Spyros

All valid concerns - as is my concern of how friggin greedy can a non-Chinese company be, trying to sell me a bunch of laminated offcuts cut by a C&C as a traditional saddlers clam for USD$200. I'm not prepared to support anyone blindly just because of country of origin, they need to convince me first. We can use our power as customers to boycott products from certain areas, and we probably should. But ultimately if there is going to be change in industrial & labour relationships within a country that change has to also come from within, you can't just force it from outside or you risk making bunches of people even worse off. Or, more commonly, end up banging your head against a brick wall and achieving nothing. I do take your points, they're all valid. Just saying it's not very simple. And at the end of the day I don't know how much people got paid to make this particular tool, it wasn't exactly cheap either. Maybe what would help from our end is to stop buying their cheap crap (which to be honest is what we mostly do) and buy the better things they make (because they do make a lot of that too) so at least they actually have more money to pay. I don't know the answer. But I am happy to listen and participate in anything that makes sense.

At some point I was working for a guy from somewhere north in Sweden, he said their summer was pretty unlucky because it fell on a Monday LOL

Same for me but keep writing, you'll see it gets a lot better very quickly. Your English is probably better than mine 5 years ago.

Time to start doing videos maybe

Personally I'm very happy with my Chinese steel. It works for me

There was a lot of early tools that were extremely overengineered, and some people loved it. Like if you open up an early electric drill chances are it's all metal, weighs a tonne, and feels like it's gonna last for centuries. In the end most people felt there's really no need for that, and plastic won over for practical and cost reasons. I sometimes side with A and sometimes with B.

If it breaks it means it's more brittle, which means it hasn't been annealed properly after it was hardened (probably intentionally). Annealing reduces hardness but increases ductility (stretch/bend). For example hand files, they usually don't anneal them because this makes the steel harder, holds an edge better, and a file doesn't need to bend anyway. But if you drop a file on hard floor once or twice it will likely break. Knives on the other hand need to be able to bend, so they anneal them. That's a general observation on heat treatment but the end result (brittle/hard/flexible etc) depends on the type of steel as well. I would say a woodworking awl needs to have some flexibility, but a leatherworking awl probably doesn't, so in my mind it makes sense not to anneal it and help it hold an edge longer. But I can also see how this might have caused complaints from users who don't understand this and wanted their broken awl replaced because they dropped it, it broke and they saw this as a sign of bad manufacturing.

Prices don't seem to reflect poor quality though.

If you can (cheaply) talk to a tax accountant maybe do that first, it may or may not be to your benefit to start a company. Like if you're simply going to add a few $k a year to your other income, depending on your tax rules in your country and your other income you might not even have to pay any tax at all. With a company usually you get taxed from the 1st dollar. If you find you're growing steadily then you have to pick the right time to transition to a company, but don't just do it upfront. Again depends on your country, but a company is another expense, might need to submit returns, might need to get audited etc. Talk to a tax guy.

Τhe knife is fine. I prefer light passes because I don't want to risk the leather shifting under the ruler. It's a shifty material. Now don't tell me I need to question the quality of my ruler. it's fine, it's a ruler, it has cork or rubber underneath.

Welcome to the forum! You might have no experience but being Italian at least you know what good is supposed to look like, all you have to do is look around in your beautiful country of well dressed people Don't underestimate that, it's valuable. Enjoy your journey! Cheers SP

Leather is soft generally, grab something a little better than a butter knife and you will cut it. For me the obsession with sharpness has more to do with the quality of the cut, a nice clean cut means less or ideally no sanding, and better/easier burnishing afterwards. On thicker leathers it can also mean 1 versus 2 passes is enough to finish the cut. I don't like that 2nd pass if I can avoid it, it can mess things up if you get it even slightly misaligned with the 1st one.

Ι like small imperfections that distinguish a hand made item from a machine made one, if there aren't any I'd even go as far as adding one and I'm not even joking. As long as it doesn't distract from the overall quality of the thing, and in this case I don't think it does. Just a lovely gift. Honestly the only thing that caught my eye when I looked at the photos and before I read your text was the two "E" in Engineer were not perfectly in line.

maybe try on some scraps to finish the back with various things, see if you like the look of any. A popular candidate is tokonole, personally I really like tan kote. I actually liked it more than the front on a recent project, and that was an expensive milled veg tan, which was weird. I just put a very thin layer of tan kote on and then ran a tempered glass over it a few times.

I'm sure some do care but I would guess not many. I mean judging from myself before I got into leatherworking I didn't even know that some belts were lined. Obviously I could see some belts had stitches and some not but I thought it was just decoration, a different style. Never occurred to me to even look at the back of a belt as a customer. The only thing I remember is that I was always suspicious of belts that were very shiny for some reason. Then again I'm a man, and I've noticed men look at leather items very differently than women. We care more about things like quality, longevity, practicality, strength, and country of origin, whilst women seem to care a lot more about brand, style, variety and matching with their clothes. I doubt they'd care very much about what the back of their belt looks like. But I'm known for my continuous failure to understand women so take that with a massive grain of salt

No, it's not, just use good leather that you're happy with how the flesh side looks, and it's thick & strong enough for the purpose. Bridle usually works well.

I don't want to digress but at some point I'd like you to draw on your experience and tell us what is the best mail bag design

We also don't have a snake problem in Australia *ducks*

yes sorry I was thinking about shop vacs when I said $1k. This sounds like a good filter, but check the cost of replacing it.

I really don't know, it's one of those things you only know after you've used them a while. It might actually work great, i don't know. My concern with filters in general is that whatever it is you're trying to filter whether it's fumes, odours or dust, it actually stays in the room. With dust, those machines (unless we're talking about HEPA certified over $1k machines) are notorious for mincing dust into smaller particles and releasing them back into the air. With fumes, i don't know. With odours, I'm concerned the actual machine/filter might start to stink overtime unless you change filters all the time. To me the only perfect solution is to take the air and whatever is in it and send it out, but it comes with the energy downside.

Those air scrubbers work ok in smaller spaces, I think the problem you might face is that overtime the actual machine might start to stink. I mean it collects all the particles, they're not going anywhere. Maybe a better solution for you (and potentially for Danne) if you can afford some bench space, is to create a mini glueing station, and use a very targeted extraction in that space only. You have your bench, then put something like a rangehood relatively low over it (just a hood, not the whole machine) attached to a duct, which will go to a greenhouse extractor mounted on some plywood in the wall or a window. With a switch and fan speed controller close by. That way when you're gluing under the hood you can run the fan at a very low speed and short bursts and hopefully capture most or all the fumes and send them outside while retaining your room temperature more or less.

I bought mine from greenhouse supplies, it came as a set with the duct and fan speed controller. It's powerful alright, if I forget to crack the window before I turn it on it creates such a vacuum that I literally can't open the door. Basically it replaces all the air in the workshop in about a minute, like I said don't expect the room to stay warm.

Electric creasing iron? This is my experience FWIW:

That looks flawless to me, pretty much like everything else you've posted so far. Stunning!