Bree

Here's one I made last night that I am kinda sweet on... East Indian Rosewood Crotch Cigar Pen with Black Titanium plating.

OK I have PIX for you to see. Note that this Reply function is basically dead as a stone in IE 8.0.6001. No way to post PIX. Here's a few. Enjoy!!

Hi everyone! Johanna reminded me that I have been absent too long. I got this new Delta 46-460 woodturning lathe and I have been making lovely pens with it. So I ended up chatting with the penturners on their forum. But it's that Facebook Sorority Life game that has sucked up the balance of the little free time that I have since IBM is torturing me with huge amounts of overtime. Soooo... I have been on a leather vacation!! I have worked on some projects and I will try to share some of that stuff next thread. But I have missed you all and thought of you many times!! Anyhoo... wasn't it ohhhh soooo nice to get a vacation from me!!!

I have been away for awhile and today is the first time that I saw the new site. I don't even know when it deployed to production. My first reaction was surprise and then a mixture of both good and some bad feelings about the site design. I am an experienced, professional webmaster working for IBM so I know something about website design. It does not surprise me that some people would react strongly... some positive and and some in a negative way. Don't take it personally. Pay close attention to your clients. They are the lifeblood of the site. Their wants and needs are extremely important. If you listen and keep improving a little bit all the time, you can't go wrong. As far as the developers and admins go... there is no doubt that this is a big job done primarily out of love. Every now and then the subscribers need to be reminded that this is basically volunteer work and more thanks is needed than criticism. No one likes thier work criticized especially when it is given gratis or for low return. Still anytime you put work into the public forum you are exposed to the risk of criticism. That is the nature of the beast. Fact is that crtique and dialectic are what drive innovation and improvement. We just need to keep it balanced, focused, and constructive. I won't go into the things that I find positive or negative in this post. You can email me and I would share my thoughts privately if desired. I will say that you folks have the best resource for the Leatherworker on the Net. You can be proud of it! And you deserve a strong THANK YOU!! from each and every one of the subscribers. You have my THANK YOU! Keep up the good work. But keep listening and improving too! Then everyone wins.

Looks like some very nice curly maple! It's good strong wood. Should give a lifetime of service.

For you tac light aficionados... I recently got a new handheld that is absolutely awesome... the Olight Triton M-30 700 lumen tactical strobe. I have an Olight T-20 which is outstanding but this thing is the cat's meow of small tactical lights/torches. I know of nothing this small with the kind of power and sophistication of this torch... and it strobes on command instantly unlike most of its competitors. When something goes bump in the night in our house, BG's can initially expect to be greeted by this utterly blinding strobe with more bad news to follow!! Here is a link to the details http://www.batteryjunction.com/olight-m30-triton.html

Same thing happened to me on some leather I was splitting. There is a thread on here (somewhere) that I started with PIX and good explanations from the team!

Bob... Did you ask him about his comments to Ken? I must say that he wasn't all that customer friendly in his response to Ken's complaint.

I have a Badger 100 that I used for many years. I recently bought a cheap double action from Harbor Freight to replace the Badger. That Harbor freight airbrush is perfect for blowing sealer and the like. It is dirt cheap and is of remarkably good quality for Harbor Freight. Their little compressor is also quite serviceable. http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/disp...temnumber=95810 Unless you are doing airbrush painting and the like, this brush is really all you need and you will save a lot of $$$.

Really nice job!

Good job! Remember this... Once you start pricing on the cheap... it is VERY difficult to get your customers to accept your pricing on the premium end. You stereotype yourself. You make yourself a cheap commodity. It's hard to turn straw into gold. It is much easier for a premium pricer to fall on bad times and have to part with something of high value for less. And that is a very easy sale to make. You can have exactly the same product at exactly the same price but the PERCEPTION of the value to the buyer can be determined by the normal pricing of the seller's other merchandise. It's not logical but it's true. So since none of us are producing millions of units at the lowest possible cost... none of us should be pricing our wares at the lowest possible price on a daily basis. Custom work is PREMIUM work. Charge accordingly and make the customer believe that they get PREMIUM work from you no matter what they actually pay as a result of wheeling and dealing. My $.02

I've had one on my bikes for years. Actually several different kinds. So there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to motorcycles... now horses might be a different story. What would really get you noticed is a non-spill coffee cup holder and a 12V Cappuccino maker to go with it!! Get that going on a horse and you are making history!!

