Rahere

It's been worked from the bottom to the top, two lines of slits, Up Two Crossing RL before LR on the front, Down One Straight on the back. 1. Take a long length of lace, halve it, and insert it equally through the second holes from the end, from the front. 2. Run both tails back through the bottom slots just beneath. 3. Run the right tail through the next slot up on the left side, then the left likewise on the right side. 4. Repeat from step 2 until the tails are too short. Complete a step 3, then run them down as if to thread a step 2, but glue them down and trim short rather than running them through the holes.. Restart with a fresh lace from step 1, in the holes you just used to bury the tails, so the new lace hold the old tails down, then continue normally. An alternative would be to skive-join, gluing new lace on, but it's a recipe for a mess at your level, the crossing lace isn't visible as it's buried by the overlacing..

Latigo, if that's what it actually is, is a hybrid tan which creates a relatively waxy leather, which could help your question. It's mostly a Horween product, so very unusual to find in the UK.

It's too out of focus to tell. It looks like an overstitch, or a machine stitch, with a V stitch overlaid by a runnung stitch of some sort. A picture of the rear of the stitching would also help.

The pyramid idea was a New Age concept, didn't really matter what it was made of, it was just the shape. Edges seemed to last longer. My woodworker background goes r-i-i-i-g-h-t when you talk about a new plane blade or a blade fresh from the grinder being sharp. OK, it's not blunt, but it's not goung to cut crossgrain lime and leave a polished surface. The difference in sharpness between a headsman's axe and a quality samurai sword. I'm an adict of Japanese water stones, as used for said sword. An oilstone takes you to a bead you sheer, leaving a line a few crystals thickj that's on the way to sharp, so you then use rouge on a strop as a grinding paste to improve on that. That's about what an 800 Japanese starts at. Then 1600, 2400. After that the pareto principle sets in, you can improve by small amounts but by much more work, realistically I'm a maker, not an addict.

You may find punch heads are available for your setting press, but glue hide to the anvil to spare the cutter

@Dwight, the same for bodkins. For fun, have you seen Joerg Sprave's The Slingshot Channel on Youtube? He's trying to make quivers redundant.

Zippers come in two types, toothed and chain: the chain type resembles a looped wire. Some types are reversible, ie a slider can work pointing in either direction, so something like a bag can take two sliders each with a half-hasp allowing a padlock, for example. There are also locks with a tooth engaging in the zipper, running from simple stops to full key locks. These are pretty much limited to the #5 size, although I have seen some for the #10, they're really scarce. The # is the width of the closed zipper, in mm. There's ambiguity over the definition of open and closed zippers. I'll start from continuous roll zipper, which is cut to length. If the entire thing is to be separable, then the bottom end tags are the tongue and housing, which go over the teeth or replace them, otherwise it's a staple tag holding the engaged teeth closed. The top end will usually have a separate stop tab crimped over a tooth on each side, but if you're using a slider coming from each end, then it may be the same as a closed bottom end. Teeth outside the tags are usually cut away. Made-up zippers are simply this done for you, so it may be possible to remove the top tags and move them slightly lower, if you need to shorten a zipper that's too long. YKK make the widest range available, including the different locking sliders. To go into this in greater depth, https://www.ykkfastening.com/products/zipper/

What are you using as the punch? One of the plier type? If so, ditch it, get a set of straight punches - I might suggest Ivan's with the swappable heads, except one sheared...half the cutting edge just disappeared...That way you're punching straight up and down where you put the punch. Use a soft-head mallet (leather/rubber/plastic) As far as the rivets are concerned, use the right size head for the rivet, I'd suggest.

