Spyros

Those are all the pieces you need Then I glue the first one on with contact adhesive and I rough cut it on the bandsaw then took my time to perfect it with a file on the vice

All right some cutting photos This is what I started with, it's half a sheet of plywood and I still have probably 70% of it left. Like I said you don't need much. here I'm roughly marking how many pieces I need based on my pattern. and this is what I used to break it down to small manageable pieces

I guess what I'm asking is, does this make a difference in real life in everyday items like wallets and bags etc? And isn't there a machine out there that can do the same stitch as the hand sewn saddle stitch below?

I'm sure it's been discussed before but there's so many discussions on hand stitching that I couldn't find this specifically. The reason I'm asking is because people are asking me, and I just repeat what I read on the internet: a) Stitching by hand is superior to machine stitching, there is a significant difference in longevity and durability. b) There is no machine that can do saddle stitching like we do by hand: pass two needles from the same hole from opposite directions, and repeat with the next hole. But then I realised that I don't actually know either of those two things as a fact, I was just parroting things posted on the net by people I don't know. So I decided to ask the experts Thanks in advance Spyro

HOW TO CUT THOSE THINGS Safety first: wear a mask, don't breathe dust, wear safety glasses, read the manual, etc. Watch a woodworking safety video, there's tonnes on youtube. If you havent done this sort of thing before maybe let someone else do it, at the end of the day you need your fingers to make beautiful things out of leather With the safety thing out of the way. Print 1:1, cut along the solid black line and glue the patterns on your plywood. The fastest and most accurate way to cut those pieces is to make one copy with a band saw, clean it up to perfection with sandpaper/files and use it as a template to cut the other part with a router and a flush trim bit (I've linked a video in the previous page). And that's what I started doing as well on my router table, and I've done it dozens of times before, however for whatever reason my router bit absolutely hated this type of plywood, it was catching and wanted to take the piece from my hands and launch it out the window. Please be careful, routers can be very dangerous, if you find yourself in a situation like that with a router or generally something feels wrong just leave it (that's what I did), there are many other ways to make this cut. I ended up freehand cutting everything on the bandsaw, and that went smoothly, it just took a little longer and a bit more sanding in the end. Note: bandsaws can also be very dangerous, but I have a lot of experience with it (and a long mental safety checklist I go through every single time) If you have none the tools above (or those machines scare you, which is perfectly understandable) you could also use a jigsaw or scroll saw or even coping saw, it just takes more time and patience.

Some notes on the cut list: Part A: You need 2 of those. Note this part has a 46mm slot. The way to make this slot is by drilling a hole at the start of the slot and another one at the end, and then using a coping saw or scroll saw to connect them. Same as you would with an oblong hole on a belt if you don't have an oblong hole punch. And then you just clean it up with a bastard file. You can make the slot when you cut them or afterwards when the pieces are glued together, up to you. Part B (also 2 copies) has a side view and a top view. Cut based on the side view. I've put the top view there just to mark the position of a couple of holes you'll need to make later. There's also an indentation, and some corners have been rounded over so they're a bit more pleasant to the touch. If you're comfortable cutting round corners and indentations do it, otherwise they can easily be done later with a file and some sandpaper. Part C (4 copies) can be made as long as you want, and that will determine how big a piece you can stitch on your pony. I've made mine based on the solid line, but I've also made a dotted line just to show how you could scale yours up. And you can scale up even more in the same fashion, up to you. Parts D & E are really carbon copies of part C, just cut a little shorter. So if you're going to scale up Part C you need to scale those up as well, and the best way to do that is make copies of the scaled up Part C and chop them after. MATERIAL: Get the most expensive plywood you can, quality does matter here. Bamboo ply would be ideal, baltic birch will be fine. You don't need much, think about the same surface as making a small bag I used 18mm marine ply I had lying around and it was ok, but ideally you want better and slightly thicker, between 19-21mm. I hope this makes sense so far. Build photos to follow.

