Spyros

I'm not designing bags for tug of war, not my gig sorry.

I mean if that is a rivet that I'm seeing in that photo it looks like the stem is sheared clean off, but with the leather staying in absolute pristine condition like there was never any force applied to it. I still have no idea how you managed to do that. To be honest with you I'd still go with rivets for that application. Generally speaking stitching is great because you have 20 bonds instead of two rivets, which shares the load more evenly, but the way you've done the loop you will either have the toilet paper effect if you stitch across, and if you don't it will have too much stress on the top stitches of a "U" or "X" pattern. I guess you'll have to take your chances with the toilet paper, it'll probably be fine.

is that photo before or after the your rivets came off? And which rivets came off, the top or the bottom ones? To answer your question, if you have an area of great tension try to avoid stitching across, if you know what I mean? Avoid having perforated lines across like toilet paper, try to make them along the edges instead. A "U" shape works well.

I don't see the point, those tests are extremely unrealistic to have any value in real life. I mean I don't know anyone who puts their leather item on a vice and starts pulling to see what happens, and if that person exists he can go buy his bag from someone else, not me LOL I only got in the trouble before because a couple of people said rivets just come off, which is impossible without destroying the leather first.

Don't worry about it, I got passionate about rivets and it lasted about 3 seconds LOL Here's the thing... if I have proven that the rivet is stronger than my leather, then what does it matter if the thread is even stronger? Mind you I'm 6'5/290, that was an *extreme* force applied to get that leather to rip, totally unrealistic. Maybe relevant to saddles? Parachutes? I don't know, I don't make those things. I'm very sceptical about youtube videos in general, in my experience more than half of them are just flat out wrong. Good people, good intentions, but wrong regardless.

And I'll keep riveting them LOL All happy :D

No way. You made me go to the shed on a Friday night LOL Here's some leather. Top side is Sedwick English bridle, bottom side is full grain veg tan, glued and stitched together. As a combination it's tough as they come, the kind of thing you can easily hang your body weight from: And this is one double cap rivet. And this is how the rivet is supposed to fit: it must stick out a couple of mm, and there needs to be a tiny bit of room in hole around it for the rivet cap to go inside the leather when installed. This is important. and this is how to install them. The metal base with the blue collar is from a hand press, I've drilled a hole on the block of wood to hold it. Both the base and the concave setter are exactly the correct size for that rivet, this is also important. A couple of hard hits with a heavy maul. By hard I mean HARD, no BS. Obviously I was holding the setter when hitting, but I was holding the phone this time to take the photo. And this is what it looks like installed, the top of the stem has completely mushroomed inside the rivet and it has been reduced to between 2/3 to 1/2 of its original length. This is the most important thing, I see some people on videos giving their rivets a couple of light taps on the table and calling it "ok done". Well good luck with that. The rivet needs to be hit hard enough to be a little bit embedded in the leather. Here I am putting the strap in the vice. And then I pulled with everything I got. No photos of that because I was pulling with both hands, plus one foot on the vice. After a lot of pulling, eventually this is what happened: The rivet stayed in its place and it tore right through the leather. The head of the rivet itself deformed as you'd expect, because I was pulling it sideways, but the stem is firmly planted in the cap and still holds just fine. Ok? That is a properly installed double cap rivet. I have no idea what you guys are doing that causes your rivets to fail. Mine don't.

Disagree, I never stitch loops or handles, just double cap rivets and nothing's ever failed (except for my attention to detail sometimes, in which case I've had to remove a couple, and they don't come off no-matter-what). I'm guessing the people who say double cap rivets don't hold must have the wrong size stem, probably too short.

What about it? A Fiebings edge kote 4oz bottle from the only place I can find it in AU is AUD$12.10, that's USD$8.70 at the current rate. Plus whatever shipping is. At Ivan it's USD $7.99 so 8% cheaper, with free shipping. Thats generally how it goes, anything is better than Australian prices. Maybe you think it's cheaper to shop locally because you're probably not comparing like with like. It's not cheaper. And even if it was I don't care, I'd still shop from overseas even if the price was double just for the fact that they have websites from this century, not the last one. I have zero interest in shops that have 3 things on their website and another 10 that are not and I have to ring them to describe them to me. Plus the overall variety of products of course, and I'm not even gonna get into customer service, reliability, or the crazy fact that I actually receive stuff faster from friggin Taiwan or Buckleguy in Boston than I do from various places in Australia.

