Martyn

Hi guys, just a quick question for the hive mind, you know that marbling effect you see when you heavily oil a piece of leather? I assume it's when the creases in the hide take up the oil a little faster than the surrounding area - is there any way to enhance that and lock it down to make it permanent? I love the look, but I've only ever seen it when I've put way too much oil on a piece and it always fades quickly anyway as the rest of the leather eventually takes up the oil and it all evens out.

Cant you make it from oil tan/bridle leather?

Ahhh, it takes a minute or two for the reaction to occur.

Did you soak dye it? I've only painted it on.

Did you wash the baking soda out? It might have been the baking soda that reacted with the bluing. I think most bluing methods involve some kind of pickle in an acid solution. You might not have just neutralised the vinegaroon with the soda, but also the blue? Either way, tough result. My sympathies.

I completely agree - but I'm using it on pre-waxed tiger thread too. At least it's supposed to be pre-waxed, but I've found that it varies and awful lot. This sticky wax is so good though, a quick, single pass over the block and you're away. It's dead simple to make and once you've tried it, you wont go back. The recipe above is actually 'recipe 1' from this article here: http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/CODE.HTM Just to add to the above instructions, the reason some recipes call for 'toffy-pulling', is because they make the coad on a bain-marie type double boiler and the wax doesn't get hot enough to thoroughly melt the resin into an homogeneous mix. So you toffee pull it to mix it, but it's very messy and an awful lot of work. By heating the wax directly on an electric element, you can get it hotter and get a thorough, homogeneous mix directly in the pan. The risk is of course, you are working with very hot wax/resin mix. This stuff is like napalm and capable of inflicting very serious injuries. If you spill it on yourself, it's not going to wash off under the tap, it'll carry on burning through your flesh until it cools naturally, so great care must be taken. Obviously that is x10 if you get it near a naked flame and it catches fire too. If you make it - BE CAREFUL - you have been warned. /End of health and safety message.

Double post

It's the tannin itself which changes colour. You can turn oak black oak with the same stuff. If 'black' is coming out of your leather, then it's the tannin leeching out, but it's definitely not rubbing off. The piece must've come into contact with something pretty reactive to make it leech like that. Either that or the leather hadn't been washed and neutralised and there was still some ferric sulphide salts left in it, which bled out and came into contact with something containing tannin and turned it black.

I think veg tan has a pH of around 4. That's still quite acidic, you could try and push it closer to 7 with baking soda. Try a test piece and see.

I dont know what you've been using, but it doesnt rub off. It's not a stain and contains no pigments. In it's pure form, it's a clear liquid. It's a chemical reaction between the iron salts in the vinegaroon (ferric sulphide IIRC) and the tannins in the leather. It cant rub off, because it alters the leather itself.

This is the set you're using right? Why dont you try running a resist (resolene?) into the stamp depressions using a fine brush, then dying the raised portions also using a fine brush? Then when dry, run more resist over the whole letters before dying/airbrushing the rest of the collar?

I find glasses help with fine work of any kind - those cheap magnifying glasses you get off the shelf at a chemist.