Hey guys I was thinking about this and I'm actually not going to start a new thread. I mean some people sell those things for a living, some even sell them here, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes. I will however do what I said, but I will do it on this thread for the couple of you who asked the question, and then you guys can build it or not build it, up to you. Ok so here's your cut list below. Everything is in mm because I'm a chauvinistic pig (no seriously it's because all my rulers and tapes are in mm, sorry) I've put down the critical dimension in green so when you print this you know you are printing 1:1 scale. After you print 1:1, if you need any other dimensions the dots on the paper are 5mm apart, just measure it.

Hey mate, have you ever tried ordering leather from overseas? I've only bought from Leffler and Austanners here in VIC so far, but if there's no trouble at customs (for whatever reason) I'd like to try ordering directly from O/S.

My pleasure. Remember I said if I was going to make another I would make it longer? Well guess what, I completely forgot LOL I actually made it from the patterns I made for you, with minor changes. And now I'm stuck with two identical ponies. Dumb But, come to think of it, this is probably the ideal size anyway. Light, portable, tiny when you fold it it fits everywhere, and when i have something big to stitch i just tilt it a little. this is how I did that tote for example.

Oh crap I didn't know about that. I ordered $100 worth of little things from Tandy a couple of days ago, last time I got an email the next day with a tracking number but this time nothing yet. I actually went with Tandy because last month I got my stuff 4 days after i ordered which was incredible considering it came from Texas to Australia. It was actually faster than ordering from most Australian shops.

Righto, stitching pony out of plywood. I'm about done I think. Just a couple more holes to drill, then I'll take all the pieces inside and trace them on a piece of paper so i can give you a "pattern" so to speak. Tell you what it was easier making it the last time, I didn't have to worry that everything I do must also make sense to other people LOL

All right then... I came here to learn how to make backpacks, but I guess we're making a stitching pony I'll pop out to the shed and see what I have, I should have some plywood and a few bolts. But I'm not doing any video, I'm alone in there and it's just too hard. I'll stop and take a photo every now and then. You guys can show me backpacks later

Then it's time for glue up stack the two Cs together as aligned as possible, glue and clamp them, and do the same for the Bs. The As are glued in 2 stacks of 4: each stack will have two whole pieces first and last and two short pieces in the middle. Does it all kinda make sense? It probably sounds confusing... I should probably do a build along thread and actually make another one and take photos or video while I'm doing it.

next, cut the remaining pieces: 2 X shape "B" and 2 X shape "C" below. again sorry about my crappy drawings, I'm kinda doing them on the fly on my breaks from work.

Cool, cool Alright so now you should have 8 of those curvy pieces. If you stack them together in two piles facing eachother you have the basic shape of the two jaws of your clamp. Take the the two middle pieces of each stack and cut them shorter from the bottom along the lines I've marked below. The two middle pieces from the right stack will be cut a little shorter than the other two.

I don't have much leatherworking experience, but I'll tell you one thing about these particular knives that I know for sure: they are about the easiest thing in the world to sharpen. It's just the shape of it, it's so front heavy and small, and it has this giant bevel that makes it easy and safe to really press down on it while sharpening without ever losing the angle. I've sharpened hundreds of irons, for woodworking, and that knife was easily the quickest thing to bring to a razor sharp edge. I'm talking a minute. Which, at this point, makes the ability of the steel to hold an edge pretty much irrelevant to me. And it's also so small that it wont bend anyway, so hardness is more or less irrelevant as well. Having said that both those things seem plenty adequate in the one I bought (a cheap-ish Wuta one, the one with the plain light wood handle). I'm thinking of upgrading some of my tools but this is out of the list completely, I just don't see the point at all, I can see myself keeping it for years until I sharpen it down to a nub.

