CitizenKate

I got it from my local Hobby Lobby in the model train section. Kate

Yeah, I'd like to see that, too. Kate

You may want to try a stainless steel blade angle with your swivel knife. The stainless blades are thinner than the carbon steel blades, and make it much easier to carve with more accuracy. Kate

That's okay, skip, we still got our laughs. Kate

I second what Mike advises. I would add that, sometimes, design cuts can look choppy in the places were the cut was interrupted. To make the cuts smooth in those places, you just need to be sure the blade is carefully seated back into the cut before continuing. Kate

1:1 is a good place to start. For darker colors I use more, for lighter colors, less. Tandy carries numerous antiques and stains. If you use dyes or antiques, you should also put a top coat of some kind over it to seal the colors and prevent them from bleeding. The exception to that is if you use something like Tandy's all-in-one, which is an antique/stain and finish in one product. I've tested it, and do not hesitate to recommend it to beginners. It's easy to use, and gives pretty nice results. Kate

The only "rule" I follow for mixing dye colors is, what do I think looks good? Once I think I have the color I want, I paint it onto a piece of leather, and sometimes also antique over it, to be sure I'll get the final color I want. The amounts you use to get an exact color will vary from one project to the next because dyes from different lots of the same color can vary quite a bit. For mixing, I use medicine droppers and measure by the dropper-full. I keep track of how much I use of each color to get the shade and hue I want, but I always test it each time. The "reducer" is mostly just denatured alcohol, which you can buy by the gallon for less than the cost of a 16oz bottle of the "official" stuff. Try putting on a lighter coat first, then follow with stronger coats. Hope this helps... Kate

I'm re-posting some photos I took to demonstrate using latex as a dye mask, when using an airbrush to color your project. I'll come back and add some more detailed information at some point, but the photos alone are fairly informative. Please note the difference between using this as a dye resist and an antique resist. This is great for dye jobs, but I don't recommend it for resisting antique. Kate

They sure do! Thanks very much!!! Kate

Does anyone know a good supplier for those 6-hook key plates that are used in key cases? I remembered seeing them in one of my Tandy catalogs, but their most recent one doesn't have them. I called Hidecrafter, but this was one of the items they recently dropped from their inventory. I found an ebay seller that has the nickel-plated ones, but none of the brass plated ones. I checked on Springfield Leather's web site, been searching all over the web... nada. Thanks, Kate

Regis, get some medicine droppers, like these. Kate

Wow, you guys have some really nice "firsts". Just goes to show how much talent we have here. I happen to have handy in my "outgoing attachments" folder a photo I took of one corner my first chess board... I was resuming leather work after about 25 years of inactivity. I also have another photo of one I did with the exact same pattern about a year later. I really cringe when I look at the first one. Kate

Kathy, that is unmistakably a walleye. Don't be so hard on yourself. That is very nice work. Kate

What a great thread - I love reading about everyone's lives and the places they live... Thanks to being the child of a career air force man, I was born in Gainsborough, England, and also lived in Germany for 3 years when I was very young. But most of my life, I've lived in Kansas. My parents were both very crafty. My dad was into leather work, gun smithing, and photography, and my mom was into everything else - sewing, embroidery, knitting, crochet, quilting, collage, etc. So I had a lot of exposure to many various crafts as a youth, as well as playing various instruments. After a series of twists and turns in my career (at one point I was studying music education at Wichita State University), I became involved in the IT world during the early '80's and have pretty much stayed there since. Today, I live in Manhattan, in the northeast part of Kansas, in the Flint Hills and close to the Konza prairie wildlife preserve. (Did I mention Kansas State University? ) I have two dogs (Mushka and Nigel) and two cats (Harley and Lucky), all rescued from animal shelters. Sometime during the 90's, I was strolling through the craft market at the Smokey Hill River Festival in Salina, KS, when I came upon the booth of one Ron Musser of Pennsylvania, who had on exhibit an impressive assortment of tooled leather game boards. I was instantly fascinated with the idea of a leather game board, and all kinds of ideas for themes started buzzing around in my head, so I decided to pick up leather work again. Game boards are still my specialty, but I have also branched out into other things in order to make use of the mountains of smaller leather pieces I have left over. Kate