I dont think this is actually quite the same as the coad or shoemakers wax you read about because there is no liquid pitch required, but it's damned good nonetheless. It's basically following a recipe Chuck Burrows told me about a few years ago - it's dead simple to make and it works! What you will need: Some beeswax Some Pine resin or rosin Both can be bought off ebay - or you can collect your own, whichever you prefer. Beeswax comes in a variety of different purities, typically the 'lentils' are the purest form, being a pale straw colour and very free of anything but pure wax. Purity isn't that important here though, so long as it's free of twigs and bits of dead bees, it should be fine. Pine resin or rosin is also readily available on ebay. It's used in aromatherapy and in the making of incense. It usually appears in the form of little broken rocks. I think when they clean and purify it, they must pour it out into trays and then smash it up with a toffee hammer. Anyway, pick a seller you like the look of and buy some. Doesn't matter which kind really, so long as it's pine resin of some kind, it'll work. I bought mine some time ago to make cutlers resin - same stuff, different recipe. You'll need a mix of somewhere between 60%-70% beeswax and 30%-40% resin or thereabouts. Approximately one third resin, to two thirds beeswax. It's not critical though, so dont stress over weights and measures, just make sure you've got about twice as much wax as you have resin and you'll be fine. Nest we're going to turn your little rocks of resin... ...into resin powder. This is easy, if you're using the commercial resin bought off ebay, it's quite brittle. Just put it in a tough plastic bag, put it on something hard and hit it with a hammer. You'll have a bag of resin powder in under a minute. Next we need a container to make it in. There are lots of options here, but I just went for an old British army mess tin... Whatever you decide to use, it's probably a good idea to make it 'sacrificial' or permanently earmark it as your wax melting tin. You'll need something to heat it on. I would strongly advise against a naked flame. I'm going to melt mine directly on my halogen hob. You'll also need something to pour it into. I've read about pouring it into iced water and then pulling it like toffee. I just pour it into a mould. I use a couple of hockey-puck sized ramekins. I use the ramekins to measure out my ingredients too. Two heaped ramekins of wax beans and one flat ramekin of resin powder. Dump them both into your melting pot, make yourself a stirring stick from a length of old cardboard packaging and it's off to the stove. Dab a paper towel with liquid dish soap and lightly rub some inside the ramekins, this will act as a release agent. I have no photos of the next stage, because it does require your undivided attention. But it's very simple. Heat the contents of your melting pot over a medium heat until it melts, stirring all the while as soon as you are able. If it starts to smoke, it's way too hot. Take it off the heat and allow to cool a little. Wax takes time to melt, so don't rush it. Heat it gently. The resin powder will go gloopy at first, like half-melted toffee. Just give it time and keep stirring. It'll dissolve into the wax to form a fairly clear, uniform amber liquid. At this stage I add a desert spoonful of olive oil. This lowers the melting point of the wax and makes it softer at room temperature. If you are in a hot country, you could leave this out, your call. When you are happy all the ingredients are fully melted and completely mixed together, take it off the heat, stir it a bit more and let it sit for a moment. This will let any particulates sink to the bottom. Then pour your wax into the moulds. It's a good idea to have the moulds sitting on a piece of baking foil or something, to catch any spills. Let the wax cool at room temperature for an hour or so, until it's fully solid and cool to the touch, then put them in the freezer for a couple of hours. Freezing the wax causes it to shrink away from the sides of the mould. When you take the moulds out of the freezer, turn them upside down and give them a sharp rap on the table and the wax puck should pop right out. If it doesn't, put it back in the freezer and try again later. That's it, that's all there is to it. No buckets of iced water or toffee pulling or anything. Let your wax come up to room temperature before using. It looks like wax and feels a bit like wax, but it's softer and much, much stickier. A single light pass is enough to load your thread. It loads the thread much easier than beeswax and it's way stickier. If you rub it, it makes your fingers a little tacky too, which is useful for gripping the needles. It's sticky wax.

Thanks Bri - those pics tell me exactly what I wanted to know. Unfortunately, not what I wanted to hear though. Still, I'll probably get one anyway - for the price it's just not worth making one. It would cost me £30 in wood and screws and then my time on top and the risk of botching it. The organiser was worth it because I had the scrap wood and proper organisers are expensive, but these draws are silly cheap. What can you get for £24 quid? It's a curry and a pint. Thanks for posting the pics mate, appreciate it.

