Spyros

He's Irish, they say different stuff I've lived in Ireland (the other one in the south) for a year as an exchange student, and it's hard not to love the place. I remember a lot of lingo but not gewgaws tho

If I make a notebook for myself or my wife I will handstitch it, line it, paint the edges, sand them to perfection and make them shine. I just struggle to believe anyone would actually pay me fairly for that labour.

I didn't understand it either until I started making bags. When you make bags you buy sides, a side will make you 2 bags if you're lucky, and then you end up with a whole bunch of offcuts that are too big to throw away and too small to make a bag with. And now I have a pile of offcuts the size of a small island. I reckon those hastily made small items, that's what it is, someone getting rid of this offcuts. I have to do it too at some point, just design something cute and simple and make 100 of it as fast as possible. Will I line them? No. Why? Because I make bags, I don't want to waste time on something that is not my specialty. I just want to get rid of offcuts as fast as possible and if I make a buck in the process then so much the better.

I'm much more likely these days to change the design than convince myself to deal with ordering zippers.

Yeah I don't really use thick saddlery leather so my chisels have no problems going through my bags or anything else I make. But generally keep in mind, stitching chisels are much like awls and like most other tools, in that you kinda get what you paid for. My KS Blades which are 10 tooth and not 5, which makes it even harder, have no problems going through 2 X 8 oz and probably more. And they pull out fairly easily because it's high quality and well sharpened steel. However the price of quality chisels like KS and Sinabroks is also very different. I think mate if you're mostly doing thick leather, like sheaths and stuff, you'll be better served long term just ditching the chisels entirely and mastering the awl like on the video above. And maybe keep your tandy chisels for when you do "chap leather" like Don Gonzales calls it, ie softer/thinner stuff. That's really what they were designed for, although like I said some of the better ones you can push them to their limits.

Bell skiver sounds like the kind of thing you only master in your 60's LOL

Oh yeah, my favourite rant. Fkn zippers. Buckleguy, and I make sure to get drunk first to get through the buying experience. Just click and click until the cows come home, and 99% of the time something is not in stock whether its the colour or the size or the zipper pull or the stops. And you can't find out if you can actually assemble a complete set or not until you've clicked on half the website it seems. And yes, I do have a small pile of RiRi zippers in the shed without matching pulls or stops because I got frustrated and ordered the wrong thing. The stupid website should be guiding you with those things, it's 2022 not 1990. Choose a colour and size, and the website should recommend all the pullers and stops that match the size and the colour and are actually in stock. They have an engine in the background that gets online quotes from couriers based on size and weight of your shopping cart ffs, this is really not that hard.

Not sure if it's doable in your space, but when I have very long handstitch to do (like a belt or a strap) I've made a very simple jig to hang my work from the ceiling or a high shelf, and I stitch it standing up instead of sitting. It makes it easier to manage those long threads. Just hang it from something high and try to secure the bottom somewhere else so it doesn't move too much.

I've done it twice and it was one of the main reasons I bought a sewing machine When I made those two with all that thread it felt like I was pulling a fish out of water with every single stitch LOL So eventually I decided to just use however much thread my arms can comfortably hold and pull (ie less than my wingspan) and if this meant I'd have 4 or 5 starts and stops along the belt then so be it. I just made it neat, and honestly nobody is gonna bend down to inspect your belt stitching with a magnifying glass.

Beautiful Safari colours

Also pretty much all products by Saphir smell fantastic for a long time , but they're expensive

When I make something out of timber or leather, this is what I use when I don't like how they smell

Thanks. I googled "needle bar" and it showed me a great pub in Taiwan LOL But eventually I worked it out, makes sense.

Great job, if I was the car owner I'd be stoked with this result! Great workstation for the machine too, it's nice to have that table extension

how can you tell when a machine is out of time?