I just got done tearing down some wall shelves from my garage wall which the previous owner of my house installed. Just making room for some metal shelves I'm adding. I thought that would be about a 10-20 minute job, just removing 6 wood screws... but that turned out not to be the case. It was bad enough he stripped the heads on every single one of those screws (except for the ones he broke off, that is), making it necessary for me to literally just take a hammer and bash the home-made wooden brackets off the wall. But when they finally came off, another sign of his fine workmanship was revealed: his method of locating wall studs... In all fairness, this could have been done before the days of electronic stud locators, but I found lots of 'em just by tapping a claw hammer gently on the wall in different places until I heard a difference in the sound, and usually nailed them pretty good - pardon the pun. What's funny is, I'm not sure what that was he marked on the right... there was no stud there. Sheesh! I'm glad he didn't do much work inside the house! Kate

First rate, as always! How do you plan to color it? Kate

Got the point! Still, maybe I should have photographed it after the first antique job to help you appreciate what a disaster it almost turned out to be. It does look quite a bit better now. And as for the frame... <snicker>... jeez, okay! Kate

Jayhawk?!? TOO-ey! Just kidding! I was actually thinking of making another one with a Jayhawk for my brother, who is a KU alum. We are, as they say, a house divided. Kate

This is exactly what I would have said. Thanks for saving me the typing, Marlon. Kate

Thanks for the comments, everyone... The main thing I'm not satisfied with is that the antique around the numbers and dial beading is a little too dark, and makes the numbers look a little fuzzy. Also, some of the purple faded a bit when I rubbed over it with the deglazer, so it's not quite as vibrant a purple as I would have liked. But I'm glad it turned out as well as it did, despite everything I did to screw it up. <_< Yeah... the frame I chose did not quite have the effect I thought I was going to get with it. I have another frame that's the same size, which I'm going to try and see if I like it better. The coloring was done thusly: - The logo was colored with spirit dye that was sprayed on. I applied liquid latex around it to mask off the background (I posted a demo of that process, but it's in SQL limbo at the moment; I'm still working on restoring the old posts, but in the mean time, I may re-post it.) - The beading around the dial and the numbers were painted with Createx transparent colors. - Then antique was applied. I squirt it on with a squirt bottle, then use paper towels to spread it and work it into the depressed areas. Then I use more paper towels (lots more) to quickly wipe off the excess, until I have the appearance I want. For my pieces, I almost always use an antique, and I almost never use a resist, so the antique accentuates the natural variations (sometimes even the flaws) in the leather. When I wipe off the excess, I keep the paper towel flat as I wipe across the leather, so the antique stays in the depressed areas. Sure, I'll take a crack at 'em. Nothin' to lose, right? That was awesome, yes. Finishing this up on the day after... the timing was a bit uncanny, was it not? Kate

Some of you may remember a clock I posted WIP awhile back (prior to the server meltdown in December)... well, this project took a turn for the worse when I fouled up the antique job - big time! (I ran out of paper towels and couldn't get the excess off before it started turning to goop! ) Also, most of the water-based dye I applied to the dial and the numbers came off. I was pretty disgusted with it, and tossed it aside until I could decide objectively what to do next with it, but I was pretty sure it was headed for the boo-boo bin. I took some deglazer to it, and got as much of the antique off as I could, but it had absorbed well into the leather in the deeper parts (which is one thing I usually like about the formula I use), so it wasn't coming off in those places. Last week I took another look at it and decided to try to finish it. I re-painted the dial and the numbers with some Createx transparent colors, then re-applied the antique. This time, I had a massive pile of paper towel sheets ready to go! Yessir! Yup! Heck yeah. So here it is... I still haven't attached the clock movement, and it's still not as nice as it would have been if I had done the job right the first time, but at least it's not a total loss... Kate

Ooooo.... very nice, Timbo. Nice clean look. Kate

Puh-TOO-ey! :D Kate

Spit it out, Kev! Kate PS: Lovely work, Freakathon!

I'm sure nobody would mess with me if I had a guardian like that! Kate