DwightT

Nothing wrong with showing good work. I love the baseballs. I may have to give something like that a shot one of these days just for fun. /dwight

Thanks. Just for grins I went and weighed it. With the strap locks it comes in at 8.3 oz. I'm not a guitar player so I have no idea if that is heavy or not, but doesn't seem too bad to me. Thank you. Thanks. The faux part is OK, but I've seen better. Next time I think I'll need to make the beveling deeper between the border and the "inlay". /dwight

Thanks. I was going for a dragon skin look. I had actually considered stamping the 'skin' on a separate piece of leather, then doing an actual inlay. But I decided that would have made the strap too heavy and stiff to be useful, so I went with the faux inlay look instead. Still need to work on that technique some more to really pull it off. Thanks. Dealing with cancer can really suck. Thank you. Those are "Ernie Ball" strap locks: https://www.ernieball.com/guitar-accessories/strap-locks# He uses those on his current strap, so I got him a set for this strap too so that he can easily switch between straps if he wants. /dwight

A friend of mine is going through treatment for Multiple Myeloma and having a pretty rough time of it right now. One of the things that helps him cope is playing the guitar, so I decided to make a new guitar strap for him. I've seen a couple of other projects on here that used the Sergey Neskromniy dragon scale stamps and I really liked that, so I decided to give that a try here. Maybe it will help him to slay this particular dragon. /dwight

Personally, I'm at most ambivalent about those clips. They mostly just kept trying to pull my pants down. Chuck had it right - it really comes down to how does my stepson feels about the current one. Other than the leather going floppy on him, he does like it. Even though the holster was originally designed to go on the right side, he likes having it on the left. For one it counter balances all the tools that he normally carries on the right, and he feels that it's easier for him to grab the drill from there. So I'll probably design the replacement based on the current one, but incorporate the higher sides as Dwight suggested. I also kind of like the idea of a simple wrap-around using Chicago screws to mount. Having the ability to reposition it might be nice. On the other hand, once he has it in a position that works, it would probably never be changed again so a single piece of leather might be sturdier. I'll have to do some thinking on that and discuss it with him. I'm also starting to think that instead of making it out of 10oz leather, I might instead go to two layers of 6oz. That might keep it stiffer longer? And of course I'll make it purdy. That's the whole point of having me do it. /dwight

My stepson is an electrician and he has asked me to make him a new holster for his drill gun. His current holster was made by his brother, who was trying to make a holster for his gun (not sure what kind of gun) but wound up with something that was too big for his use. It seemed to be OK for the drill gun though, so he passed it on. However over the years the leather has gotten soft and doesn't really hold the drill very well anymore when climbing ladders and the like. The current holster was made from two pieces of 8oz leather held together with rivets. I think it would be better to use at least 10oz, and possibly run an additional band of leather around the opening to give it more support. I would also just cut a single piece of leather rather than rivet two pieces together, and use stitching instead of rivets. Any thoughts? /dwight

Looks great. I've been thinking of doing something similar, but with a finger notch cut out of the bottom to allow pushing the phone up. Might make it easier for somebody with grip issues to pull the phone out? /dwight

I know that I'm late to the conversation, but I can remember way back when I was in elementary school and first started learning about the concept of leather carving, I wandered into my grandfather's shop and marveling at all of his leather carving tools. I distinctly remember a subset of those tools that appeared to my novice eye to have been fashioned from from various nails. Stupid me I didn't know enough at the time to even think to ask where those tools came from, but knowing him I always assumed that he had made them to meet his needs at the time. He was an old fashioned farmer / rancher and was known to "get er done" with whatever he had at hand. Sadly when I inherited his tools many years later those nail tools were not among the collection and I have no idea as to what happened to them. I guess those tools could be included under the term "Nail Carving"? /dwight

Thanks. I'm still working on edging, but this one I think was one of the better results. Most of the shears sold around here don't come with a sheath either. I got this one at a home show, and they threw in the sheath as a bonus. I threw it away. I do like having this sheath on my belt when I'm up in the tree and need to move around. Better than trying to stuff the shears into my pocket. Thought about that, and I'll probably do that for a multi-tool sheath that I need to do one of these days. But I want to give the clip a try partly just to get familiar with them and partly because sometimes I don't have a belt when I go out to prune, especially in the summer. With a clip I can just slip it over the waist band of my pants. /dwight

It's Spring (sort of), which means that it's time to prune the fruit trees. Unfortunately the sheath that came with my pruning shears was a cloth piece of junk that collapses whenever I pull the shears out, making it difficult to slide the shears back in. Since I'm so accomplished at leather work now (suuuure) I decided to make a sheath for myself. Used 6/7 oz leather and they hold their shape much better so that I can slip the shears back in without having to fiddle around with the sheath. The only thing I don't like is the belt loop. I just don't like having to undo my belt every time I go to put the sheath on/off. I may have to make another sheath and use a holster clip instead.

Well like I said I'm not really a gun person, and maybe I'm just totally blind, but I'm just not seeing it. All I see is a smooth barrel. It's probably just my ignorance about the components of guns.

