Rahere

For the edge burnishing, use a dremel with a spindle-mounted head (I got mine from Proops, a man-toy shop originally on London's Tottenham Court Road, now on Etsy). Far faster

I think Batchelors may have stocked them. They unscrewed. If there's no other solution, try chicago screws for the rivets. Prym setting kits are cheap, though, if not the best for finish. Green Machine presses are wirth the £40 orvso.

You'll have to help them with the witches, @Matt S Witches - witches spells - Bow bells. The classic definition of a cockney is to be born within hearing of the bells of Bow Church. A Scoobie's? Scoobie Doo - clue. Correctly done, because the cartoon series is about hunting clues down. It's the hidden indicator of a real cockney, there's always a backchat second meaning. That's contextual, so with Halloween Sabbath falling on Shabbat, Saturday, tomorrow, most appropriate. wth, I'll indulge myself. Made up on the fly. Got into a pumpkin last night. You should've seen the other guy. Pumpkin light=fight. Hidden, my face is puffy.

The problem with templates is they push the blade out of the vertical. I use Ivan English point punches, at long last affordable. Check out their corner punches too, the white line on the outside lines up with the point of the corner.

I'm a pragmaticist: theory's fine, but leather's real, and you're proving there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio! Another approach would be to do the same, but using card to make a template to be used kn laying out your leather for tooling, rather than the leather itself.

I can't help thinking organic decomposition indicating incomplete tanning. True, mediaevals would see that as normal. They were aromatic. I'm tempted to suggest another soak in tannin.

In general, if it's large enough, probably yes. BUT, the work involved may not be worth it. It may be easier to put what you've got aside for something needing its features, and start afresh with something more suitable. There are many types of "bag", from a holster, which your samples might be ideal for, through a briefcase, likewise, to a handbag, getting more floppy, to a day bag, totally floppy, to a mediaeval moneybag/belt pouch, needing a suede. Firstly, how thick is it? Anything over 1mm is probably too thick for a bag, but could be split down, expensively at this point. If it's 3-4mm, keep it to learn tooling on. Veg tan can take water, and dry out, so before putting oils and softening agents into it, try that, to see how still it really is. If it's still board-like, it'll not machine sew easily, for starters. If it is loose-fibred enough to take oils, then folk here can advise.

Tack-stitching. Make it up as you would a blank, but with a single tread, one hole in five, cut it to length. Remove the stitching (it should just pull through) and work. Make up properly.

I was trying to think of the term for the anti-scam. RFID.

I considered adding a comment that if it's large enough, it can add useful shape to the wallet, and cover an anti-scam material (there's folk out there who've gutted a swipe reader and read your cards on public transport, in your wallet).

No, it's just it goes in the opposite direction to minimal. Another approach it to tool a plaque and sew it to the wallet before make-up. I've a roo-skin wallet 20 years old, daily use. There's no way it would take tooling though, it's as thin as cloth.

In the UK, we'd use Kiwi. Any non-liquid tin polish is likely to work. More generally, feed it with pure neetsfoot oil (not compound), then beeswax. It depends on how desperate it is.

You're going in the opposite direction of light, here. Roo leather can be split without losing much strength, so usually is, to 1mm or less, whereas tooling leather generally starts at 3-4mm, to take punch impression. The reason veg-tanned leather is used is because it holds water: chrome-tanned doesn't. Roo can be either. But finding 4-5mm veg-tanned ? You'd likely have to have it shipped from the wonderful land of Oz.

https://www.aacrack.co.uk/tanneries/badalassi-carlo/badalassi-carlo-minerva-box-cognac-15-17.html tells us they've used animal fat as the wax, and you've pummelled it out. What the original was is likely a trade secret, but https://www.leather-dictionary.com/index.php/Oils_%26_fats_in_the_leather_industry gives some idea. In general, a shoe polish will preserve the original leather, and might save this.