So back to sharpening an awl, don't let me discourage you because I'm just sick and tired of sharpening after doing it for woodworking tools every day for years. I just hate sharpening and I avoid it like the plague. However I do have a couple of flat awls, and although I use them extremely rarely they do need sharpening once every few months. So here's my half-arse, bored to death method: I take a small piece of 600 grit sandpaper, fold it tight around the sharp edge with my thumb and index finger, and pull the awl backwards and out a few times. That's it, that's all I'm good for. It's not *really* sharpening it but it does something, so there's that. If it gets really bad I just order a couple of new tips from kemovancraft on etsy. I did try to touch it up on my tormek-type wet wheel but it's too easy to make the slightest wrong move and then it's a dart. The problem with the awl blade is that the damn thing is just too small and that makes it extremely unforgiving to sharpening errors.... I think free int'l DHL is for over $100. They have some Horween leather lately and some good goat liners so it's easy to get over that.

It's one of those things I order months before I run out. I just go online and order from wherever is cheapest, usually ebay, and then I totally forget all about it, and then months later it shows up from wherever the hell it came from. Usually japanese or hong kong post stamps on it

Thanks everyone, much appreciated I can see those type of bridle briefcases usually go for anything between USD$1k - $1.5k. It's not hard to see where the money is, it's a lot of leather and a lot of work, the problem is that it's hard to find the type of people who pay this kind of money for a bag. I bet your friend has been doing this for a while to build up this kind of clientele and earn their trust as a maker.

If you want a buffed glossy edge, the product you use is is the least important thing. The 1st thing is the leather itself, some leathers just wont shine no matter what, and others you can get a nice edge just with some water and friction. And the 2nd most important thing is sanding. When you think that surely you must have sanded enough now, sand more. And when you're done, sand again

none of this make any sense to me one single coat of black tokonole and a quick rub with some canvas would have pretty much the same result. And he's using too much tokonole.

Yeah those Dieselpunk patterns (and pretty much all youtube patterns) are specifically designed for people with very basic stitching skills and equipment. Hence all the round holes so people don't have to worry about slanted holes and awls and casting the thread and things like that, even though round holes is *technically* the wrong way because you remove leather and thus weakening the leather. But the aim in those patterns is to keep things as simple as possible and encourage people to have a try (which is actually greatly appreciated and I'm not knocking it at all), not necessarily to achieve maximum strength and longevity. But you know what Toxo? I suspect that sometimes we're stressing too much for no reason... at the end of the day it's just a bag, people are gonna put a laptop and their car keys in it, it's not like they'll use it to carry bricks or pull crocodiles out of the water :D I reckon 99% of the time a few stitches with good quality thread is more than enough for a bag handle to last 3 lifetimes. Different story if you're making horse tack or safety equipment for firefighters or something like that, but leather bags are usually just shelf queens that spend their life commuting on the passenger seat in someone's car. From my end when it comes to handle and strap mechanics, I mainly just want to see that they don't deform or stretch the leather in any way during common everyday use, that's pretty much all I worry about. That, and aesthetics of course.

I just go to the local hardware store and get whatever contact adhesive they have that says on it that will stick leather. In spray if I can, which is my favourite way of gluing leather at the moment. I haven't noticed any shortages.

Thanks man I haven't even stitched the strap loops to the top flap, the whole system is held together by the rivets only. And the reason is I don't want the loops pulling on the top flap at all, I like it 100% smooth and flat. I want all the pulling force to be transferred to the reinforcing bar directly, and from there to be distributed across the flap from below. Don't ask me why it just works better like that in my mind, but also in practice (I've made an identical briefcase for myself and it's my everyday carry). I have however added reinforcing polyester tape inside the loops, and those are solid brass rivets, so I'm pretty confident the whole thing is not going anywhere. I will however say that what you say probably looks better and I've been thinking about it so I'll see if I can build it in

Thanks, probably not great for production though, it's too much work... if the bag is lined you have to line that too, and those tiny gussets are hard to fit under the machine so I had to handstitch it, then more edge painting etc I have to come up with a simpler design

Yeah that's the idea. Then cut the thread leaving about 2-3 mm out and burn it a little with a lighter to curl the thread into a ball, and leave it. The ball cant get pulled back through the hole and that secures it. In places with extreme tension you might want to add a rivet as close as possible to the end of the stitch (careful not to cut the thread when punching the hole), but that's for you to decide if it's needed.