Spyros

Thank you sir

One thing you will find very refreshing compared to woodworking both here and on youtube is that in leatherworking generally there is much less masturbation over tools. In leatherworking people talk a lot about sewing machines because they're legit complicated, but other than that most videos and discussions in leatherworking are usually around designs, patterns, techniques, learning, all that nice stuff. Woodworkers on the other hand, I don't know what's wrong with them, they seem to be in a permanent competition who is going to die with the most tools. There's really only two machines in leatherworking that it's hard to do without: the sewing machine and the bell skiver. Those two save A LOT of time. But if you're only doing small volume you can do without those.

Hey quick question: back in Vardhmans metric system, what needle would you use for an M13 thread? I couldnt find M10 so I got some M13, and I used a 200 needle with it. Which worked, but the holes seem a bit too big for that thread, should I go down to 160? By the way I just had a battle between a RiRi zipper tooth and a 200 Smetz needle :D RiRi won. Good thing I was wearing glasses is all I can say, the needle shattered in 5 pieces.

Well it's not a copy as such, you wont see an exactly same one anywhere. Rather it is a mix of design features I've seen elsewhere. For example, I can't claim it as my idea to use a horse collar closure on a bag, obviously I saw it somewhere. But the dimensions, curves, pockets, colour combinations etc, I designed from scratch. You don't see any darker handles here because this was a response to your previous post "How about you show us some of your work so we can see what you're all about", not to show you two tone bags. To illustrate the two tone effect this one below is a better example. I call this " the airline travel bag", it was a custom job I did for an air hostess. It is intentionally boxy to maximise internal space and at the same time be easy to stow away and also fit under an airline seat. It is light (no lining, no reinforcements, thin leather) but at the same time very durable and it holds its shape because it's made out of firm bridle leather. It fits a specific dopp kit, small laptop or ipad (in vertical orientation), A4 paperwork (lots of COVID certificates needed to travel these days) and also chargers, headphones, notepad. It also has an external zipper pocket that gives easy access to phone and passport wallet, and features an easy one-hand closure. It's relatively cheap, quick and easy to make, practical, not too bad to look at, and most importantly she likes it.

Geez you reminded me I have to start taking photos of the stuff I make, I keep forgetting... but here's a couple that I posted here before. You also reminded me I'm interested in mixing other materials with leather, I'm currently waiting for some canvas, and some Harris tweed from Scotland

Υeah nah, the lathe I was talking about was for making a nice custom HDPE maul with stacked leather handle to your exact weight and size specifications, instead of paying $100 for one that is really never exactly what you want.

Report back please, I'm curious

I really like using darker handles and straps out of bridle to create a two-tone effect for my bags, but yeah that's a great solution if you want to keep everything same colour. Well done!

Ι wanted a different hobby than woodworking because I just couldn't stand the sawdust anymore to be honest. I don't have room for proper dust extraction and it was a permanent battle with shopvacs and such. The beauty of leatherworking was: no dust, essentially no noise, no danger to lose a finger, no need to go out to the shed, no need for any machines whatsoever. For a long time I was making bags on the kitchen table, with just a box of tools, that's all I needed. It really is a better hobby. You'll see

Man, I was thinking for hours what kind of storage solution I could make for my stitching awl, so that the blade is safe and the awl is easily accessible. A wine cork. Of course. I'm an idiot