Um, what front sight? I'm not really a gun person, but I don't think the flintlock has a front sight.

Great design, awesome execution, and I love the dragon skin concept. All in all well done.

Yes, you can apply the antique over the resist. That is the typical application. I usually use a spray-on lacquer such as Fiebing's Saddle-Lac. The problem that I've had with rub on or brush on top coats is that they do take the antique off. /dwight

I almost always apply an antique to my tooled items since it helps to hi-lite the tooling. After tooling I apply any dyes, then a coat of Resist (Fiebings Pro-Resist), the the antique, and finally a top coat finish. The Resist keeps the antique from discoloring the died areas. Since you only used the antique before on un-tooled leather, you were probably more after the staining effect, while for this it sounds like you are after the hi-lighting. When you apply the antique, work it over the entire area making sure that it gets into the recesses of the tooling. Then wipe it off using a damp cloth or paper towel that has been folded over multiple times to make it fairly stiff. You don't want to wipe very hard. The idea is to just get the antique off of the raised areas of the tooling and leave it in the recessed areas. /dwight

I saw somewhere that a guy had taken a scrap leather circle, folded it in half to make a taco, then filled it with pennies and stitched it shut. Seemed to make a pretty good weight and he claimed that for the weight the pennies where less expensive than ball bearings. Dunno how that would compare to the cost of sand. /dwight

I'll do the same, but sometimes if I can't find any line art that I like I'll look for a photo instead, load it into a graphics program that supports layers (such as GIMP) and then trace over it to create my own line art. /dwight

Looks great. I saw the one you posted a while back, and that was part of the incentive for me to do the one that I did for my grandson. I may have to take on the inlay process next time. /dwight

A0 refers to one of the paper sizes generally used by printers in Europe. A0 is the largest in the A series at 841x1189 mm (roughly 33x47 inches). A1 is half of A0, A2 is half of A1, and so on until A10 (26x37mm or 1x1.5 inches). Our standard "letter" size (8.5x11 inches) is roughly the same as A4 (210x297mm). There are also B and C sizes that start larger than the A series (1000x1414mm door B0 and 917x1297 for C0), but they follow the same half sheet per step idea as the A series. /dwight

I made the strap adjustable since he still has a few years of growth left. But I told him that if he sticks with it then when he turns 20 (and is hopefully finished growing) them I will make a new custom fitted strap for him. You may have to wait a while. Currently he thinks he is in to Ska music. I'm trying to convince him that he needs to look at the great bassists like Jaco Pastorius or Paul McCartney. His response was "Who?" I can understand him not knowing Pastorius, but McCartney? I'm really going to have to work on his education. Thanks. However we have 12 grandkids. The problem now is that I'll have to figure out what to make for the rest of them. /dwight

My grandson recently decided that he was going to learn to play the bass guitar, so while his other grandparents bought him a guitar, I took the opportunity to try my hand at making him a strap for it. I think it turned out pretty good. At least he is happy with it. /dwight

Ok, getting better penetration with diluted dye makes sense. As I mentioned I've done very few projects where I had to dye the whole thing. Usually I'm just doing small areas like backgrounds or other individual tooled elements. When I do those my brush will go from the bottle to a scrap piece of leather first for the initial discharge, then to the project. I do that to control the bleed-over into the surrounding areas, so I was probably leaving the "hot-spot" that was mentioned on the scrap piece. Diluting the dye won't mean that I won't have to do that intermediate step. If anything I would expect that I could have more problems with bleed-over, but I still think diluting it would be good for the general better penetration. As for Resolene, I haven't really used it much until just recently. Up until now I've either being using the spray-on SaddleLac, or my old NeatLac. Since I finally used up my NeatLac and everbody has been talking about Resolene, I thought I would give it a try. The instructions on the bottle didn't really say anything directly about diluting, but it does say to apply with a damp sponge. Regardless I'll start directly diluting it also. A question with diluting the dye: if you are mixing two or more dyes, are you diluting the individual colors first and then mixing or do you mix first and then dilute the results? Does it even matter? /dwight

Why the 50/50 dilution for the dye? Not looking to start an argument, but I've seen others mention that and I can't remember seeing the reasoning behind it. I typically use it straight from the bottle, but I'm using an artist's brush to apply it to a small area. Is the 50/50 limitation only applicable when you are dying the entire piece? And why the dilution for the Resolene? Since that is a sealant, wouldn't you want it full strength for the best effect? /dwight

Nice. And I like your stamping pattern. I have those leaf and rope stamps. I may have to go play with that on some bracelets for the grandkids. /dwight

Married for 28 years the first time. Single for a year before I even thought about dating, then found someone who has now been my best friend and bride for the last 11 years. We had both lost our spouses to cancer at about the same time, so we both knew about long-term commitment and working through the issues as they come up. When I was dating though I encountered a few divorcees. Man they were a bitter group. Nothing good to say about their ex's, and in some cases about men in general. Didn't go out on a second date with them. Can't say it was just women that were like that though. I knew a few men that complained about their ex's too. Some people probably shouldn't be in a relationship to begin with.