DNU 1541 can sew 138 thread but it is the max thread size for this machine. Quite frankly, I would not sew with 138 on the 1541. If you want thread that thick, go to a heavier stitcher. Avoid problems by not pushing the machine to its design limits. My $02.

Yes I would say that the Tormek jigs are the best. The Tormek machine is the best but not $579 vs $169 the best. I can buy all my Tormek jigs and do my little milling adaptations and still be under the price of the Tormek T7 WITHOUT even starting to buy jigs. The Grizzly T10010 can do everything the Tormek can... just takes a little creative thinking and tinkering. The Profile Wheels are two wheels that attach to the honing wheel side of the sharpener which are tipped with leather... one rounded and one V-shaped used to take the wire edge off tools after they have been ground and honed. They are useful for several leather tools.

I am jealous as can be!! Great job! I wish my 29's looked that good!! Bree

Tapering works just fine. I have several times done a 6" to 4" taper which was very well accepted on back support wide belts.

Bad idea methinks. Think about the leather substrate compared to a fabric substrate. The needle comes down and parts the warp and woof of the fabric. The fabric is unharmed by this action. The patch has a firm solid base. With leather every single time the needle comes down it puts a hole in the leather. It perforates it and each stitch weakens the leather. If you embroider the patch on a leather substrate the the patch is sitting on a piece of leather that looks like it was the backstop for the Battle of the Ardennes Forest with zillions of holes. I would use fabric as the substrate and maybe stitch a leather "background" under the completed patch to give the illusion that the background is leather. You get most of what he wants with a MUCH stronger patch. My $.02

LOL!! There ya go... now that is simple street wisdom! And I can't argue with it!!

The Grizzly T10010... IS... a Scheppach Tiger 2500. They are the same machine. I know this 100% for a fact because I asked Scheppach directly and they told me. They do not sell the Tiger 2500 in the US. They custom manufacture it for Grizzly and they market it here. The Scheppach jigs fit the Grizzly 10" wet grinder. Most Tormek jigs fit but not all. The profile wheels from Tormek require a 12mm profiling wheel shaft but the Grizzly/Scheppach has an 8mm shaft. I had my gunsmith mill an 8mm shaft identical to the Tormek shaft and it works like a charm. I made him a South American Kingwood Cigar pen for his trouble. And he is a very happy camper. The Tormek planer jig does NOT fit the Scheppach because the special fine adjust support bar is not the same width as the Scheppach. You could redrill the support bracket holes and use the Tormek or just get the Grizzly or Scheppach version of the planer jig. The cost is similar and the jigs all work well. For leather work the profiling sheels would be inportant so you should do what I did and get a special shaft milled for the wheels with 8mm male and female ends. Hope that helps. You will save a lot of $$$ by using Tormek jigs and buying Grizzly.

LOL!! Be thankful that you didn't slpash it on your face!! That would have made a bad day much much worse!

If you like the finish that you are using try applying the finish to the belt in the bent position versus lying flat. The leather will stretch and the oil will soak in so when it is bent again, there will be finish on the area that has stretched out. That should help some.

It smells vinegary but not horrible. It is not a huge reaction. Vinegar is very weak. There will be some little bubbles but it isn't a big deal. I use plastic coffee cans and they work fine. The lid would pop before anything bad happened. Just put some ferrous substance in with the vinegar and let her brew. Very simple. Just remember this is a chemical agent... ferric acetate. Treat it with respect.

Happy Birthday Johanna!! May you have many more and prosper throughout the year as you head for the next one!

I probably didn't even use that much. I put in 1 tablespoon for maybe a quart of water... just enough to fill a rectangular Pyrex pie pan... probably a quart of H20. Chuck's formula is probably equally good because I let mine sit for a longer time than he does with his mix. Like Chuck, I used warm water to dissolve the baking soda and then let it cool. You can easily forget what you are doing and plop your leather into hot or even boiling water doing these operations. That would be a bad mistake. So be very careful to always have your fluids at the temperature you want them... and know why you want them at that temperature. It's kinda fun... like fooling around in chem lab!! LOL!

For the tight budget there is the "Sharp Eye Programmable Tacker"... you get an inch or two out and do an eyeball calculation of how much you will be off and make a SWAG adjustment so you hit spot on at the corner (or center point for a belt).