As you say, @Bonecross, they could pop out. Given leather is organic and matures, I'd suggest that, in the long term, "will" is a more likely option. That being said, turquoise and cabuchons aren't the hardest stones, and could probably be edge-slotted using a Dremel diamond disk mounted in their table router, perhaps using rouge as a grinding paste. That would then offer the possibility of inlaying a thinner chrome leather force-fitted into the slot, before gluing. Again, it might be worth checking if epoxy is the best option compared with my current, expensive go-to, Renia colle de cologne, which seems to hold on to anything unusually well. At the same time, epoxy will soak into the leather in the slot, turning it into an o-ring. Horses for courses.

Given you're pretty sure you're going to have spare on the binding, I'd suggest you go for overkill, with 1/4 " excess before you bring the bag in, and 1/4" or more on the tail. Unravel the thread in each tail, back to the bag by a stitch, and hold it well out of the way while you trim the excess binding flush. Then bury the excess thread by backsewing four or five stitches by hand, in saddle stitch. Cut flush and heat to lose the polyester stub back into the material.

You're not the only one! One of the reasons to do a test on some scrap of the materials.

As well...so the issue's that 6" of binding's stretching into 6.3" or something when sewn to 6" of substrate? I'd live with it and trim the excess once sewn. You'll find the same with fabric, it'll stretch more in one direction, which is why binding's cut on the bias.

Eyes are almost exactly 40mm across, the same as a ping-pong ball, so it can be used to wet-form a mask.

If the issue's it not coming out flat, have a good look at the interlock of the threads. It may be that where they loop around each other in the hole isn't in the middle, but almost at the surface on one side. That's caused by a tension difference, with the curve pointing towards the side that's too tight.

His planer is finely settable, a rotating drum with a cutter on each side of the drum. He's got the idea, double-sided tape, although it may be better to damp the leather and wrap it over the ends, using clamp bars screwed into the end grain. It'll be drum taut that way when it dries.

A wood planer is perfect for the job, if you have one. It's just that leather companies want to split hides which may be an unusable 7-8mm thick into a top split and a suede, each 3-4mm.

It would be easier, under these instances, to use a venturi brush, which creates an airflow across the mouth of the bottle to create a vacuum sucking its contents into the flow. All you'd have to clean then is the cap of the bottle.

Them's going to need my services - look up my avatar's history.

Dye has an annoying habit of following the fibres, making a small logo ill-defined. Resist may be a little better, but not good enough. Test on some scrap. You could get it etched by someone else, then cut to size and sew it on.

What went wrong? Didn't you case it?

As far as the 2-3 layer question's concerned, it may be an incipient welt. A gasket is sewn in between welt and upper, designed to protrude well beyond them when turned.this then offers something to sew a hardier main sole to, without intruding into the body of the shoe itself. The lower of the seams is thereby hidden, and a separate welt trim can also be glued to the top, before stitching, thereby filling the top seam too. That's in general shoemaking. For general information, Sveta Kleta's Youtube channel is a decent starter.

The reason the Faire folk like them is because they're turnshoes, made up inside out so the welt disappears inside, holding leather against leather to keep the damp out. One sewn, they're literally turned inside out. Someone's then glued an artificial sole on afterwards - stitching through would destroy the dampproofing, and turning it needs a relly flexible sole. What appears to be welting is actually the insole seam allowance turned over. In a true mocassin, that would be the sole anyway. Look at the different side-stitching techniques used for true welting.

One issue's possibly copper rot. In the 1980s a kind of cancer was causing a problem, latex and rubber variously turned crystalline or runny/gummy, and the thing spread as if catalytically. It was tracked down by a process of elimination to metalwork containing copper or copper alloys, which were studiously avoided. This doesn't seem to be an issue now, but I don't know why, I didn't have time to follow. Perhaps they've changed the formulation. Hand-set eyelets are very likely to be copper-cored, even if coated, and the act of setting opens hairline cracks.

In life, you often get a choice of two out of three. Speed, cost and beauty is one of them. If it's pretty and fast then it won't come cheap. You seem to wantvfast, and hand-held indicates cheap, so it won't be pretty. That's my penniworth, take it or leave it.

Al Stohlman make them