DwightT

FWIW: I found a set of PCB drill bits on Amazon that go from 0.3mm to 1.2mm but they all have 1/8 inch shank. I can fit them into my old drill press without having to swap out the chuck. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Z7JZKKD?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details /dwight

I haven't really worked with chrometan leather before, but recently I picked up a side at the local Tandy store for a good price. My wife and I are looking at a couple projects, and she noticed that it scratches or scuffs easily. As an experiment I cut off a small chunk, scuffed it with my fingernail, then applied some Neat-Lac to it. It seems to have taken out that scuff mark, and now it doesn't seem to scuff as easily. So, is there any reason to not use Neat-Lac on chrometan? Or I guess more to the point, what is the preferred way to finish chrometan? Thanks /dwight

I could, but while the handle is OK, it's actually a bit smaller in my hand than I would prefer. I have an Owden awl with interchangeable blades, but they are a bit larger than what I was looking for. I'll probably just keep looking for a decent small diamond-shape awl. /dwight

Yep. That's them. I bought the small one. I will say that when it was nice and sharp when it arrived and only needed a quick polishing, any the holes it made were nicely shaped and small. I guess the only real problem was that the blade was so brittle that it snapped after only a few holes. /dwight

I'm glad it wasn't just me that found their comment strange. I know I'm no expert at stitching, and I thought maybe there was a technique that I didn't know about. That's why I didn't want to name them and malign their name over my stupidity (always a good possibility). But since I'm not alone in doubting their words, this was the "WUTA Stitching Awl Diamond Shape Awl" from WUTA Leather. I see now on their description on Amazon that they have this statement: "Use correctly:In order for you to use the awl better, When perforating, you need to use a hole punch tool to perforate first. The awl only used to assist the perforation. " Still makes absolutely no sense to me. /dwight

Recently I bought a new diamond stitching awl off of Amazon because I wanted something that could do smaller holes than what my current awl provides. The awl arrived, and the blade promptly broke off at the shank after poking about 5 holes. I contacted the seller, and while they refunded the purchase price, they also told me "We immediately reported the situation to our professional craftsman, who advised our customers not to directly use the awl to punch holes. Since the tip of the awl is relatively sharp, it can only be used to assist in poking holes. After the hole is made, use an awl to reshape the hole." Does any of that make sense to anybody? Are they saying that I should be using something else to poke the hole and their awl is only meant to be used to shape an existing hole? That seems like a fairly cumbersome way to do stitching, but maybe that's what needed for smaller fine-detail stitching? Am I missing something? Meanwhile I went back to my old awl, which is still holding up fine. I may not have thousands of projects under my belt with that awl, but I have poked a few hundred holes with it. /dwight

There's nothing wrong with just leaving it empty. Sometime simple is better and IMO adding more tooling around your image will just distract from it.

Yes. It's just the standard rope stamp, and then I gouged the stitching lines along the edge of the ropes. I find that helps to hide the stitching. I've even done some other projects where I poke the stitching holes on the points of each stamp. Makes the stitching almost invisible.

A while back I posted about some old leather that I was using and the problems that I was having with it. I had made a dice cup partly to see what I could do with the old leather and to get an idea for what it takes to do stitching on a cylinder. Needless to say my results weren't all that good. The tooling was OK, but in the process of stitching with an awl the leather would stretch or the holes would split out. Plus that was one of my first projects after being out of leather work for a long time, and I found that there was a lot that I had forgotten. Since then I've done a lot of reading on this sight, remembering some things that I had forgotten about and learning some new tricks, and I think things have improved. My wife and I are about to leave for a cruise, and she wanted me to make another dice cup for this trip. I decided to use the old leather again, but instead of using an awl I made the stitching holes with a chisel, and I didn't even try to join the edges with a butt joint where I would have to stitch through the edge of the leather. Instead I poked the holes straight through and used a two needle baseball stitch. I also finished the edges using the technique described by @hidepounder and I think the results were a lot better. In all I'm much happier with the results. So Thank You to the forum members for all the great info on this site. I hope to keep learning as I continue playing with this stuff. /dwight

I like the idea of bonding a piece behind the torn part. That way I won't really need to worry about matching the current color. There is already I lining on the inside of the bag, so I can position the "patch"in the middle to hide it. I'll just need to skive the patch as fredk mentioned to minimize how much it shows. Thanks. I may not need to worry another color matching here, but I'm doing some other projects where I occasionally combine old and new leather. I'll look for that dye color to make them match. /dwight

I think you are right. That might be the best way to go. The problem will be in the "dye to match" part. The original leather wasn't dyed to begin with. It's just 50+ years old. That aged leather color might be hard to match. Plus I would be worried that the dyed leather wouldn't age the same as the old leather and it wouldn't take long before it didn't match at all. I'm thinking it might be better to go with an intentionally contrasting color. . /dwight

50+ years ago my grandfather made this bag for my mother. My sister now owns the bag and she asked me to clean and condition the leather. In the process of looking it over though I found that a lot of the lacing is deteriorating, so I offered to redo it. However when I was pulling out the old lacing I found that some of the leather had split at the holes: There is about a 3" section on the bottom of one side of the bag that is split like this. The rest of the leather looks OK, and the liner on the inside looks fine. Any thoughts as to how to go about repairing this? Obviously for sentimental reasons we want to try to keep the bag in as good a condition as we can. /dwight

