DwightT

Services will be held Saturday at noon. Flowers may be sent to the local funeral chapel. Authorities have ruled the death as justifiable.

Beautiful work. It's been a lot of years since I was into archery, but I still have the compound bow that I made in H.S. wood shop along with the traditional target shooters quiver that I made when I was in the archery club. I never cared much for the bow-mounted style of quivers for many of the reasons that you listed, but if I do decide to take up shooting again I may have to re-think that and see if I can do one like yours. /dwight

Welcome from Idaho. You'll find lots of good people and good info here. Looking forward to seeing your work. /dwight

That is just phenomenal. I know it's way beyond anything I could ever hope to achieve. /dwight

Then your edging is really nice. The transition between the two layers is so smooth it looked like a single piece of leather to me. Nice job. /dwight

Nice. I like how you used the technique to make it look like multiple layers on the front. The only thing that you might want to do differently is in the stitching along the top and bottom edges, don't run the stitching over the false layer edge. The stitching along the top "layer" should continue around the corner, and the stitching along the bottom "layer" should stop before the false edge. Other than that it looks fantastic. /dwight

Thanks. I guess it's just the color or something. The crazy horse that I've been using is a light brown while yours looks like dark brown. Came out looking great. /dwight

That looks fantastic! What did you use to treat your leather? I use crazy horse for the backing of guitar straps and I'm only applying carnauba cream to it. Your leather seems to have a sheen that looks better than what I get. /dwight

Personally I think they turned out fantastic. I don't see a need to resize the diamonds. I don't have that particular stamp, but I'm going to have to play around with the idea with the stamps that I do have. /dwight

That looks great. I'd like to do one for my bike someday. I just have to figure out how to make it work on a Goldwing. /dwight

That is stunning. Beautiful tooling and good selection of colors. And your stitching and edge work are marvelous. Good job. /dwight

Beautiful. And real snakeskin too. And I completely agree with Pastor Bob. Doing something for somebody else and having them enjoy it is always a wonderful feeling. Good job. /dwight

@Fraulein - here is the belt that gave me the idea for the faux inlay: https://twentythreeplus.com/products/three-piece-look-alike-belt The belt was carved out of a single piece of leather in such a way to look like it has over-laid pieces. A friend of mine showed me that belt and his attempt at the process, and I thought it might work for this inlay as well. Like I said mine turned out OK, but I think I can do better. /dwight

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.