Woodshed

Great problem! Nice strap too!

Beautiful and inspiring.

Excellent design and build. Elegant.

Wonderful on every level!

I've had a dry spell on leatherwork. Primarily because of a knee replacement. The second knee gets replaced next week so really I'm looking at mid-December before diving in again. I'm losing weight (deliberately) to lighten the load on my new knee, soon to be knees. My waist is down two sizes so I made my first belt a couple weeks ago, to go with a silver buckle gifted me sometime about 1971, before I joined the Navy. It's made from a single layer of 13 oz veg tan. It came out better than I thought it would and best of all it fits!

To keep my costs down, as a hobbyist, I shop the sales and don't buy the premium leathers. I have so much to learn that it is better for me to get a lot of leather (a variety of weights) as inexpensively as possible, because at the end of the day, as my skills improve, the budget leather I use looks and works great. Tools are a different matter. I just pace myself and try to get what I really need. I bought a few cheap tools to start but found out that wasn't the way to go so now I am very selective and willing to pay more for better tools. I also fabricate as many of my tools as I can.

Hello from Hartselle. I've been quiet here for awhile due to a total knee replacement and am in between knees atm. After surgery was put on blood thinners so felt it wise to stop playing with knives and needles temporarily. I hope to become more active again after the second knee gets done. I'm a hobbyist closing in on two years experience. It's a great hobby with unlimited potential. Keep it up!

I really like the fish jumping in the basketweave. I find that kind of thing is very tough to pull off. Beautiful job.

So nice!

Leather craft is an intense learning experience. Maybe that's what keeps me at it. The leather just doesn't hide anything, and oopsies sometimes dominate. Like having a brush pop out of my hand flipping in the air with black dye on it...yesterday.

This project has grown into a number of gifts for sons and family we will visit soon when we head out west.

Excellent! Very useful too.

Seems like whenever I shrink picture size on my phone the colors and shine change enough to be a bit disappointing. It's not bad in the shine department, and that will lessen with use I would guess.

Hah! We all have some dye stories I'm sure! I got a little speck of black dye on the outside of my little finger one time where I couldn't see it and then used it to steady my hand as I painted a nearby area. Fail!

Thanks. I re-inspected and I think my initial "yuck" was based on an illusion due to the stitch meeting the edge of the pocket. I didn't show the inside of the wallet yet but here is what got me... on the left hand bottom of the pocket the awl was like right on the edge of the pocket and something looks wrong in the way the stitch does or does not pick up the pocket in that area. Whatever it is, its not a bad angle on the awl. It just looked like it to me. Yep! I sometimes wonder if there will come a project where I don't make a mistake! One little slip and ...

1st wallet. The Don Gonzales pattern pack was my guide. Destined for the trash bin due to a bad jab with the stitching awl, dang it. I'll use it till then. Maybe the next one will make it past inspection.

I generally use stitching chisels just like I would a stitching wheel, simply as a tool for marking stitch locations. Holes are then punched at each location one hole at a time with an awl, as stitching progresses. Depending on the leather being used and the combined thickness being punched, the forces involved in punching 4 or 6 holes holes and removing the chisels just seems too prone to distorting the leather.

Great work all around!

Another thought popped in, hope its a helpful one. Really, cutting leather accurately isn't necessarily a simple thing. It can be very challenging. One slip can be an expensive mistake. So lately I've been making templates using picture frame mat board from Hobby Lobby and heavy paper. Somewhere on this site a video link showed a seriously skilled maker making templates for a wallet this way (I think from Iceland?). I figured it could only help me to borrow from his techniques. So now, after carefully drawing whatever parts will be needed on paper, I use knives to cut away the excess paper, then glue the shapes to contrasting color mat board, and finally use knives (again) to cut out working templates along the edges of the glued-on paper objects. Before any leather is cut, there have been two practice runs and a lot learned about what knives and what directions of cut work for any given feature. It's a lot less expensive to practice on paper and if the template comes out right, it's re-usable for any do-overs. I have so far added several knives as a result, and will likely add a few more over time. All the best, hope this is helpful.

Inspiring. You've set the bar high!

Something that has help me is much better lighting (I'm using a total of 240 watts close to and directed at the cutting board), and also working very deliberately to focus my vision in front of the blade at where I want the blade to go as I cut. I found that I had a tendency to want to look at where the blade had been to see if the cut was staying on track, which wasn't helping at all.

Understandably. I've only got 2 older ones, an 8" and a 10"; and my favorite is the 8". But that's not what she said The 10" is a Fulton, one of Sears and Roebuck's tool brands prior to the Craftsman brand. It just feels a little over the top as I'm generally working on tool handle sized wood. The 8" is more nimble; the 10" is back up. It's about to get a new sheath too.

My favorite draw knife just got a new sheath. An eight inch blade from New Haven Edge Tool Company, which appears to place its manufacture between 1855 to maybe 1900 ish.

I've been thinking about that too, along with a border blade. Made a new buckle strap and moved the buckle up for middle hole engagement. It was easy rework. Now it looks right to me!

Today's design/build project. The original cold war era leather straps started out as thin junk and had fallen to dry rot before a friend gave me this concertina. At 2" wide across the back of the hand, these feel great and put the player in full control of his fingers.