That's alright, you can make it out of 3/4 inch plywood which is easy to cut in a small bandsaw, and we'll skip the track. Ok so first step is to cut some 2inch by 10 inch pieces of plywood, make about 10 of them because there will be mistakes for sure. Then print this and glue it on 8 pieces (sorry about the hand drawing but it would take me forever to make those curves in sketchup) and cut them out on the bansaw. I guess you could also cut with a jigsaw or coping saw, but it's harder and it will take longer. Now about this shape, these are obviously the jaws of the clamp. If you want to make them a different curve, or maybe a couple of inches longer so you can clamp bigger leather pieces in there, you can, it's up to you. But dont make them much longer than that because then I'm not sure if the clamping mechanism will work properly. 1-2 inches should be fine, if I was making mine again I'd probably do that actually. In terms of cutting them. Those pieces need to be as identical as possible, but again it's really up to you how pretty you want your pony to look. If they are not completely identical it will still work fine. The method of making identical ones depends on if you have a router and a flush trim bit. If you do then you make one piece as perfect as you can, sand all the curves to perfection etc, and you use it as a template. This guy explains it well: If you don't have a router just do the best you can cutting them as identical as you can, and in the end of the project when everything is glued and ready you can file and sand down the pieces that stick out. But it's best to avoid that as much as possible because sanding curves is a bit of a PITA. Let me know how this sounds so far, if it sounds doable I'll continue with the next steps.

Yeah I can see how that might happen... didn't think about it to be honest. Anyway I'll probably need to make it again soon as this leather is way too stretchy, just not meant for this type of thing.

Sure, although I must warn you it's probably not the easiest build. It requires some accurate freehand radius cutting on a 12" or bigger bandsaw, a router table and some specialised hardware like a T-track and the blue cam clamp that runs on it, but you can find those things in most woodworking shops like Rockler for example. Also a couple of threaded rods, a spring and some nuts and washers, just typical hardware store stuff. I chose to make my own star knobs out of wood but you can find ready made plastic ones on ebay for a couple of bucks. Overall depending on quality there's probably about $50 of materials in this thing but it can be made cheaper if you skip the T-track and the fancy cam clamp (that thing was USD$16, I only used it because I had one leftover from another project). You can also laminate plywood instead of solid timber for cheaper. The T-track is not really necessary, I put it there so I can lift the upper part of the pony a little bit higher so that the whole thing can fold into itself for storage, which can be achieved with a slightly different design, and to offer a bit more flexibility on the table to position the clamp exactly where I want it. I guess I did a few things the hard way on this pony, I'm sure I can come up with a simpler way. For example I made the clamp with a loose bottom jaw that clamps but doesnt turn (which was a giant pain to make), because i didn't want it to scratch the bottom of my table every time I clamp it. But now I see the other popular ponys on etsy etc that don't have that so maybe nobody cares about the bottom of their tables LOL Now I'm looking at youtube to see if someone has made a similar type of pony because it's probably easier to show you than type instructions, but I can't find anything. Check with your husband if it doesn't sound like too much trouble and he still wants to have a go, and if so I'll put together a pattern or instructions for you.

Yeah I did a NATO from the same hide I did the tote, I was really proud that i custom made it for my wrist and it only had one hole, I was the only person I knew with a single hole watchstrap And then I started wearing it and it stretched to buggery, now it looks like swiss cheese LOL

Thanks guys So for stitching leather to canvas, my best option is probably hand stitch it, but make holes only to the leather and just push the needle through the canvas?

On my to do list, as soon as they open from COVID, I don't think there's another leathercraft shop in the whole city anyway. They're expensive though. Thanks!

Pretty disappointed this isn't getting responded to, I had similar questions about waxed canvas.... Anyone?

wow!

Thanks! Ok so here's my first finished project. I picked the leather pretty much randomly online, based on the photo only as I didn't really know what I was doing and I had to start somewhere. It said "Bowden combination tan milled side" but I don't know what any of that means, if anyone can explain that would be great. I know it has a oil/wax pull up sort of feel to it and it's supposed to be 2.2mm thick, although it felt like more. But I like how it looked in the picture and I like it in person as well. It's kinda stretchy though which made it a bit of a nightmare to skive by hand (or maybe I'm just bad at skiving). I did go right through it with the skiving knife at some point leaving a 10mm gash, I packed it with glue and decided to take my chances with it. So far you cant even see it but lets see how it holds overtime. Other than the skiving I really enjoyed making it, the Mrs merrily confiscated it (initially it was earmarked as a present for someone else), and it taught me a lot. In terms of patters, I didn't use any because I want to force myself to start designing my own stuff. That's kind of the whole point of leatherworking for me, I've bought a lot of backpacks, camera bags, duffel bags etc in my life, and I always wanted to change something to make it better. So here's my chance, I just have to learn how to do it. Now I can't wait to start something else