With all respect to Fiebings and Bigfoot, who has a number of videos on their site, simply tagging the product page Ingredient Disclosure isn't what the Law requires. I used to work with one of the world's top specialists in industrial injuries due to skin reactions, and almost anything will trigger someone. Product safety sheets are commonplace in industry, we should encourage them here. It would also facilitate identifying the exact issue, because the following comes from a generalised angle. Having watched the reactions, which are naturally pragmatic, I come back to a core baseline in fibre dyeing. The original, mediaeval norm involved two ingedients, a colour, and a fixant, usually called a mordant, which holds the colour to the fibre - so-called because it was thought to bite into the fibre.. When I talk about fibre, it's anything, organic or inorganic, we want to colour. Most fibres are pretty good at keeping themselves clean, so a dye, straight-up, isn't always going to stay, which is the issue here. The usual preparation included extensive cleaning, often using natural ammonium (I'll spare you the details) as well as degreasers. That was followed by soaking in the mordant (which may have been where tanning started, as tannins are often used), then dying, and finally fixing with the mordant again. Quite a faff, so things have been simplified. Without knowing exactly what's in your dye, an educated guess suggests a certain likelihood of an azo dye which binds to leather in a cationic ion exchange reaction. This simplifies the issue, because it suggests one of two possibilities: too much dye, or insufficient cleaning. I note that the Fiebings pages emphasise use of their cleaner product first, which hasn't been mentioned. The question of too much dye suggests it might be preferable to be sparing on the first dye, and come back with more if the need arises. We all know that a form of surface tension capilliary action spreads the dye quite efficiently (sometimes too much so if you're trying to keep it to an area), so perhaps we should allow the leather to dictate. At the same time, I'm not going to exclude other additives such as a resin coating, which could make repeat dyeing problematic. For this reason, testing on scrap is probably wise.

Don't use saddle-stitch, if that's what you mean by two needles, rather, over-stitch going round three or four times, then back-stitch at least 3 stitches. A judicious dab of glue in the hole to consolidate the stitching and knots probably won't hurt, either.

It may well be that the rounds are lightly coated in gun oil, to care for the notoriously dry and dusty inside of magazines, and so there's less risk of jams in the breech.

Hold fire while the heavyweights get their thinking hats on.

There are a number of approaches to the tip. 1. Blunt cross-cut, rounded corners. Often used with plate buckles, because there's no real threading involved. 2. Angle tip. Mark the centre, slope back at about 40 degrees, round where it joins the side of the belt. 3. English tip. Parabeloid curved. Ivan do cheap stamps.

From the dye angle, we seem to be in the stone age. Normally, a mordant's applied first to give the dye something to get into, and very often something similar's used as a fixative. Traditionally, this was sodium carbonate (NOT bicardonate) otherwise known as washing soda and soda ash. Dyes not fixing properly are indications a mordant is needed, but how this or other preparations interact with leather tannins is a moot point. Has anyone experimented?

Ivan sell sensibly-priced English Tip punches, for a beginner. Those are the parabola tips, rather than pointed ones, which never wear down. A length of alumunium angle is almost as cheap as the timber, and doesn't warp. Don't forget you can cut cross-wise too. Belts don't all have to be 48", either, but make the shorter ones, for women, far thinner

Yikes! Just the front, or the entire helmet cover? You'll have to look to see what mount points you've got, a top eagle clip, perhaps? Most have a strong rear plate, with appliqué sewn onto it, flesh side to flesh, so the base plate faces the helmet.. That can be quite a task, if the rear's very thick, use a diamond awl and saddle-stitching.

Let's try it this way, looking from the front. = 5 = = 4 = = 3 = = 2 = = 1 = Push one end of the lace through each of the slots marked 2. Bring both back to the front through the slots marked 1, without crossing, straight down, left through left, right through right. Push the end on the RIGHT through the LEFT slot marked 3. Push the other end (the lower of the two on the LEFT) through the RIGHT slot marked 3. The laces have crossed sides. Bring both back to the front through the slots marked 2, without crossing, straight down. Continue, going up 2 rows each time and crossing the same every time on the front, down one row on the back, never crossing. So 2-1, 1X3, 3-2, 2X4, 4-3, 3X5, 5-4, 4X6...alternately back-front-back-front, where "X" has the laces cross sides, always going forwards 2 rows on the front, and "-" has the laces keep to their same side, always 1 row backwards, on the back.

And how.

The first pattern used a single end, burying the other. That produced the lopsided lace, because it has ro move up the work. A balanced lace, by comparison, uses both ends. What you're looking at is the reverse of two parallel lines of backstitch, with the overlap turned into a decorative crossover. The underside is the normal front. If you were to use complementary colours, gluing the tails rather than crossing them at the start, you'd get a sine wave effect, I think.