So I started shopping from these guys a few months ago mostly out of curiosity, and gradually they have pretty much taken all of my business. Which I never thought it would happen, but it did. The way I understand it this is a Taiwanese business that has been around 42 years, started with making their own tools and hardware and over time expanded to trade some big name products like Fiebings, Horween, Fenice, Craftools, plus a whole lot of leather. I started finding their tools in local shops in Melbourne, I bought a strap cutter and a couple of punches, and although not high-end or fancy they were actually very good value for the price, so I thought I'd check out their website to see what else they got. And now I have ended up buying pretty much everything from them, I only shop elsewhere if I want something very specific like Sedgwick bridle or something like that. Why? Well a couple of things, first of all after a certain value (USD$100 I think) they ship with Fedex for free, which is a big deal for me because I live in Australia and shipping can easily be another USD$100. Fedex out of Taiwan has been fast and reliable, I typically receive my orders in 4-5 days (and that's calendar days because they deliver on weekends too). Second they have no problems shipping liquids overseas, which most other shops don't. They take paypal, they have an easy website with good photos and descriptions, I get a tracking number usually the same day, generally everything is fast and easy with them. Third they actually have the cheapest Horween leather I've found anywhere, and generally very good prices for leather, some of which pretty high-end including some hard to find Italian stuff. 4th they have decent hardware and good variety of all other bits and bobs I sometimes need like bag stiffeners, liners and webbing so I can do all my shopping in one place and easily go over the threshold for free shipping. And all of it is actually pretty good stuff, especially their webbing. Oh and they have zipper sets so you can get matching slider/top/bottom stops without have to click around for everything (learn from that Buckleguy). I'm not associated with this shop in any way shape or form, just a shout out from a happy customer.

Both thread and metal are stronger than the leather, and both need to be installed properly. A double cap rivet is easy to get it wrong, or get the wrong size. If you get it right you can put the leather on a vice and pull it with pliers, the rivet is not coming off, and if you keep trying the leather will tear. As anyone who's ever tried to remove a rivet knows, it can only be removed with a drill.

Maybe make a 2mm hole at the start and end of those slits, takes 5 seconds and makes them a lot harder to tear.

Yeah I keep explaining to people that the most important tool for every craft is the surfaces. Something straight, something to clamp and wedge things on, something to bang on that doesn't rock and doesn't damage your tools. Bench and bench accessories, that's what makes the most difference. I also have a collection of steel extrusions and anvils and various shapes and sizes, some permanently screwed on the bench right above the leg for maximum stability. Its incredible what you can do with the tiniest anvil in the world. Jeweller's anvils are great. Those are usually good enough and cheap enough:

There is no way those rivets were installed properly and they just came off. I've never seen a double cap rivet that wasn't stronger than the leather and I've had some crappy hollow ones in the past. Even those could only be removed with a drill, never mind the proper solid brass ones. Do you have the proper rivet setter and base? Did you hammer or press it in straight or did the stem maybe bent sideways? Was the stem the correct length for the thickness of the leather?

Just some very light coloured nappa leather, it's a bag interior and it definitely stained grrrrrrr Maybe because the presser foot squeezed the oil into the leather I'll try the Singer brand

Mine did dammit, I'm just using a no-name bottle that came with the machine. Any brand recommendations?

Well oiling so frequently is great for the machine but not so great for the leather, if you overdo it even a little bit it will absolutely spew oil on your work (and your shoes, don't ask me how I know)

Welcome to the wonderful world of leatherworking where you don't have to deal with breathable dust and piles of shavings, your tools and machines don't wake up the neighbours, you never have to clamp anything or wait an hour for glue to dry, you don't need a dedicated shed, you never lose a finger, and you can absolutely do professional work on the kitchen table with just a toolbox worth of tools! You've done some excellent work with timber, well done. Time to enjoy a more user-friendly craft

There is an actual category of customers who get disappointed by low prices. There's levels and levels of perversion out there.

If you are doing any sort of significant stitching lengths then IMO these result are pretty much as good as it gets.

yeah they are... the thread has a lot more distance to travel to reach the end of the hole, with the diamonds it bottoms out faster so it doesn't really matter how much you pull it.

Yes pretty much every single thing that people tell you to put on your leather behaves differently depending on the leather itself, which side of the leather you put it on, how much you put on and what you mix it with. Videos/research/instructions/advice are all nice, but there's only one way to really know anything about any leatherworking liquid: try it on an offcut and see what it does. Repeat every time you receive a different type of leather, and never assume anything. A lot of leather has gone to waste because of assumptions about liquids LOL Most common spanner in the works is that a leather might already have a layer of something-something on it (or in it) from the tannery, and the tannery never mentioned it in the description, and then good luck expecting resolene or tan kote to behave like you imagined. I use a lot of tan kote and resolene, I love them both for different reasons. But when I receive a new to me type of leather I always treat it as a mystery leather and run a series of experiments for finishing, burnishing, skiving and dyeing before I start working with it.

How it feels is irrelevant, just make sure it says HDPE not LDPE or something else I've been pounding $200 KS blades on it for a couple of years now, and sometimes *really* pounding them all the way in, and they're just as sharp and straight as the day 1. Same with my cheaper ones.

Ηigh Density Polyurethane, just soft-ish plastic basically. Not too soft not too hard, Its perfect. The cutting board was made of the same. Low density Polyurethane is basically foam, like those insert cutouts they put inside tool drawers and presentation boxes. High density polyurethane is basically the same thing but more dense.

$2 plastic bread cutting board That worked great for a couple of years, eventually I wanted bigger and I bought a giant piece of HDPE from ebay and screwed it on my bench. That was like $60 or something