Yeah, I agree, they arent 'everyday' but for certain applications, they are awesome. They actually look a lot better from some distance too. The closeup pics dont really tell the story. The combos with dark brown in em really pop, but they all look as different again on natural backgrounds. I'm gonna keep these tests and string em as swatches I think. Oh and here's Harry the cat - he likes to help out... :D

Been doing some more erxperiments with two tone stitching and different colours, here are the results... The thread is all tiger thread, 0.8mm... From left to right.. Black Dark Brown Havana Amberglow Beige Cream The black and cream I've already done above and wont bother with here, as the brown is very close to the black anyway. Brown and Havana... Brown and Amberglow... Brown and Beige... Havanna and Beige... Havana and Amberglow... Amberglow and Beige... The pics dont tell the whole story. In the flesh, the top three - the ones with dark brown in them are definitely the best looking ...at least on a dark background they are. Both me and the wife agreed the top one, brown and Havanna was the best of the bunch. The lighter, lower contrast combos look good on natural leather,l but they are a bit muddy on a dark background. Brown and Havana definitely works though, it's a nice combo, obvious without being too in your face.

No, but i've been tempted too. You can get em cheaper than that BTW... http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/371422785434 I have tried the cheasp Chinese 'Seiwa-style' pricking chisels though. You know what? They're OK, I like em. Front Back Set of 4 chisels for £15.

Looking good Bri. You see that divider between the two drawers on the right? Do you think that could be removed easily and without damaging the box? I want to take that divider out and make a tall drawer to go the full height of the box.

Ideally, yes, but it doesnt always work out nicely. You can see whether or not you'll need to make adjustments by rolling your chisel down your stitch line, end over end, like using dividers. You can see where the last hole in a run will fall and make adjustments accordingly. Once you know you will need to make an adjustment, as you are making your row of holes Instead of putting one prong of the chisel in the last hole you just made for perfect spacing, just 'fudge it'. By that I mean you abandon your last hole as a point of reference and set the gap manually. Make the gap slightly bigger or smaller - only very slightly. Do this two or three times on a run and you can make the last hole nail it into the corner and you wont notice that two or three stitches in the run are a hair too long or too short. Also, I like to use a round hole in corners, so stop one stitch short of the corner with your chisel and make the corner hole with a scratch awl. This helps with spacing too. Using the round corner hole method, you rarely need to make any adjustments to stitch length and it looks so much better. Nigel Armitage shows the round corner hole method here... https://youtu.be/TGuiha5S2oE?t=137

If you neutralise it with a soak/wash in baking poweder, it should be fine. If you're worried about the acidity, check it with litmus paper after washing. I've used in ona knife sheath for a carbon steel knife with no ill effects.

Aika, regardless of your unfortunate circumstances - and you have my sympathies - this thread is still ill-advised and ridiculous. I mean most of the people you are talking to, are on the other side of the planet. How were you hoping to consummate the relationship, Skype? Your short list should start with people in the same country at the very least, then maybe 'popping round for a coffee' falls within the realms of actually being possible. ...and regardless of what YOU want, there is the other issue of whether everyone else on here, wants to be subjected to your manhunting. lecture over. Do what you want and good luck to you.

The best tooling leathers are veg tanned and oil tanned. But big companies will use an electric hot press. Heat and a few tons of pressure will make a mark in almost anything.

Well it sounds like you've had your share of hardship and I genuinely wish you good luck in your search. If you want the advice of someone who's been happily married for 25 years, forget about making little baby leatherworkers, go socialise and meet some real people - and don't forget your sense of humour - it'll serve you well long after your behind has succumbed to the inevitability of gravity and cream cakes.

So you're hoping to meet your soul mate on the internet by telling people you're pretty and a good cook and then behaving like a 14 year old girl in a sweet shop? Get a grip. Ferg wasn't insulting you by the way, he was pointing out that the only man who is likely to show interest in this, is someone with problems looking for a tart. If that is what you are looking for, you are going about it the right way.

I dont have a next size up. I'm sure it would look better though. I'm just not keen on 5 spi. Besides, the weird thing with this chisel is I almost had to grab the pliers a couple of times, in spite of the fact it looks like there is a ton of room from the length of the cut. It's an odd chisel. I'd rather go smaller, it just looks so much nicer and everything seems so much more 'tuned' if that makes sense?