Vikti

No way at all will I take that to work. I'd turn my back for a moment and then I'd see a pile of my tools lying on the ground and my bag missing. Awesome job!! Damon

Sorry for the lack of info. I got the pattern from Big House Daddy and altered it for a southpaw and left out a couple of things that I don't use on my previous toolbelt. I used 6/7 oz leather and the best thing is I made it with about 2/3 of a half shoulder. Leftovers for more projects! Damon

Just got this finished today. I might make another with some improvements as I can think of them. Damon

Super great!!!! Damon

I have a 9 oz. poly mallet and a BK 16 oz. tapered mallet in my kit. I do just about everything with my BK mallet. Now I haven't used it on a strap end punch but I have used it for setting snaps. rivets and oblong punched. Just give the tool a couple of good whacks and keep moving on. I would recommend to not use it on your smaller seeders because you could easily drive it straight through the leather into you slab and ruin your seeder, that's why you have a smaller mallet. Don't underestimate your maul. Even a 14 oz. one can pack a good punch. Now, when to use one over the other, I think that for the most part that's personal preference. I use my heavy mallet for almost all my tooling (except for my small seeders), I use my small mallet when I'm using said seeders or when I'm tooling and I don't want to make too much noise, my table that I tool on amplifies almost any kind of noise from hammering to dropping tools on the table. Just experiment. Damon

I'd be happy with a youtube channel. There was someone a while back who was saying that he was going to do one but nothing ever became of it. Damon

She's going to be helping out at Bella's Braids throughout the week but I'll ask her to try to stop by and show them off. Damon

Now that I am getting both money and time to start I'm starting to work a bit outside of my comfort zone. My wife is getting ready to attend Gulf Wars in Mississippi in a couple of weeks and I decided to start out by making her a new pair of Viking style shoes. All I have left to do is to put a coat of Edgecoat on the sole (which I think I should have done before gluing the sole on) and put the toggles on to hold it closed. Not too bad for a first attempt at footwear as well as creating my own pattern. Damon

I don't know how well this would work out or if you would like the effect, but what about applying some needsfoot oil to it? I know that it would darken it up but maybe it would help hide the spots. Damon

Hi Daggram, Is there a way you can email me the pattern for the high top shoes? I'm trying to get my wife ready for Gulf Wars that's next month. Damon

There's the Lone Star Leather Guild that meets up at Hidecrafter in Ft Worth but that's about it. Damon

Cool, someone right around the corner from me!! Howdy from Cleburne Damon

Check out http://www.bighousedaddy.com/making_a_leather_hat.htm I've gotten a couple of patterns from him and I like the way he makes his patterns. Damon

I watched a couple of his videos showing this tool. While I know that there are times when we use a beveler on an area where we didn't cut the leather to get certain effects but there is very little carving that I saw on his videos. On some of his work he shows images that really needed to be carved before beveling and some of that looks real bad. Good intentions but, I think, bad implementation.

Hi RD! Where at are you in this big state? Damon in Cleburne

The majority of my tools are from Hidecrafter and I prefer them over my Craftools hands down. Now, the Hidecrafters tools are considered entry level but I think you'll like the results better. Also, if you cannot afford the BK swivel knife then at least get a BK blade. Damon

The electrical contractor I use to work for had me out at Alcon Labs in south Ft. Worth and they have a very interesting museum there which includes 2-3 pair of leather spectacles. Below is a link to their virtual museum (there is a link to a slide show about the leather specs) but I will say that the internet doesn't do them justice. The people at Alcon are great people and maybe if you can get in touch with the caretaker maybe they can find a way to get you some pictures that are better than the web site shows. http://www.alcon.com/en/research-development/alcon-eye-museum.aspx Hope this helps. Damon

Hidecrafters has a dvd/pattern pack for a hunting bag that's pretty good. You can find it here Hope it helps Damon

Love it! Wish I had enough money to buy one from you. Damon

Your work never ceases to amaze me. Is this a simple cover that slips over the exsisting cover of the book or do you send the cover off to a book binder and let the binder make it part of the book? Damon

I've been using Pro-Carve and I'm about to run out and was looking around here for casing solution mixtures because a lady at the Tandy in west Ft. Worth (I think her name was Linda) said that she uses dish soap in her water. Can I use the concentrated dish soaps or does it have to be the regular soaps? Thanks, Damon

I've seen people use these shop presses before for die cutting of leather but for stamping purposes, how would you know when you have enough pressure on the leather? Damon

Those are totally awesome!! Question though, about how tall are your pouches? You don't have anything in your pictures that shows the relative sizes if them. (Please disregard, answered in another post.) Keep up the good work, Damon

I have about 20 of these tools and they are very good compared to some Craftools stamps. They have pretty sharp impressions for the most part Damon

Really can't argue with that logic.....