When I was starting to work with leather, my brother-in-law gave me a box of all his scraps. Most of it was latigo. A few years later, I wanted to build myself an archery quiver, as I shoot archery tournaments at Renaissance faires. I decided to try working with that box of scraps. I came up with a completely unique design, and tried tooling a bit on a couple scraps I wasn't using. After a few failures, I decided, with little actual training from an experienced leather worker, to try carving my designs, then try to tool it from there. I started by carving my designs first, then I laid a wet cloth on the leather until it started absorbing the water, then began tooling. SUCCESS! I created an incredible looking quiver, with a lot of great Celtic knotwork and my personal emblem on it. I brought it to the local leather supply to show a friend that worked there, and has since been promoted to district manager. He looked it over, complimented me on the work, but said it shouldn't have worked using latigo leather. It actually only took me two days to complete the carving and tooling for all the panels, but assembly took about five days, and lots of blood from sticking myself with the needles. I'll post a few pictures in a few hours as I have to unbury it from my mobile workshop.