Hi Tibi, welcome aboard Yes absolutely it can be done, and unless you want to start making it a business and churn out volume, you don't need to use any electrical tools at all. A lot of people here don't. Ok lets assume you want to make a wallet and a belt. You need the following: Knives. Before you buy any leatherworking knives at all, I would suggest you start with just utility knives from the hardware store, you probably already have a couple. Stanley knives, that kind of thing. Get a small one too, and an X-acto knife. There are countless leatherworkers (myself included) that don't feel there's a need for anything else. But you will not know this until you try. Get lots of disposable blades and change them frequently (or sharpen them and reuse them). If you have a very sharp woodworking marking knife, you can also use that. Rulers. You need 3 or 4 in different sizes (and a 90 degree angle one), and they have to be made of steel, so you can cut against them. Leatherworking shops will try to get you to buy the ones with a cork backing so it doesn't slip on the leather, but they are unnecessarily expensive, you can simply get a rubber adhesive tape from the hardware store and glue it on, or nothing at all is also fine. The main thing is your rulers are metal. If you can afford it get a couple of round ones too to cut round corners, but if you can't that's fine, you can always use things like coins or jars to cut around. Something to skive edges with. Look up "japanese skiving knives", but don't get carried away with the prices. As long as you know how to sharpen (which you do because you're a woodworker) pretty much any cheap one will do. It's a handy knife to have, for many purposes, not just for skiving. Hole punch. If you're making belts then you will need a couple of hole punches. You will need rivets for your belts, and you need to punch holes to get those rivets through. Go to buckleguy.com (not necessarily to shop from there, but because it has good photos and descriptions on their items) and find a mid size rivet. Then find and buy the hole punch in a diameter that matches the stem of that rivet. Also get an oblong punch for cutting holes for the belt buckle. A couple of edge bevellers. #1 and #3 are the most commonly used ones. Glue and foam brushes (to spread the glue). Honestly any contact adhesive from the hardware store will do, as long as it says it is suitable for leather. Maybe prefer a water based one, it doesn't stink. Stitching chisels (for making stitching holes). Now here's where you'd want to spend some serious money, otherwise you'll end up upgrading pretty soon. Quality matters in stitching chisels, you want to get something decent. European made ones are not cheap, but if you insist have a look at Blanchard or George Barnsley. Get one with 2 teeth and one with 6 to 10 teeth. If you are in doubt about sizes and spacing, to start with get the middle size and middle spacing from what they're offering. Later you will probably get more chisels if you stick to leatherworking, but a mid-size all rounder is always useful to have. (Note, I'm a chisels kind of guy, but that's not the only way to make holes in leather. I'm just telling you what is my preference here. ) Awls. You need two: a woodworking one for making round holes and marks, and a leatherworking (flat needle) one that matches the size of the teeth of your chisels. Thread and needles. Look up Rizza Tiger thread and John James needles. Again don't get too confused with sizes, get some 0.6mm thread to start with and later you can go lower or higher for different types of projects. 0.6mm is just a common all-rounder. As for needles, just get a few from all sizes, they're cheap as chips. Strap cutter (for belts) Again cheap is perfectly fine, a strap cutter is a very simple wooden tool. Or just make your own. I like the common cheap chinese one, you will find it under various brand names like Weaver, Ivan etc. Stay away from the buckleguy one, it's useless. Stitching pony or stitching clam. Again that's an awesome project for a woodworker, I'd recommend you make your own. I made myself those two below Although later I found that those table-top type ponies don't work very well for me, so I made a floor standing clam, and that's what I use 99% of the time. All you need to make it is a 14" bandsaw. Very simple, make one. Cutting surface. You need something made of durable plastic (ideally HDPE) to protect your chisels and your knives. A $3 plastic cutting board for bread is fine to start with, that's all I used for a couple of years. Something to smack your chisels and your punches with. A cheap mallet from the hardware store is perfectly fine, as long as it has plastic surfaces, you don't want to hit metal with metal. If you have a lathe you can later turn your own leatherworking maul out of HDPE exactly to your liking. Again that's what I did, but I better stop posting photos of my tools now Edge paint and/or Tokonole/Gum trag I'd start with clear (white) Tokonole, it's probably a bit more user-friendly for the beginner. And everybody else as far as I'm concerned Books. Anything written by Al Stohlman will do. Although, for the most part, youtube is your friend. Two guys on youtube that make it look easy and interesting (kind of like DiResta) are Corter Leather and Mascon Leather. Maybe I'm forgetting something, but I think that's all the tools you need to make a decent wallet and a belt. Anything else you will find in your woodworking shop (sandpaper, a metal hammer, a sharpening kit etc). Along the way you will find a million other little tools that can be useful, and you'll buy them as you need them, but most of them are really not necessary to get started. I find leatherworking is actually very similar to woodworking. Probably easier and simpler too. Have fun

It will burn the leather if you let the rivet spin because it got fused with the drill bit, but you shouldn't let that happen. Basically you're not trying to drill through the rivet as such, all you're trying to do is remove some material from the base of the rivet until you release the stem. And you do that by drilling at some angle and without too much pressure, and changing the angle frequently. You want to see metal shavings coming out from the tip of your drill bit, and it shouldn't go in more than half a mm at a time. Need a sharp drill bit too. Trust me I'm the world champion at setting rivets in the wrong places

Is that a direct translation of the french "regarder"? It's not the same thing in english

Hmmm maybe not this glue... this glue is for shoes, which means it stays forever flexible. That's probably not what you want, you want rigid in this instance, something that dries like epoxy or superglue. Actually what happens if you use 2 part epoxy on leather? Something tells me it's a terrible idea, but I havent tried it.