Looks great. Care to share the overall design? I want to make a tool roll for my brother-in-law and I'm looking for inspiration. /dwight

I've always tried to use the concept of ""put you tools back in the same place so that you can find them next time". My problem in the garage though is that every so often my wife gets a wild hair and decides to reorganize, and it takes me several weeks to get used to her new system. So far she hasn't touched my leather tools, so I can't blame her when I can't find one. /dwight

Absolutely gorgeous!! And the video was fascinating. Showed me so many things that I've been doing wrong. Along with some tools that I've seen but never been quite sure how to use. Thanks for that. /dwight

Looks great. Maybe someday I'll take on some painting / dying like that. For a closure, how about just a tooled leather strap and buckle? Tool and color it to complement your current design, then you could possibly attach it to the back of the case or just leave it unattached like your current bootlace. /dwight

Used to do the river skiing thing when I was a kid, but we didn't use bungee cord or a barrel. We just used rope to attach the ski to the middle of a bridge. As long as the rope was long enough we could launch from the river bank. Been more years than I want to admit since I last did that. /dwight

Looking good. And thank you for the idea of gluing two pieces together for the sewing. I have to do some edge stitching for a project that I'm working on, but the holes keep tearing out because I'm using old leather. This will solve that problem for me, plus give me another tooling surface where I can add some additional customization. /dwight

Laserjet toner is essentially composed of polymer beads that are "fused" to the surface of the paper with heat. I'm not exactly a chemist, but I would imagine that the acetone breaks the bond between the paper and the polymer and lets it settle onto the leather. Once the acetone evaporates the polymer adheres to the leather. I'm guessing though that it isn't a strong bond, and over time the toner would wear off. Inkjet ink though really is ink that has absorbed into the fibers of the paper. The developers of the inks have actually put a lot of R&D time into making those inks stay put even when they get wet, so it's not surprising that you couldn't find something to make them transfer. As interesting as your laserjet process sounds though, I think I'll stay with the transfer film method. Since I can see through the film I would imagine that it would be easier to align the pattern on the leather piece. I may try your process on a sample piece though just to see how it works. Thanks for the description. /dwight

I'll ditto what Tequila says. I print it out, then trace over the image with a pencil onto transfer film. One of the advantages of this is when I'm transferring the image to the leather is that I can see through the film to verify that I've hit all the lines, and to line everything back up if I missed some. But tell me more about your laser-printer transfer process. I used to work in laser-printer development (I wrote the low-level code for some control panels) and I have a laser printer in my home office (retirement gift). I'm not too sure about using acetone on leather, but if the process works without damaging the leather it might make my life easier especially with small projects where I've scaled the image down. /dwight

Yes. The dice cup I made a while ago was actually a trial run for this. I had thought about just making a sleeve, but I felt that having a base would make it stronger. Plus it gave me a place to put my "Handcrafted By" stamp. /dwight

I'll have to give the Carve Ezz a try. Once I got away from that edge it hasn't been too bad, but it definitely doesn't carve or punch like new leather. Part of it was probably how the leather was stored. In my case it was rolled flesh side out and tied with a cord. The roll has been stored in the garage for the past ~20 years, which means that it has been subjected to hot/cold cycles. The leather that was in the outer layer seems to be in the worst shape. I was just going to leave it be, but then I decided to go back and finish the edges. I applied several thin coats of tragacanth gum, burnishing between each coat. I have a wooden burnishing wheel that mounts in my drill press, so it makes it fairly easy to cure the gum. Looks a bit better now. /dwight

My son was recently promoted to vice-principle at a local high school, so I got a Yeti Coffee Cup for him and made a leather koozie for it. Still not my best effort (I hate the border), but I'm still experimenting and re- learning as I go. The whole thing is filled with symbolism for him: I made it, the rose is for his mother (she loved roses and always had a rose garden), the purple of the cup is for the pancreatic cancer that took her from us, and the silver on his name is one of the colors for his new school. Overall he is happy with it, so I'll ignore the flaws for now. /dwight

As I mentioned in my intro post a few weeks ago, I'm returning to leather work after a 30+ year hiatus. I have a bunch of tools and stuff from back then (along with some really old tools that I inherited from my grandfather), and I have most of a side of leather that I bought probably 40 years ago. Recently I finally got around to trying my hand at making a dice cup following the instructions in "The Art of Making Leather Cases" book and I cut the leather for it from that old side. For the most part the leather took the tooling OK, but when it came time to do the stitching I ran into some problems. Basically the leather was very stiff along one edge (what had been the edge before I cut it from the side) so I had a hard time in getting the awl to go through. The awl was freshly sharpened so I know that it wasn't from using a dull awl. It was just very hard to push through that edge and it ultimately stretched the leather to the point where I couldn't get a clean joint. I'm still mostly happy with the project, but if I do any other projects with that leather and I have to sew it, I'll pre-punch the holes with a stitching chisel. /dwight

I'm stealing that idea. I'm also working in a small space, so your shelf unit will help me to get my tools organized. I love the way that you tilted the tool block to make it easier to see the stamps. /dwight