Well the prices have nothing to do with any of the above really. Pricing depends on one thing and one thing only: how much the customer wants to pay, period. They definitely want to pay for something (anything at all) that says Hermes on it, and some people want to pay for the romantic idea of a lone artisan with a leather apron and a French hat making custom items for them. (I told you to wear a leather apron Brian, start smoking a pipe and sell your image, you're not listening to me LOL) Now to get a customer to want to pay an outlandish price, there are a few things one can do, but talking to them about the cost of making things is just not one of them. They don't care, and they don't understand anyway.

ΙMO if there was an easy way to remove a rivet without damaging the leather, then this only really means one thing: your rivets are cheap crap or they haven't been set properly...

So now that you got some advice, why don't you buy it anyway and report back? Get the $200 thing and try a few projects with thin leather.

I guess you'd have to actually see a leather sewing machine up close, and then you'd understand immediately. It was definitely not what I expected when I saw mine for the first time, they are total monsters, they look like some component out of a nuclear submarine. Mine came on a pallet that barely fit inside a van and it weighed 130kg all up with the motor and the stand. 130! Solid steel everywhere. I questioned it a lot as it seemed total overkill, but it is like that for a reason, it's required not only for the longevity of the machine and its ability to pierce the leather, but also the absorption of vibrations and the quality and consistency of the stitching itself. Now, quality and presentation of stitching is probably not something you're thinking about right now, but it is a big deal in leatherworking as the threads tend to be a lot thicker and much more visible. The "heavy duty" domestics will not even accept the thickness of thread thread that is commonly required for leather, and some of them are even allergic to bonded nylon/polyester thread (which is the bread & butter of machine stitching leather) because they're just simply tuned for other common types of thread used for fabrics. I guess you can use thin thread for everything, but a lot of your leather projects will come apart, leather is physically heavier than fabric and it applies a lot more pressure to the seams. The other thing you're probably not considering is that leather doesn't fold like fabric, you cant just iron it down flat. You bend it. You'll be surprised how easily flat & thin leather becomes 3 dimensional. The thin bags belts you want to make have joinery where the leather overlaps or rolls over itself (plus reinforcing materials underneath so they don't stretch), and that gets very thick very quickly. And that's where the ability of the machine to "climb" is hugely important in leatherworking. In fact you might not even be able to fit that section under the presser foot in a domestic. I am also interested in that Singer "heavy duty" you linked above and there's another review video of someone reviewing it and using it. You should see what he had to do to convince it to climb over the hem of a pair of jeans. He did it in the end, but man, watching that completely erased any thought of using it on a leather project. I know what you're thinking. We've all been there: "surely there must be something one grade above my wife's domestic that can stitch leather, before I get to that >100kg monster". No, there isn't, you need the monster. Unless you're happy to go to a non-motorised machine, those are much more elegant, and some people hate them, some people love them. I think what those people at the shops mean when they recommend the "heavy duty" plastic ones, is that the machine is able to stich a leather label on a pair of jeans. But really, it's a machine for building fabric pants.

Spring loaded center punch before drilling anything metal. Always.

To be fair, you did kinda murdered that leather around the hole a little bit LOL

Personally I really like the look of tranche pockets, but I could never understand how is it possible to keep the pocket liners in place long term with just glue and no stitching... Unless there's some other trick I'm missing?

By the way I may or may not have been half asleep through one of Philip's videos, but I'm pretty sure he skived a zipper at some point LOL These Hermes-type leatherworkers are taking skiving to the next level thats for sure.

Did you end up finding a bell skiver Danne?

yeah but if you go into a dealer there is also a high probability they will steer you towards a $10k Juki when all you want to do is a bag a week as a hobby. Don't ask me how I know

I think leatherworkers have a use for those machines. Not for leather as such, but sometimes you need to make a drop-in liner out of thin/soft goat skin or sunbrella, or you're doing a canvas & leather bag and you have to do sections of only canvas. Looks like that little "heavy duty" domestic machine would be just fine for those applications and a nice complement to a leather workshop. It looks like it has a metal frame under the plastic, most cogs are metal, and most importantly it looks like Singer made it be repairable, and they don't do that for machines that are meant to be used for a couple of years and then throw away. I wouldn't mind one of those for those ancillary to leatherworking tasks. That is of course if Singer Australia wasn't taking the piss with their pricing.